Posted on 07/30/2013 7:15:08 AM PDT by NotYourAverageDhimmi
Conservatives are grabbing popcorn and lining up to catch a new historical drama with modern connections.
“Copperhead,” the new film from director Ron Maxwell, focuses on the Northern opponents of the American Civil War and stars Billy Campbell, Angus MacFadyen and Peter Fonda.
At least one conservative — Richard Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com — emailed his audience to tell it about the movie “that every conservative needs to see.”
“[W]hile Copperhead is about the Civil War, believe me, it will hit close to home for every conservative fighting to preserve our Constitution and our American way of life,” Viguerie wrote. “Because Copperhead is about standing up for faith, for America, and for what’s right, just like you and I are doing today. In fact, I’ve never seen a movie with more references to the Constitution, or a movie that better sums up our current fight to stand up for American values and get our nation back on track.”
The movie, which is based on the novel by Harold Frederic, follows Abner Beech, a New York farmer who doesn’t consider himself a Yankee, and is against slavery and war in general.
Asked about whether he sees his film as conservative, Maxwell told POLITICO, “I think if ‘Copperhead’ has any relevance at all, in addition to illuminating a time and place from our common heritage, it’s as a cinematic meditation on the price of dissent. I’ve never thought of dissent as a political act belonging to the right or left. It’s an act of liberty, expression of the rights of a free person — free not just in law but free from the confines and pressures of the tyranny of the majority.”
Maxwell said while the concept of dissent is as “old as time,” in the U.S., “it’s protected in the Constitution.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
The Veterans Administration will still provide a Confederate Head stones with the submission of the proper paperwork. A few years back, a friend that was a Civil War reenactor discovered a blood relative that had been in a VA infantry unit buried a Portsmouth VA cemetery with just a flat grave marker. He submitted a copy of his relative confederate army discharge to the VA. About 4 month later he received a Confederate soldiers grave marker in white marble, engraved with his relatives name rank, unit and date of death.
You would get an argument from authors of The Federalist Papers, which explained what the Constitution meant. Alexander Hamilton and John Jay voted in the New York ratification document for the following explanation of what the Constitution meant:
WE the Delegates of the People of the State of New York, duly elected and Met in Convention, having maturely considered the Constitution for the United States of America, agreed to on the seventeenth day of September, in the year One thousand Seven hundred and Eighty seven, by the Convention then assembled at Philadelphia in the Common-wealth of Pennsylvania (a Copy whereof precedes these presents) and having also seriously and deliberately considered the present situation of the United States, Do declare and make known.
... That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness; ...
... Under these impressions and declaring that the rights aforesaid cannot be abridged or violated, and that the Explanations aforesaid are consistent with the said Constitution, And in confidence that the Amendments which shall have been proposed to the said Constitution will receive an early and mature Consideration: We the said Delegates, in the Name and in the behalf of the People of the State of New York Do by these presents Assent to and Ratify the said Constitution.
That was not a conditional ratification. It was a statement that explained what the Constitution meant. It is a statement of original intent. The part that had been conditional about the New York ratification (that New York could leave if amendments weren't passed within a certain number of years) had already been taken out of the New York ratification document.
Nowhere in the Constitution was secession prohibited. Nowhere are non-seceding states or the federal government given the power to stop a state from leaving. IMO, if there had been such statements in the Constitution, the Constitution would not have been ratified by all states.
The Constitution did not bind states that have seceded from the Union any more than the United States was bound by English law after the Revolutionary War.
IMO all of them would - and did. They added verbiage to ease concerns of nervous citizens but they agreed to the Perpetual Union and later the More Perfect Union.
They all knew that the alternative was to go it alone - a circumstance that would surely culminate in being subsumed or consumed.
Which clause do you disagree with?
Secession is not prohibited. Secession by the action of a single state is not an authority given to the state. If you disagree with that, then you have a controversy, which is to be resolved per Article III, with the state as a party to that controversy, so the original jurisdiction is the supreme court.
Certainly the militia act of 1795, passed by an early congress that had many of the Framers as members, gave the president authority to determine what was an insurrection, and to call out the militia to suppress combinations too large for normal measures.
The President at that time did make such a determination, and did call out militia to suppress the insurrection.
If the laws of the US are not obeyed, and taxes owed to the US are not paid, then that is an insurrection.
The president has the authority to suppress insurrection. The state does not have the legal authority to start an insurrection, so such an insurrection would be illegal.
Does the Prime Minister of Canada have the authority to put down an "insurrection" if Quebec were to declare its independence,as it almost did a few years back? How about Britain's PM? Scotland is holding an independence vote next year.
Perhaps donmeaker knows the answer but what differences does it make? Those examples are utterly irrelevant to the conversation of how the United States conducts her affairs, now or then.
Are you suggesting they didn't mean what they said? Say anything to get it ratified, then go back on their word? If so, you have a pessimistic view of those key founders. Even George Washington recognized the new union was not the old union. [Source: the records of Congress, August 22, 1789, Link, my emphasis below]:
The President of the United States came into the Senate Chamber, attended by General Knox, and laid before the Senate the following state of facts, with the questions thereto annexed, for their advice and consent:
... "As the Cherokees reside principally within the territory claimed by North Carolina, and as that State is not a member of the present Union, it may be doubted whether any efficient measures in favor of the Cherokees could be immediately adopted by the general government ..."
The Constitutional Convention of 1787 basically ignored the Articles of Confederation and wrote an entirely new document outlining a different government governed by the new Constitution, not one governed by the Articles of Confederation. I hold, as Washington apparently did, that the new union was indeed a more perfect union, but not the same union or one with the same rules as the old union.
If the Constitutional Convention had wanted to say the new union was perpetual like the old union, they could have said so. They didn't. They started forming the a new government after nine states ratified the Constitution (Article VII of the Constitution) instead of waiting for the unanimous consent of all thirteen like would be required under the Articles. They treated the Articles and its perpetual union as a dead letter like the perpetual union of New England colonies formed long before the Articles.
I also found the following in the records of the first Congress:
And be it further enacted, That all rum, loaf sugar, and chocolate, manufactured or made in the states of North Carolina, or Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and imported or brought into the United States, shall be deemed and taken to be subject to the like duties, as goods of the like kinds, imported from any foreign state, kingdom, or country are made subject to.
Those two states had not yet at that time ratified the Constitution and were not members of the new union and their specified goods had to be imported into the United States.
Can you *really* imagine *any* president,even one as utterly amoral as Osama Obama,sending troops into a state (or group of states) that have declared independence?
Not at all. Just realistic. There was a sense of urgency and a sense of enormity and it wasn't like we had no enemies scratching at the door.
You mean like George Washington did?
Now you're playing word games.
And you’re not?
Edmund Ruffin was a great Southern patriot. He killed himself instead of living under occupation of Federal forces. That he has terminal cancer made the decision easier. The form of government that the Founding Fathers envisioned for this country ended when Lee surrendered to Grant. And slavery was just a side-issue. The war was over States Rights. Lincoln didn’t give a damn about a black man. His real feelings about blacks are historical fact. He thought the white man was superior to blacks and never wanted them to have the right to vote. In his famous debates with Douglas he said he had no intention of ending slavery if elected. He only jumped on the moral issue of “freeing” the slaves half-way into the war after one Southern victory after another and after he thought that England was going to side with the Confederacy. The Emancipation Proclamation freed no one. Lincoln had no authority in the CSA where the majority of the slaves lived and certainly didn’t “free” any slave in border states that were fighting for the union. All the Founding Fathers believed in the right of secession. Does anyone for a minute think that a state would have entered into a contract with a bunch of other states, controlled by a Federal government, if they didn’t retain the right to leave that VOLUNTARY union if they saw fit. Of course not.
The only reason Jefferson Davis was not put on trial is because his trial would have shown secession was legal and Lincoln acted unconstitutionally when he sent his armies South to put down the rebellion.
And yet they did.
The only reason Jefferson Davis was not put on trial is because his trial would have shown secession was legal and Lincoln acted unconstitutionally when he sent his armies South to put down the rebellion.
Baloney.
First, Canada is not governed by the US constitution.
Second, yes, they also have the right and duty to put down insurrections.
You claim the war was over state’s rights.
What state right?
Absolutely, any president would put down an insurrection. Washington did. Lincoln did. Any president would, should and must.
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