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 ...
Of course the South had some factories, and some foundries; my point is that its manufacturing capacity was a fraction of its agricultural capacity, and its agricultural capacity was the source of its economy. In fact, its manufacturing capacity was five times LESS than the North’s, and it employed more than 10 times FEWER factory workers. Thus, it was necessary to import manufactured goods from Europe (especially Britain).
Gee thanks for the update on that one. Wow, did not know that.
Considering the hoops you've jumped through to deny the fact that Jefferson was referring to the exorbitant tariff system, that's the first honest thing you've said all day.
And wait a minute, I think he didn't have a problem with collecting taxes during his Presidency, even tariffs.
If you can't see the difference between a tax rate of 8% and a tax rate of 65%, there isn't anything more that can be done to help you.
I see you’re back to fibbing again. Oh well. With some people it’s habitual and they can’t control it. You must be one of those people.
No, just trying to make sense of what your're claiming.
The South had almost no manufacturing base, as theirs was an agricultural economy, and that’s why they had to import machinery, forged goods, and furniture; the imports — before the tariffs — were cheaper than similar goods produced in the North.
Oh so now it isn't just machinery, it's forge goods and furniture as well. And all these imports made up such a large percentage of total U.S. imports that they accounted for 85% of all tariff income. And of course all these imports had to be landed in New York and Boston, then transshipped to the Southern consumers because it allowed those ships to turn load up with exports and head back to Europe. Even though the primary U.S. export - cotton - was nowhere near.
Do you realize just how ridiculous that scenario is?
There existed a long-standing mutual economic relationship between England and the South, and in order to ensure that the British market for Southern cotton remained open, Southern planters and others had to maintain relatively sizable importation of goods from Britain. Hence, the Southern economy was an import-oriented one. The tariffs made the cost of those imports prohibitive, and threatened the trade relationship between the South and Europe (especially Britain), and thus the very economic life of the South.
Maybe if it was a barter economy. If the planter loaded his cotton on a ship, sailed to England, and swapped it for his goods. But the trade was a bit more sophisticated than that. Cotton was sold to cotton brokers. Cotton brokers sold it to clients overseas. Other businessmen bought imported goods from different customers and brought them back to the U.S. where they were bought by U.S. consumers. Primarily Northern U.S. consumers. Southern demand for imports was small by comparison.
Not quite sure what you believe that post proved but there is not question that there is one legal way to change the Union and that is through amendment of the Constitution.
Nowhere was it claimed that rebellion was the means of changing our Union or that insurrection was justified when some people became unhappy.
1) Jefferson was not technically a “founder” though conventional wisdom believes him one. Those who produced the Constitution were Founders and J was in France at the time, fortunately.
2) J’s view of the constitution was about as idiotic as there can be. It would have guaranteed constant legal conflict and utter chaos. But demagogues want that.
Yet, even he opposed secession. Certainly Lincoln’s election would not have been anything which he would have considered worth seceding over.
1) Jefferson was not technically a “founder” though conventional wisdom believes him one.
Conventional use of the term "founder" encompasses anyone involved in the effort to secure the independence of and organization of the United States between roughly 1775-1789. Jefferson definitely fits into that group. That, and he also provided many of the intellectual designs for the Constitution through the letters he wrote to Madison and others.
’s view of the constitution was about as idiotic as there can be. It would have guaranteed constant legal conflict and utter chaos.
So let me get this straight. You want a government that is highly functional, organized, efficiently autocratic, and above constant partisan rancor and conflict? Sounds awfully...Obamunistic. Not to mention at direct odds with the intended system of factionalization expressed in the Federalist Papers.
Yet, even he opposed secession.
Not according to the letters I posted.
As one born and raised in the South (and still loving it and southerners) I must say that I believe Southerners are more polite and well mannered than Northerners.
Madison explicitly wrote Hamilton during that NY ratification convention and said that once in the Union always in the Union. He did not believe in a right to secede.
But since there was NO “intolerable” oppression, other than that visited upon slaves by the whips and chains of the slavers, so the RAT Rebellion was completely unjustified and would never have been supported by Madison. Southern states were in no way oppressed by the federal government.
Don’t let your rhetoric run away with you. We have yet to have such a government.
You have to recall the youth of our nation. There are going to be many things which happen that are bad or distasteful but that will be corrected in the fullness of time. Our government reflects what the People want and only when those people are properly educated will it be corrected.
We are not where we are because of some massive conspiracy.
Such oppression had not happened. The federal government was tiny in 1860. It had almost NO military arm not fighting the Indians. It had been run by Southerners for most of our existence. It had NO intention to oppress the slavers.
There are few arguments as absurd as that claiming actions of the federal government justified rebellion.
Luther Martin would not have supported the RAT Rebellion. Perhaps you should quote Luther Martin’s opinion of Jefferson, the poster boy of the secessionists.
The fort was federal property deeded over to it by the state decades ago. SC had NO right to fire on it. NO right to take it back. Its actions started the war.
You discussing “honesty” is laughable since your arguments on this issue are based entirely on lies.
As to Martin, neither his largely irrational dislike of all things Jefferson nor Jefferson's own personal shortcomings on which it was instigated is sufficient to disprove the general disdain that both men had for the federal government's encroachment upon the states. Politics makes strange bedfellows.
Madison explicitly wrote Hamilton during that NY ratification convention and said that once in the Union always in the Union.
Madison was also a weak-minded and easily swayed vacillator on almost all constitutional matters involving state-federal relations. He eventually settled at the end of his life into a self-contradictory embrace of duel sovereignty in name while denying the same in practice while also denying that he was denying the same in practice, or the constitutional equivalent of trying to have his cake and eat it too. His career long inconsistency on the subject is so fraught with holes that it is difficult to uphold him as an authority.
Three states in their ratification documents said they could resume their own governance and four other states in their ratification proposed words similar to what became the Tenth Amendment, which is in many minds a legal basis for secession. I am reminded of Senator Jefferson Davis' word to the Senate on January 10, 1861:
...the tenth amendment of the Constitution declared that all which had not been delegated was reserved to the States or to the people. Now, I ask where among the delegated grants to the Federal Government do you find any power to coerce a state; where among the provisions of the Constitution do you find any prohibition on the part of a State to withdraw; and if you find neither one nor the other, must not this power be in that great depository, the reserved rights of the States? How was it ever taken out of that source of all power to the Federal Government? It was not delegated to the Federal Government; it was not prohibited to the States; it necessarily remains, then, among the reserved powers of the States.
Amend the Constitution? Two or three times in 1860-61 various Republicans in Congress proposed amendments saying that a state couldn't secede without the approval of other states, the president, etc. Why would they propose that if, as you appear to think, secession was already somehow prohibited by the Constitution?
Nowhere in the Constitution is secession prohibited. If you feel otherwise, please show me where it is prohibited.
You might also tell me how the Constitution would have been ratified if it had said states could not withdraw. Statements in the New York, Virginia, Rhode Island ratifications and the closeness of the ratification vote in those and some other states say a no-withdrawal Constitution wouldn't have been ratified. The government proposed by the Constitution was new and untried. States that had a few years earlier had to fight their way free of an oppressive government would be loath to put themselves in a position where they had to fight their way out again.
Even Lincoln’s own words says he didn’t care if the South left and he never wanted blacks to have the same rights as whites. To me, this was about his railroad buddies and the money to be made on the south and north combined.
New York took away the right to vote for Blacks in the 1790s despite the best efforts of Jay and Hamilton.
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