Posted on 10/25/2010 7:28:30 AM PDT by Michael Zak
On this day in 1859, Senator William Seward (R-NY) said:
"The Democratic party is inextricably committed to the designs of the slaveholders... The history of the Democratic Party commits it to the policy of slavery. It has been the Democratic Party, and no other agency, which has carried that policy up to its present alarming culmination... Such is the Democratic Party... The government of the United States, under the conduct of the Democratic Party, has been all that time surrendering one plain and castle after another to slavery."
The more things change...
I suppose we can only hope that someday you will do the same.
Speaking of which I'm sure we're all looking forward to seeing the posts which prove your point. If memory serves you said I saw accusing people of stalking as far back as 2002, wasn't it?
Thanks. I stand corrected. There was a James Taylor of Caroline mentioned in the Virginia Ratification Convention, but not John. Perhaps that is where the misconception came from. I picked it up from these threads years ago.
John Taylor was a leading theorist of the Jefferson and Patrick Henry wing and was a distant cousin of James Madison. He served in the army in the Revolution. He warned Madison about a threat to secede made by Rufus King and Oliver Ellsworth made to him in private in Congress in 1794, when Taylor was a senator. He was a vigorous opponent of Hamilton's policies.
Taylor opposed the Constitution. So did many others. Perhaps you could expound a bit on the rest of your last sentence. In addition, do you agree with the Taylor and Madison quotes I provided? If not, why not?
yep...sorta dulls the usual fight in me right now I confess, this is the most touching loss I’ve felt here since harpseal.
i’m gonna leave the field for awhile, besides tommorow should be a grand day
bless his poor daughter
I did see that, thank you. A very sobering reminder of our temporal stay. May he rest in peace.
We are a band of brothers and native to the soil
Fighting for our Liberty, With treasure, blood and toil...
God bless us in our struggle tomorrow.
I shall miss him a lot and will remember him as a fine gentleman and a worthy foe. My sincere condolences to his family and his many friends.
Thank you Sunshine for letting us know.
Thanks for the ping, Sunshine.
If you lose a battle in politics and go on fighting it's admirable. If you lose a fight against the Constitution and then set yourself up as an authoritative interpreter of the Constitution by reselling your old anti-ratification point of view it looks a lot like fraud. I can't really blame Taylor for using what he had on hand, but for others to take him as an authoritative expounder of constitutional principles would be a mistake.
In addition, do you agree with the Taylor and Madison quotes I provided?
I don't have an argument with what Madison said. But his words don't make an argument for state sovereignty, but for the rights of the people. And I don't think you could argue that a "right" to break with the Constitution simply for a whim existed. Madison certainly didn't think so when the question came up later. A contract which implicitly contains a right to break the contract whenever one wants would be an absurdity.
Taylor wasn't really concerned with the words of the Constitution or with the way it worked in practice. He was imposing a something like a geometrical proof on the Constitution, looking for a center of absolute sovereignty in a system where sovereignty is limited and conflicting authorities are checked by and balanced against each other. If you're looking for absolute sovereignty in a system you'll probably find it somewhere simply because you think it has to be there, but that doesn't mean it is there or that other observers will agree with you.
The people have rights, but the people speak as their respective State. Who are the States, are they not the people that inhabit them?
On examining the first relation, it appears, on one hand, that the Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; but, on the other, that this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a national, but a federal act.Madison
Taylor wasn't really concerned with the words of the Constitution or with the way it worked in practice. He was imposing a something like a geometrical proof on the Constitution, looking for a center of absolute sovereignty in a system where sovereignty is limited and conflicting authorities are checked by and balanced against each other. If you're looking for absolute sovereignty in a system you'll probably find it somewhere simply because you think it has to be there, but that doesn't mean it is there or that other observers will agree with you.
It would be interesting to hear your definition of a Republican form of government. Did all the participants of the Virginia Ratification Convention have it wrong? No. They only corroborate what John Taylor said:
We have heard that there is a great deal of bribery practised in the House of Commons, in England, and that many of the members raise themselves to preferments by selling the rights of the whole of the people. But, sir, the tenth part of that body cannot continue oppression on the rest of the people. English liberty is, in this case, on a firmer foundation than American liberty. It will be easily contrived to procure the opposition of one tenth of the people to any alteration, however judicious. The honorable gentleman who presides told us that, to prevent abuses in our government, we will assemble in Convention, recall our delegated powers, and punish our servants for abusing the trust reposed in them. O sir, we should have fine times, indeed, if, to punish tyrants, it were only sufficient to assemble the people! Your arms, wherewith you could defend yourselves, are gone; and you have no longer an aristocratical, no longer a democratical spirit. Did you ever read of any revolution in a nation, brought about by the punishment of those in power, inflicted by those who had no power at all? You read of a riot act in a country which is called one of the freest in the world, where a few neighbors cannot assemble without the risk of being shot by a hired soldiery, the engines of despotism. We may see such an act in America.
That wasn't John Taylor.
Surely the people are also part of the country as a whole. Do the decisions that we make as a country count for nothing? Are we simply a loose alliance of states, that any state can walk out on at any time for any reason or no reason? Even before the Civil War it was clear that that wasn't the case.
That Madison quote is from Federalist 39, where he discusses the mixed character of our Constitution, which is neither wholly federal nor wholly national. You don't get a clear-cut argument for secession or nullification or state sovereignty from it, as Madison own views when the country faced those questions in the 1830s indicates.
Your other quote is from Patrick Henry who was also an Anti-Federalist at the time and voted against the Constitution. Surprisingly, ten years later he was a Federalist and an opponent of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. The French Revolution had changed his mind about political upheavals.
In 1798 he argued that Virginia “had quitted the sphere in which she had been placed by the Constitution, and, in daring to pronounce upon the validity of federal laws, had gone out of her jurisdiction in a manner not warranted by any authority, and in the highest degree alarming to every considerate man; that such opposition, on the part of Virginia, to the acts of the general government, must beget their enforcement by military power; that this would probably produce civil war, civil war foreign alliances, and that foreign alliances must necessarily end in subjugation to the powers called in.” So Patrick Henry recognized other threats to the country than those he saw in 1788.
As regards your quote, it sounds like Henry's talking about how difficult it can be to overthrow a tyrannical government without existing local or state political institutions. He's right. It took a lot of effort to get the American Revolution underway, even with the existence of provincial assemblies. But it can also be too easy for states or localities to break away from an existing government that isn't in any way tyrannical, and that's something that Patrick Henry also came to understand.
November 2, 2010, 7:23 pm
Premonition at Vicksburg
By ADAM GOODHEART
Vicksburg, Miss., Nov. 3, 1860
During the last days of the campaign, while Lincoln stayed close to home and held his tongue, another man who would soon be president played somewhat less coy.
For six full weeks, Senator Jefferson Davis had been barnstorming through Mississippi on behalf of the Southern Democrats. The state was ablaze with excitement, even though — or perhaps because — most knew that the party’s candidate was bound for defeat. Amid torchlight marches, barbecues and fireworks shows, orators were preaching less about what would happen on election day itself than on what might follow it. At Vicksburg on Nov. 3, Davis told a crowd:
If Mississippi in her sovereign capacity decides to submit to the rule of an arrogant and sectional North, then I will sit me down as one upon whose brow the brand of degradation and infamy has been written, and bear my portion of the bitter trial. But if, on the other hand, Mississippi decides to resist the hands that would tarnish the bright star which represents her on the National Flag, then I will come at your bidding, whether by day or by night, and pluck that star from the galaxy and place it upon a banner of its own. I will plant it upon the crest of battle, and gathering around me the nucleus of Mississippi’s best and bravest, will welcome the invader to the harvest of death; and future generations will point to a small hillock upon our border, which will tell the reception with which the invader met upon our soil.
Not all of his state’s “best and bravest” shared Davis’s apparent eagerness to welcome federal troops to “the harvest of death.” The Vicksburg Whig’s editor denounced the senator’s oration as showing “how inordinate vanity, operating upon a moderate intellect, flattered by past successes, may influence its possessor to the most inflated of self-laudation.”
But death would indeed reap its ample harvest at Vicksburg, less than three years later.
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Sources: William J. Cooper, “Jefferson Davis, American”; Percy Lee Rainwater, “Mississippi: Storm Center of Secession, 1856-1861”; Vicksburg Whig, Nov. 7, 1860.
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Adam Goodheart is the author of “1861: The Civil War Awakening,” to be published in April by Alfred A. Knopf. He lives in Washington, D.C., and on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, where he is the Hodson Trust-Griswold Director of Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.
Wasn't Taylor more correct than the Federalists, his philosophical opponents with respect to the Constitution, essentially violated the First Amendment with their application of the Sedition Act? Freedom of the press is certainly a constitutional principle protected by the First Amendment.
During ratification, Federalists such as James Wilson had been arguing that a Bill of Rights was not needed. As Wilson said, “… the liberty of the press, which has been a copious source of declamation and opposition -- what control can proceed from the Federal government to shackle or destroy that sacred palladium of national freedom?” But once in power, Federalists passed the Sedition Act which they then used to arrest and prosecute opposition newspaper editors despite the First Amendment.
Taylor introduced and defended Madison's Virginia Resolutions of 1798 in the Virginia legislature. The resolutions were known in the minutes of the debate that ensued in the legislature as "John Taylor’s resolutions." From those resolutions:
That this State having by its convention which ratified the federal Constitution, expressly declared, "that among other essential rights, the liberty of conscience and of the press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by any authority of the United States," and from its extreme anxiety to guard these rights from every possible attack of sophistry or ambition, having with other States recommended an amendment for that purpose, which amendment was in due time annexed to the Constitution, it would mark a reproachful inconsistency and criminal degeneracy, if an indifference were now shown to the most palpable violation of one of the rights thus declared and secured, and to the establishment of a precedent which may be fatal to the other.
I don't have an argument with what Madison said. But his words don't make an argument for state sovereignty, but for the rights of the people. And I don't think you could argue that a "right" to break with the Constitution simply for a whim existed. Madison certainly didn't think so when the question came up later.
As I remember, Madison's submitted version of what eventually became the Tenth Amendment did not include "the people."
Both Madison and Taylor said states could resume the powers they delegated to the central government. Madison thought they couldn’t do it on a whim. New York and Rhode Island said they could do it if it made them happier. Despite many bitter disputes among states, none seceded during the 70-odd years before South Carolina did.
South Carolina did not secede on a whim. Some Northern states had been nullifying the Constitution over the return of fugitive slaves for many years . See Link 1. A number of the quotes on that old post of mine are corroborated in Harper’s Weekly. Also, over half of the Republican congressmen endorsed Helper’s book, which swore the Republican Party’s intent to end slavery so help them God (Link 2). Slavery, of course, was the mainstay of the Southern economy.
Taylor wasn't really concerned with the words of the Constitution or with the way it worked in practice. He was imposing a something like a geometrical proof on the Constitution, looking for a center of absolute sovereignty in a system where sovereignty is limited and conflicting authorities are checked by and balanced against each other.
Taylor pointed out problems with the positions/discussions of Hamilton and Madison about the Constitution, and he feared that in practice the Constitution will lead to a national government rather than a federal one with no effective restraint on the power of the central government. This despite the fact that the Constitutional Convention voted for a federal rather than a national government. In a sense we are contending nowadays with the problem Taylor foresaw. The federal government has grown into a monster, and the states and people have had limited success in restraining it.
From New Views of the Constitution by John Taylor:
Mr. Hamilton prefers the control of the people over legislatures to the control of a court; Mr. Madison prefers the control of the court to the control of the people; but both reject the mutual check or control between the independent state and federal spheres, for which both had positively contended whilst construing the constitution. Which ought to have most weight, their constructions, mingled, or unmingled, with their prepossessions in the convention? …
The national government cannot abridge a concurrent nor an exclusive power, but it may abridge both, by a supreme power to decide exclusively upon the constitutionality of its own laws. Mr. Hamilton has ably proved, that the solitary control of the people was insufficient for the preservation of liberty; and that the additional mutual control of the two governments, was essential to prevent a tyrannical concentration of power in one; yet his dictum surrenders this essential control. It must either exist or not. If it does not exist, no effectual or constitutional mode of resisting federal encroachments remains in the states, separately, and a majority may usurp any powers whatsoever, over a minority of states, by the concurrence of a majority of the people; the assertions that the people alone are insufficient to control political departments, and that such departments must mutually control each other, are both revoked; and the federal, is converted into the national form of government proposed by Mr. Hamilton.
If you're looking for absolute sovereignty in a system you'll probably find it somewhere simply because you think it has to be there, but that doesn't mean it is there or that other observers will agree with you.
Madison seemed to think that the people could take back what the powers had delegated to the government given sufficient provocation. That is consistent with the theory that sovereignty resides in the people. Taylor also supports that. From New View again:
Mr. Hamilton invests the state governments with complete sovereignty. Why does he abandon our principle that complete sovereignty resides only in the people of each state? The reasons are obvious. His prepossession in favor of the English form of government, induced him to deposit a complete sovereignty in government.
Here's a piece of trivia. John Taylor became an orphan at the age of ten, and was adopted by his maternal uncle, Edmund Pendleton, who later becane the president of the Virginia Ratification Convention. Taylor studied law under Pendleton. Taylor was named three times to serve the remainder of terms in the US Senate. He accepted those, but he turned down an appointment to be a senator for a full term.
But could states simply nullify whatever Federal laws they thought were unconstitutional? Working through elections and the Congress itself or through the courts were better ways to change things than nullification or secession. And indeed, change did come at the ballot box and those alwas were repealed.
As I remember, Madison's submitted version of what eventually became the Tenth Amendment did not include "the people."
One clause of the Articles of Confederation read: "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled." The 10th Amendment adds the people and removes the references to sovereignty and independence of the states as well as the word "expressly." These were all highly significant changes that show how far the country had come from the Articles of Confederation's understanding of federalism.
South Carolina did not secede on a whim.
That was bound to be a matter of serious contention. People still disagree about it. It was something the courts should have settled, or better still, Congress should have taken up the matter.
Slavery, of course, was the mainstay of the Southern economy.
And Lincoln had pledged not to do anything about slavery where it existed. Therefore, his election was not in itself the kind of provocation that the secessionists claimed it was.
Madison seemed to think that the people could take back what the powers had delegated to the government given sufficient provocation.
But what is sufficient provocation? And who is to be the judge? Look at Madison's 1833 letters to Webster and Rives. The right to secede justified by intolerable oppression is something very close to if not identical to the right to revolution. It's liable to have the consequences of a revolution. If you're not confronted with that kind of provocation it's best to work within the system to achieve your goals, even if your goal is withdrawing from the system. For Madison you can't get out just because you want to just by declaring yourself to be out.
But what's the point of all this? Secession was an experiment and it failed. The reason why it failed -- apart from superior military force -- was because there was no agreement about the rights and wrongs and procedures involved. It's not so much that force decided the question; it's that both sides resorted to force because there was no clear and undisputed answer at the time. To argue that there was -- that there was a right to secession recognized by all, except Lincoln and his friends -- is simply to be dishonest.
Some Northern states did just that for many years with respect to the return of fugitive slaves. Southerners fought the nullification of the fugitive slave laws for years. The nullifying states didn't start to change their unconstitutional laws until Southern states started seceding, as my link in the previous post showed.
I think nullification is the wrong way to go. As long as you stay within the Union, you are subject to the Constitution and should obey its laws. It is clear to me that the Federalists were wrong in how they applied the Sedition Act. With Federalist judges staffing the judiciary at that time, I'm not sure there was a court remedy if someone had tried to correct the issue in the courts. Fortunately, the Sedition Act was designed by the Federalists to lapse at the end of Adams term, and the voters correctly threw the Federalists out at the ballot box.
One clause of the Articles of Confederation read: "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled." The 10th Amendment adds the people and removes the references to sovereignty and independence of the states as well as the word "expressly." These were all highly significant changes that show how far the country had come from the Articles of Confederation's understanding of federalism.
You forgot to mention that the word "perpetual" was not included in the Constitution and that there was no prohibition of secession or delegation of the power to prohibit secession in the Constitution. The fact that there was nothing remotely comparable to that Confederation statement in the proposed Constitution caused North Carolina to not approve or reject the Constitution at its first ratification convention. From a Mr. Spencer at that first NC convention on July 29, 1788:
The Confederation says, expressly, that all that was not given up by the United States was retained by the respective states. If such a clause had been inserted in this Constitution, it would have superseded the necessity of a bill of rights. But that not being the case, it was necessary that a bill of rights, or something of that kind, should be a part of the Constitution. It was observed that, as the Constitution is to be a delegation of power from the several states to the United States, a bill of rights was unnecessary. But it will be noticed that this is a different case.
Once Madison started talking about adding a Bill of Rights, North Carolina felt relieved enough to ratify the Constitution at a second ratification convention.
[Me]: South Carolina did not secede on a whim.
[You]: That was bound to be a matter of serious contention. People still disagree about it. It was something the courts should have settled, or better still, Congress should have taken up the matter.
I contend that it was a supra-constitutional act by South Carolina, but I doubt you will agree. Why should an aggrieved state subject itself to approval of the abusers in order to secede. Or as lentulusgracchus once observed, "... a person whose house is being ransacked by robbers may escape with the consent of the robbers."
After Madison made the statement, "That resolution declares that the powers granted by the proposed Constitution are the gift of the people, and may be resumed by them when perverted to their oppression, and every power not granted thereby remains with the people, and at their will." to the Virginia ratification convention on June 24, 1788, another delegate, a Mr. Nicholas, observed on that same day [my bold]:
... the language of the proposed ratification would secure every thing which gentlemen desired, as it declared that all powers vested in the Constitution were derived from the people, and might be resumed by them whensoever they should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and that every power not granted thereby remained at their will. No danger whatever could arise; for, says he, these expressions will become a part of the contract. The Constitution cannot be binding on Virginia, but with these conditions. If thirteen individuals are about to make a contract, and one agrees to it, but at the same time declares that he understands its meaning, signification, and intent, to be, (what the words of the contract plainly and obviously denote,) that it is not to be construed so as to impose any supplementary condition upon him, and that he is to be exonerated from it whensoever any such imposition shall be attempted, — I ask whether, in this case, these conditions, on which he has assented to it, would not be binding on the other twelve. In like manner these conditions will be binding on Congress. They can exercise no power that is not expressly granted them.
As Madison had said earlier, "Can the general government exercise any power not delegated?" The answer, at least according to Federalists trying to get the Constitution ratified, was "No." Madison didn't dispute what Nicholas said, and, in fact, wrote [with four others] a comparable "resume" sentence into the ratification document and voted for the Virginia ratification document with those words in it.
And Lincoln had pledged not to do anything about slavery where it existed. Therefore, his election was not in itself the kind of provocation that the secessionists claimed it was.
He was too late; the secession ball had already started rolling. And Lincoln wasn't exactly trustworthy. Which Lincoln should the South believe? The one who said a house divided against itself could not stand or the one who endorsed the Corwin Amendment; the one whose agents told the South Fort Sumter would be evacuated or the one that sent a battlefleet at the last minute to South Carolina to resupply/reinforce the fort; or the one who tried to break a truce by reinforcing Fort Pickens without alerting the other side. Besides, as I pointed out, a majority of the Republicans in Congress had endorsed the Helper's Book with its pledges to end slavery. I'm not sure how long a Corwin Amendment would have stood down the road, regardless of claims of it being unamendable.
But what is sufficient provocation? And who is to be the judge? Look at Madison's 1833 letters to Webster and Rives. The right to secede justified by intolerable oppression is something very close to if not identical to the right to revolution. It's liable to have the consequences of a revolution.
As I said above, secession is for the aggrieved or unhappy state to judge. Your comment brings de Tocqueville to mind [Democracy in America; emphasis below is mine]:
However strong a government may be, it cannot easily escape from the consequences of a principle which it has once admitted as the foundation of its constitution. The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their sovereignty, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right. In order to enable the Federal government easily to conquer the resistance that may be offered to it by any of its subjects, it would be necessary that one or more of them should be specially interested in the existence of the Union, as has frequently been the case in the history of confederations.
If it be supposed that among the states that are united by the federal tie there are some which exclusively enjoy the principal advantages of union, or whose prosperity entirely depends on the duration of that union, it is unquestionable that they will always be ready to support the central government in enforcing the obedience of the others. But the government would then be exerting a force not derived from itself, but from a principle contrary to its nature. States form confederations in order to derive equal advantages from their union; and in the case just alluded to, the Federal government would derive its power from the unequal distribution of those benefits among the states.
But what's the point of all this? Secession was an experiment and it failed. The reason why it failed -- apart from superior military force -- was because there was no agreement about the rights and wrongs and procedures involved. It's not so much that force decided the question; it's that both sides resorted to force because there was no clear and undisputed answer at the time. To argue that there was -- that there was a right to secession recognized by all, except Lincoln and his friends -- is simply to be dishonest.
Now you are saying I'm dishonest because I believe in what the ratification documents say, that governance can be resumed if that action comports to happiness or if injured? Good grief! And apparently you wish to argue that that it wasn't force so much that decided the issue. You said it, not me.
" Orders to the Charleston merchants to cease supplying Ft. Sumter came after Lincoln's plan to invade Charleston was exposed.
The "rescue the starving" was propaganda.
"If Davis did not believe that would lead to war, even after his secretary of state warned him it would, then he truly was a fool."
Who was the fool? Lincoln's own cabinet opinions: Secretary of State William Seward stated that,
“The attempt to reinforce Fort Sumter will provoke an attack and involve war. The very preparation for such an expedition will precipitate war at that point. I oppose beginning war at that point. I would advise against the expedition to Charleston….I would instruct Major Anderson to retire from Sumter”.
Secretary of War Simon Cameron stated,
“It would be unwise now to make such an attempt” to garrison Ft. Sumter. “The cause of humanity and the highest obligation of the public interest would be best promoted” by abandoning the fort.
Secretary of Navy Gideon Wells said,
“By sending or attempting to send provisions into Ft. Sumter, will not war be precipitated? It may be impossible to escape it under any course of policy that may be pursued, but I am not prepared to advise a course that would provoke hostilities….I do not, therefore, under all circumstances, think it wise to provision Ft. Sumter.” All of these experienced men of the time as well as the newspapers of New York and Philadelphia knew the truth........why don't you?
And who was the fool?
Then why did Beauregard document it in his post-battle report?
"As my aides were about leaving Major Anderson remarked that if we did not batter him to pieces he would be starved out in a few days or words to that effect."
And who was the fool?
The fool who received this sage advice from his secretary of state and ignored it:
"Firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen...At this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend in the North...You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it put us in the wrong; it is fatal."
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