Posted on 12/02/2008 6:57:32 AM PST by prplhze2000
The states in question rebelled. Unsuccessfully.
How can you have representative gov’t, without representation?
When those representatives spent four years trying to tear the country apart, and then the next two years doing everything in their power to subvert the Constitutional amendments ending slavery then how can they expect to return to D.C. as if nothing happened?
Justice Grier, in a dissent in which Justices Swayne and Miller joined, denied that Texas remained a state. Grier cited precedent that a state is defined as an entity with representation in the United States Congress.
And Justices Chase, Nelson, Clifford, Field, and Davis found that it was.
Believing something is fine, but where is that stated as a requirement in the US Constitution?
A state canno not join the Union without the approval of the other states. Once allowed in, a state cannot split in two, combine with another state, or change its border by a fraction of an inch without the approval of the other states as expressed through a vote in both houses of Congress. Since every change in status requires the approval of the other states then it isn't hard to realize that leaving entirely would take the same approval.
Also, one of the factors that led to the civil war was that the balance in the number of “free” vs “slave” states was being threatened by potential new states, and a series of “compromises” then in effect.
And? Please show me the article in the Constitution that guarantees an equal number of slave states and free states.
Not all in the north were in agreement regarding the southern states seceding.
And what difference does that make? Not all in the South were in agreement with the Civil Rights acts of the 60's and the 24th Amendments either. Should we have done away with those?
If I recall correctly, Lincoln even imprisoned journalists in the north that were speaking out against his actions.
As did Jefferson Davis. Frequently.
My point, exactly. Not much more to it, is there?
Nobody likes a loser, do they?
The south did not ‘dominate’ the north, it was more like staving off northern domination. Look at the result of the many acts, compromises, etc. leading up to the war.
The South exercised a disproportionate level of power over the federal government and enjoyed a disproportionate level of representation in Congress for most of the time leading up to the rebellion. Yet the North didn't revolt, did they?
“The South exercised a disproportionate level of power over the federal government and enjoyed a disproportionate level of representation in Congress for most of the time leading up to the rebellion.”
Now you’re just trying to make history meet your expectations.
Merry Christmas
And also, this...
One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Let's rededicate ourselves to keep this heritage alive for our kids and grand kids so they can argue this same stuff too. It's fun.
The following table on the number of representatives from the North and South in the US House comes from Albert Taylor Bledsoe in his 1866 book, Is Davis a Traitor, or Was Secession a Right Prior to the War of 1861:
Census.................North......South......MajorityBefore Census......35.............30...............5
1790........................57.............53...............4
1800........................77.............65..............12
1810......................104.............79..............25
1820......................133.............90..............43
1830......................141...........100..............41
1840......................135.............88..............47
1850......................144.............90..............90
The method for calculating the number of representatives changed over time resulting in the strange drop in 1840. See Link
I see I made a typo on the last majority figure, which should have been 54.
“When those representatives spent four years trying to tear the country apart, and then the next two years doing everything in their power to subvert the Constitutional amendments ending slavery then how can they expect to return to D.C. as if nothing happened?”
Avoids the question — How can you have representative gov’t, without representation?
“And Justices Chase, Nelson, Clifford, Field, and Davis found that it was.”
Yes, it was a split decision.
How about the second part: Grier cited precedent that a state is defined as an entity with representation in the United States Congress.
“A state canno not join the Union without the approval of the other states.”
This applied to states joining after the Union of the original states.
“Since every change in status requires the approval of the other states then it isn't hard to realize that leaving entirely would take the same approval.”
This does not logically follow. The other changes you mention all involve more than just the individual state. Secession involves only the state in question, no others. Each act of secession was an individual act, by their own legislative bodies.
“And? Please show me the article in the Constitution that guarantees an equal number of slave states and free states.”
Sorry, that was not my point. I meant that at the time, the states were split evenly. If a majority vote HAD been required, it probably would not have been a problem.
“As did Jefferson Davis. Frequently.”
Rly? I'll look for my reference if you look for yours :)
“Nobody likes a loser, do they?”
Not sure what your point is, here.
“The South exercised a disproportionate level of power over the federal government and enjoyed a disproportionate level of representation in Congress for most of the time leading up to the rebellion. Yet the North didn't revolt, did they?”
Not even possible. Equal representation in the Senate, and the House is based on population, which would always have favored the north.
Not at all. First let's let a Southern leader of the time talk about the disproportionate level of power:
"But again, gentlemen, what do we have to gain from this proposed change of our relationship with the general government? We have always had control of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as we have been. We have had a majority of Presidents chosen from the south; as well as the control and management of most of those chosen form the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to their twenty four, thus controlling the Executive Department. So of the judges of the Supreme Court, we have had eighteen from the South, and but eleven from the North; although nearly four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen in the Free States, yet a majority of the Court has always been from the South. This we have required so as to guard against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us. In like manner we have been equally watchful to guard our interest in the Legislative branch of government. In choosing the presiding Presidents (pro Tempore) of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their eleven. Speakers of the House, we have had twenty-three, and they twelve. While the majority of Representatives, from their greater population, have always been from the North, yet we have so generally secured the Speaker, because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls the legislation of the country. Nor have we had less control in every other department of the general government. Attorney-Generals we have had fourteen, while the North have had but five. Foreign ministers we have had eighty-six, and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the Free States, from their greater commercial interests, yet we have had the principle embassies, so as to secure the world markets for our cotton, tobacco, and suger on the best possible terms. We have had the vast majority of the higher officers of both army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North. Equally so of Clerks, Auditors, and Comptrollers filling the Executive department; the records show that for the last fifty years, of the three thousand thus employed, we have had more than two-thirds of the same, while we have but one-third of the white population of the Republic." - Alexander Stephens, January 1861
As for disproportionate level of representation, look at the Constitution, Article I, Section 2, Clause 3. The three-fifths clause gave the South over 1 million people additional for purposes of allocating Congressmen. That gave the South an additional six to ten congressmen they really weren't entitled to if one considered only their free population.
You also need to factor in Article I, Section 2. The South had over one million people added to their population for the purpose of allocation congressional representatives due to the three-fifths clause. That was good for as many as 10 extra congressmen.
I'm used to it.
Avoids the question — How can you have representative gov’t, without representation?
And you avoid the underlying cause. Why should Congress admit as members the very people who launched a prolonged and bloody rebellion the year before? If states are going to pursue a violent and illegal course of action then they should be prepared to accept any repercussions. Just because the South lost their representatives temporarily because of the rebellion doesn't mean they were no longer states. The Southern states voluntarily removed their delegations in 1861 and that didn't change their status then.
How about the second part: Grier cited precedent that a state is defined as an entity with representation in the United States Congress.
A minority opinion is just that, a minority opinion. The majority of the justices agreed that Texas never ceased to be a state.
This applied to states joining after the Union of the original states.
Not at all. To believe that would mean that some states have more rights than others. The Constitution does not allow for that. And I'll also point out that five of the original seven rebelling states all joined the Union after the Constitution was ratified.
This does not logically follow. The other changes you mention all involve more than just the individual state. Secession involves only the state in question, no others. Each act of secession was an individual act, by their own legislative bodies.
And doesn't leaving the Union also involve the other states as well? We don't operate in a vacuum. The country enters into obligations as a whole, not as individual states. When the Southern states walked out, they walked away from their share of the national debt and treaty responsibilities, and took with them every piece of federal property they could get their hands on. So the remaining states were left with the responsibilities and lost property that they had also funded. Wouldn't you agree that they were impacted. Of course they were. That's why secession has to be done with the approval of all the impacted parties. Otherwise such a separation is guaranteed to be bitter and acrimonious, and lead to the war that the South caused when they walked out.
Rly? I'll look for my reference if you look for yours :)
I don't need to look far. Mark E. Neely, Jr. wrote two books on the subject: "The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties" and "Southern Rights: Political Prisoners and the Myth of Confederate Constitutionalism". He goes into great detail on the excesses, North and South, and to put it bluntly cuts through a lot of the Southron myths that have been accepted as gospel. The long and short of it is that based on the number of political prisoners as a percentage of the population you were more likely to be locked up without trial in a Jeff Davis confederacy than an Abe Lincoln Union.
Not even possible. Equal representation in the Senate, and the House is based on population, which would always have favored the north.
Article I, Section 2, Clause 3. The South had over 3 million slaves in 1860. Thanks to the 3/5ths clause those added an additional 1.8 million to the Southern population for the purpose of determining Congressional representation. That was good for an additional six to ten congressmen, probably more. All to represent a percentage of the population that had no more rights than a barn did.
That was already taken into account in the figures (see Link). FYI, Delaware and Maryland were counted as Southern states in Bledsoe's figures.
IIRC, the three-fifth's clause was proposed by the North to counter a proposal by the South to fully count slaves. Without the three-fifths clause, the South did not have voting protection against the more populous North, and the Union likely would not have been formed.
I think a claim of the government being dominated by the South for most of the years before the war is a bit of a red herring. The House certainly wasn't. There were more presidents from the South, but they received electoral votes from the North as well as the South. They could not have been elected with electoral votes only from the South. The North had more electoral votes than the South, in keeping with its greater population.
In 1860, a sectional president was elected with votes only from one region. The only presidential elections that showed a largely regional vote in the past would have been Jefferson versus Adams in 1800 (Jefferson won) and Freemont (born in Savannah, I discover - alma mater: College of Charleston) versus Buchanan (born in Pennsylvania) in 1856 (Buchanan won).
"In like manner we have been equally watchful to guard our interest in the Legislative branch of government. In choosing the presiding Presidents (pro Tempore) of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their eleven. Speakers of the House, we have had twenty-three, and they twelve. While the majority of Representatives, from their greater population, have always been from the North, yet we have so generally secured the Speaker, because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls the legislation of the country." - Alexander Stephens.
So said the former Southern Whig, who voted against the annexation of Texas (pox be upon him for that vote).
The South couldn't help it if the North didn't put up viable candidates. The North as a region had the votes to elect presidents and speakers of the house. I think the country as a whole was more inclined towards Democrat or Democrat-Republican candidates back then, and they got votes in the North as well as the South.
As a Copperhead said in 1864:
The great principle now in issue, is the centralization of power, or the keeping it diffused in State sovereignty, as it is by the organic laws, constituting States and forming the General Government.
... The great boast of the Democratic party, has been, that it has met and beaten back the party of centralization, since the formation of the Union ...
Although Stephens argued against Georgia seceding, here is what he said about the right of secession (my bold below).
Whatever intimate relationships, therefore, existed between the citizens of the respective thirty-three States constituting the Union in 1860, they were created by, or sprung from, the terms of the Compact of 1787, by which the original States as States were united. These terms were properly called the Constitution of the United States; not the Constitution of one people as one society or one nation, but the Constitution of a number of separate and distinct peoples, or political bodies, known as States. The absolute Sovereignty of these original States, respectively, was never parted with by them in that or any other Compact of Union ever entered into by them. This at least was my view of the subject. Georgia was one of these States. My allegiance therefore was, as I considered it, not due to the United States, or to the people of the United States, but to Georgia in her Sovereign capacity. Georgia had never parted with her right to command the ultimate allegiance of her citizens.
... The Sovereign power of the people of the State, which alone could regulate its relations with the other States, was not vested in the Legislature. That resided with the people of the State. It had never been delegated either to the State authorities, or the authorities created by the Articles of Union. It could be exercised only by the people of the State in a regularly-constituted Convention, embodying the real Sovereignty of the State — just such Convention as had agreed to and adopted the Constitution of the United States. It required the same power to unmake as it had to make it. ...
... The Convention was called; it was regularly and legally assembled; the Sovereign will of the State, when expressed through its properly constituted organ, was for Secession, or a withdrawal of the State from the Union. The Convention passed an Ordinance repealing and rescinding the State Ordinance of the second of January, 1788, by which Georgia became one of the United States under the constitutional Compact of 1787.
Merry Christmas. It’s a blessing to have such a national history and heritage worth arguing over. Here’s to another year.
Not true. The filibuster had always been a part of the Senate rules (at one time part of the House rules too) but became a very effective tactic beginning in 1841 when the Democrats began to use it to block legislation they did not like. The Democrats had been using it for over 20 years before the Civil War and they would have had no problem in using it to block any legislation from the Lincoln administration
In fact, under the rules then, there was no way to even stop 'debate' and bring a bill to a vote. It was not until 1917 that the 3/5 cloture rule was put in place.
You can cast aspersions on him, the man who was later the vice president of your whole miserable confederacy, but you can't show where he was wrong.
Miserable Confederacy? Here's what Stephens had to say about the Union under Lincoln. He was right on in this characterization. [Source: "Alexander H. Stephens in Public and Private" by Henry Cleveland]:
The course of Lincoln from the beginning -- from his inauguration -- has been at war with every principle of the constitution. ... He, by force of arms, attempts to compel a return to what he calls allegiance to the constitution. This, too, in the face of the fact of open and avowed violation of their constitutional pledges on the part of those northern States alluded to, all of which gave him a cordial support. The Union must be preserved. The South must be forced back to her constitutional duty at all costs and all hazards, but not a word has he ever uttered against those northern States in open rebellion against one of the most important provisions of the constitution, one at least without which it is well known the constitution could never have been adopted, and the Union would have never been formed. He has never intimated a desire that these States should ever return to their constitutional duty and allegiance, while all the power of the government is resorted to to compel us to do so.
And he also said this about constitutional liberty, which was sorely lacking in the North:
Constitutional liberty can be achieved and secured only by maintaining and defending written and well defined limitations on the powers of all who are in authority. Such are the limitations in our constitution. That chart of our liberties was made for war as well as peace [Think Ex parte Milligan which came some years after these words of Stephens]. Our first, chief and controlling object in every "plan" or act, should be to maintain the constitution. Secession was resorted to as the only means to preserve the principles of the constitution inviolate.
This is getting too long, so I’ll respond to each point individually.
“Article I, Section 2, Clause 3. The South had over 3 million slaves in 1860. Thanks to the 3/5ths clause those added an additional 1.8 million to the Southern population for the purpose of determining Congressional representation. That was good for an additional six to ten congressmen, probably more.”
Here are the actual facts regarding US House representation:
36th U S Congress - House
Alabama - 7
Arkansas - 2
Florida - 1
Georgia - 8
Louisiana - 4
Mississippi - 5
North Carolina - 8
South Carolina - 6
Tennessee - 10
Texas - 2
Virginia - 13
Secession Total: 76
California - 2
Connecticut - 4
Delaware - 1
Illinois - 9
Indiana - 11
Iowa - 2
Kansas - 1
Kentucky - 10
Maine - 6
Maryland - 6
Massachusetts - 11
Michigan - 4
Minnesota - 2
Missouri - 7
New Hampshire - 3
New Jersey - 5
New York - 33
Ohio - 21
Oregon - 1
Pennsylvania - 25
Rhode Island - 2
Vermont - 3
Wisconsin - 3
Union Total: 172
Looks like it didn’t make much of a difference . . .
“To believe that would mean that some states have more rights than others. The Constitution does not allow for that. And I’ll also point out that five of the original seven rebelling states all joined the Union after the Constitution was ratified.”
Yes, I agree, therefore the new states also had the right to secede.
“And doesn’t leaving the Union also involve the other states as well? We don’t operate in a vacuum.”
Of course. That’s a good reason for not taking unfair advantage of states to the point that they leave the union.
“The country enters into obligations as a whole, not as individual states. When the Southern states walked out, they walked away from their share of the national debt and treaty responsibilities, and took with them every piece of federal property they could get their hands on. So the remaining states were left with the responsibilities and lost property that they had also funded.”
The federal gov’t refused to relinquish property within the territory of the states that had seceded. They obviously should have.
The financial side could have been handled via negotiation, claims, counter-claims, etc. It did not have to be war. BTW, the national debt at the time was relatively small. The Civil War caused the first big increase.
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