Ron Paul is a NUT!
Here's what Jefferson thought on the subject:
....the rights retained by the States, rights which they never have yielded, and which (Virginia) will never voluntairily yield they do not mean to raise the banner of dissaffection , or of seperation from their sister states, co-parties with themselves to this compact. They know and value too highly the blessings of their union as to foreign nations and questions arising among themselves, to consider every infraction to be met by actual reistance; they respect too affectionately the opinions of those possessing the same rights under the same instrument, to make every different construction for immediate rupture. They would indeed consider such a rupture as among the greatest calamities which could befall them; but not the greatest. There is yet one greater, submission to a government of unlimited powers.
See Justice Scalias question to the idiot Solicitor General of the the United States in 1996.
After South Carolina fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, four additional states declared independence.
Knights of the golden circle??.
If you think RP is an idiot just consider who sends him to Congress year after year.
If his medical advice is as good as his political understanding there must be a bunch of dead folks walking around his district.
and he should be ashamed.
"Illegally"? Stopped reading here.
Secession and Liberty
http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/secession-and-liberty-by-thomas-j-dilorenzo-2/
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The comments in the article are really a reflection of the poor quality of our current education system. The author makes the mistake of trying to understand historical events through modern lenses, instead of understanding them through the lenses of the time.
The “right of succession” was a hotly debated topic right from the intial enactment of the Constitution all the way through the Civil War, and it was not split along north/south lines.
Several New England states came within a hair of succeeding over the War of 1812.
Andrew Jackson (a southener & president from 1829-1837) believed the union could never be broken, and was very vocal about it. The fact that the quote on Jackson’s statue in New Orleans is: “The union must and shall be preserved.” shows how ardent Jackson was on this issue.
President Buchanan (A Pensylvanian, and Lincoln’s predecesor) believed the federal government didn’t have the constitutional authority to use military force to prevent a state from leaving the union (another topic that had been hotly debated for decades prior to the Civil War.)
Succession may have been settled by the Civil War, but it was anything but settled prior to that. For decades prior to that honest, intelligent people from every part of the country fell on both sides of the issue.
For someone today to make a blanket comment that succession in 1860 was universally viewed as an illegal activity in 1860 is to show a stunning lack of understanding of American history. Lord help us if this is the quality of education our schools are providing today.
Supreme power (of the federal government) was intentionally not made part of the Constitution because it would have never been ratified otherwise.
Slavery was not specifically cited in the Constitution for similar reason.
"Slavery in the territories" had been a federal power since the Northwest Ordinance which predated the Constitution. The issue was how, and therefore which, territories.
Taxation and allocation of the income from taxes were provided for in the Constitution and the south believed that both taxes and trade tariffs were being applied unfairly and to the detriment of agricultural (slave) states.
When South Carolina left the union, leaving a federal fort blocking Charleston harbor to be resolved, they hoped for the arrival of troop ships to remove that federal presence.
Instead, they got resupply ships enabling the union to retrench and remain.
SC considered that resupply as a use of force and intention to remain by threat of force and if force is legitimate to stop secession, then force is equally legitimate to bring secession about.
When they fired on one of those ships, and Sumter, they had no thought of treason because they held the union to have been dissolved by the act of secession.
The right to secede was then a 50/50 proposition and deciding that issue was the true cause for the unlimited extent and carnage of that war.
"Treason" became an accepted stigma as a means of sustaining adequate support for the war in the north.
It can readily be argued that northern abolitionists "caused" the war by limiting any president's ability to negotiate or conciliate, by encouraging revolt within the South, and by inflaming Northern emotions.
Since talk of secession is once again making the news here in the US, some here might want to reconsider their hard line beliefs regarding the war between North and South.
As to the question in #9:
I doubt such a deal was possible in 1861 but, given Sherman, Reconstruction, and the fact that this side of East Texas there was little geography that would be hospitable to a slave economy, I'd certainly rather they could have pulled it off by peaceful means a decade or so later.
Finally, Ron Paul and Chuck DeVore are both idiots.
From the U.S. Constitution.....
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine, CA)
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| Secession Timeline various sources |
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| [Although very late in the war Lee wanted freedom offered to any of the slaves who would agree to fight for the Confederacy, practically no one was stupid enough to fall for that. In any case, Lee was definitely not fighting to end slavery, instead writing that black folks are better off in bondage than they were free in Africa, and regardless, slavery will be around until Providence decides, and who are we to second guess that? And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists.] Robert E. Lee letter -- "...There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master..." |
December 27, 1856 |
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| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
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| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
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| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
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| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
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| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
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| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
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| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
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| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
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| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
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| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
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| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
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| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
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| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
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| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
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| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
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| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
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| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
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| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
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| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
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| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
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Dr. Paul is CORRECT. State’s rights were what the Founding Fathers planned for America. Yes slavery is wrong but denying states the right to secede is the reason socialism has finally come to America’s shores.
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.
and before these states “illegally” seceded would you say 13 colonies “illegally” seceded?
and why is what he said wrong? I can assure you I’m no Paulbot but Lincoln was no better than any other tyrannical dictator. I despise him, 2nd worst president ever, Odungo the Muslim gets first place.
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I've spared a few minutes for this Mr. Zak. That evil word called ' work ' that many Blue Staters will never understand, which took me away this mornin'.
The Federal Constitution is silent on the issue of Secession, therefore; we must look at the 'intent', and what the sales staff ( Madison, ETC ) sold to the several States. I'll get to the Federalist papers in another post, if you respond to this by John Q Adams :
With these qualifications, we may admit the same right as vested in the people of every state in the Union, with reference to the General Government, which was exercised by the people of the United Colonies, with reference to the Supreme head of the British empire, of which they formed a part - and under these limitations, have the people of each state in the Union a right to secede from the confederated Union itself.
Thus stands the RIGHT. But the indissoluble link of union between the people of the several states of this confederated nation, is after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect union, by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center.
This article by Devore made me lose any respect I ever had for him. As far as I’m concerned he can go perfom an impossible sex act on himself.
I agree with my Congressman, Ron Paul!