Posted on 08/05/2010 6:01:30 AM PDT by Michael Zak
[by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine, CA), re-published with his permission]
For years I have admired Congressman Ron Paul’s principled stance on spending and the Constitution. That said, he really damaged himself when he blamed President Lincoln for the Civil War, saying, “Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war… [President Abraham Lincoln] did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic.”
This is historical revisionism of the worst order, and it must be addressed.
For Congressman Paul’s benefit – and for his supporters who may not know – seven states illegally declared their “independence” from the United States before Lincoln was sworn in as President. After South Carolina fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, four additional states declared independence...
(Excerpt) Read more at grandoldpartisan.typepad.com ...
In a normal situation, yes.
In the case of secession, who is the arbiter? A court controlled by one of the intersted parties.
"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity."
IMHO, this quote applies to a government as well.
You have stated several times that an ammendment would allow an individual state to leave the union - I assume you mean that a state could request to leave and 2/3's congress and 3/4 states must approve. If so, why? If the power of the state is derived from the people (and the power of the federal state derived from the people and the states), the people have the right to determine whether the nation government is serving thier interests and, failing other remedies (see the earlier link to Madisions Essay) may remove themselves from the union.
Madison wrote: "The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State."
Unmention is what happens if such events DO occur - what is the remedy?
With all due respect, the issues in 1860 had absolutely nothing to do with ending slavery then or at any foreseeable time in the future. Only the abolitionists called for that then, and they were a small minority. If you had told people then that slavery would be outlawed in the next 5 years, they would have thought you were crazy. The only issue in 1860 was weather Congress had the power to stop the expansion of slavery to the territories. The South chose secession after the 1860 election because they saw that Congress would do just that and that Lincoln as president would enforce the ban on expansion and that the new states would be free states.
The Emancipation Proclamation and later the 13th Amendment that ended slavery in the United States were a direct result of the war, not the cause of the war.
If, for instance, the Union forces had gained a quick victory and crushed the rebellion in a matter of months, slavery where it existed would have gone on just as it had before the war. It was only after the war dragged on and losses mounted far beyond anyones expectations, that people made the connection between slavery and the divisions between the states lead to the war. From that perspective, a majority decided that slavery was indeed an evil that needed to be ended.
Federaist #47 takes on secession, as disunion, but from an oblique angle. Billthedrill and I posted Federalist #40 today, and we're a few weeks away from tackling #46 and #47.
To jump the gun a little, it depends on whether the Constitution is a treaty or a contract. In Federalist #47, I'll be posting a matrix spreadsheet showing how Treaty People viewed various aspects of the Founding Documents versus Contract People. (If anyone knows how to post a table in HTML, I'd appreciate some advice.)
In short, Treaty People treated secession as a unilateral right. Contract People believed that the other parties to the contract needed to approve the secession. Both parties disagreed on how that contract, the Union, had been created, which we will show in the matrix.
Lincoln, a Contract Person, stated that the Southern states could leave, but only if three-fourths of the states approved. He got that figure from Article V, which pertains to the amendatory process, so Lincoln's thinking there is a little flaky.
John Calhoun, a Treaty Person, had earlier stated that if two-thirds of the states nullified a federal law, it was repealed, but he also got that number from a different clause in Article V, which pertains to the amendatory process, not the legislative process. Thus, Calhoun's thinking on the subject was a bit flaky, too.
I suspect the thread for Federalist #47 will be a long one.
True, but the central idea around which Southern society organized itself was white supremacy. The Northern society did not organize themselves so. They were racists, but the sine qua non of their society was not white supremacy.
Thanks for your summation and I look forward to the Federalist #47 thread.
Actually, the first shots were fired in January of 1861.
On January 9, 1861, before the Confederacy was formed, the Star of the West was fired upon by cadets from The Citadel stationed at the Morris Island battery as the ship entered Charleston Harbor.[2] This prevented the Star of the West from resupplying Major Robert Anderson's garrison at Fort Sumter. The Star of the West was given a warning shot across the bow and turned about to leave the harbor mouth. She was then fired on from Fort Moultrie and hit twice.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_of_the_West
Based on race relations of the past 100 years or so, I my OPINION, southerners of both races treat each other better than Northerner treat blacks, indicating that the Yankee feels superior by showing condescension and superior attitude. Again my opinion.
There were 4M slaves in the USA in 1860. Prices varied wildly, but $750 to $1000 is quite conservative as an average.
That would mean $3,000,000,000 to $4,000,000,000. At a time when the entire federal budget for 1860 was $60,000,000.
IOW, buying the slaves would have required federal taxation to expand by orders of magnitude, causing the very expansion of the federal government that preventing the war would have supposedly allowed.
This ahistorical notion that buying the slavers out would have been infinitely cheaper is shown to be utter nonsense by the reaction of Union slaveowners to offers of compensated gradual emancipation. Lincoln tried repeatedly throughout the war to get Union slaveowners to agree to such a program. They rejected it every time, even towards the end of the war when it would seem even an idiiot would realize slavery was on its way out and the smart thing would be to grab what money was available.
Slavery was utterly tied in to the southern way of life, as is made clear by their violent reaction when they thought it was threatened. Financial considerations were not necessarily the most important in their eyes.
Here's an attempt to quantify the cost of the war versus the cost of buying the slaves and freeing them. I don't agree with all his premises, but I thought it was interesting.
http://www.gongol.com/research/economics/slavebuyout/
The way I understand a treaty, it is like a truce on the battlefield, as soon as somebody fires a shot; the truce ends. The party firing the shot thought it was in the best interest to break the truce, for what ever reason.
Ron Paul talking about buying out slaves was a total dodge. If I were the interviewer I would bring up the numbers you talked about and I would also ask him what would you propose the Federal government to do if the slave owners didn’t want to sell their slaves. Force them to sell?
Ron Paul is a total idiot and I can’t stand how there are so many people bamboozled to think he’s the be all and end all for discussions on constitutional issues....
I wholeheartedly agress that the founders did not like the ides of secession.
I will also agree to your paraphrase of Jefferson, although IMHO there is no NEED to determine intent as the document is clear and concise in its meaning. We to often rely on the writings of the founders to squeeze out meaning!
Also, IMHO, the people granted certain limited powers to the national government as it was better suited to performing several functions (defense, etc ...) then an uncoordinated band of individuals (states included ...). If the people did not expressly grant a power, it was not granted!
I also believe the term Constitutional Rights is a fallicy - the consitutuion grants NONE at all! The people reserved the power to determine thier rights to themselves. I share Hamilitons opinion on the BoR’s for exactly the same reasons he used.
So, based on that premise - I reserved the right to determine whether I desired to be governed by the national government. As I am an individual, my only option is to leave the Union - with my movable property! - and the Government can not prevent me from doing so (I can not remove immoble property from the state without declaring myself a state). If the citizens of my state all agreed with me, we could, collectively as a State., remove ourselves - and our property (the State) - from the Union.
I admit - the argument is carried to the extreme and as an individual, I would at some point HAVE to submit to some government as the idea of individual sovereigns can only exist under a government as originally conceived in the US!
This is also not a recipe for longterm survival of the individual, nor a state - but just because it is a bad idea, does not make it illegal under the constitution (unless Kagan is ruling .... :D )
Actually, slavery was enforced by perfectly legal due process.
You're confusing morality, what the law should say, with what it actually says.
Through most of human history the legal systems of all nations have used due process to enforce laws we would consider uttterly gross violations of human rights and of morality.
The Nazi and Commie regimes being good recent examples. Jim Crow was an example in our own country. For that matter, sharia law is the law of the land in Muslim countries and uses perfectly legal due process.
Legal does not necessarily equal right or moral. Unfortunately.
Incorrect. Their ratification was conditional on the Constitution being amended with a Bill of Rights. The 1st Congress passed and the states ratified the 1st ten amendments (The Bill of Rights) which satisfied the conditional ratifications. No prepetual right to seceed was ever suggested nor would it have been accepted.
Contract law, however, is a whole other kettle of fish.
Thank you for posting that.
Me too! :D
As to the premise of leaving Virginia - the consitution is more or less silent here, other than to guarantee a repubican form of government, it says little on what powers the people / a state has within the state. Therefore, what I state does NOT apply to a state government per se (although it gernally does in practice - it depends on what powers the people granted to the state ...).
Anarchy - yes! Desirable - no! Allowed - that seems to be the question :D
It proves, without a doubt, that secession is legal. You will not find this in any history book. Please feel free to post that link, post it often.
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