Posted on 10/25/2010 7:28:30 AM PDT by Michael Zak
Who was the fool? Look again.
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.
In 1860, there was no general agreement of a state's right to secede at will, hence such a step was going to involve conflict. I don't have any poll results but I'd venture that most experts didn't believe in such a right, though they may not have believed that the federal government could or should use force to prevent such an act. Having accepted that secession was unconstitutional it was not a large step to believing that the federal government could take steps against it, especially after the rebels began the war by firing on Fort Sumter.
There was no agreement because there was no mention in the Constitution of a right to secede. Trying to smuggle it in under the guise of the 10th Amendment is bound to look suspicious to a lot of people: a contract or agreement implicitly allowing for a right of one entity to break the contract at will isn't something everyone will except. If the right were explicit or if states had maintained the rights they Constitution granted to the federal government (coining money, maintaining an army navy, negotiating with foreign powers) it might have been another story, but that wasn't the case.
There was the right to rebellion against tyranny. There may have been a right to remove a state from a situation that had degenerated to anarchy, but the right to secede at will didn't exist.
In the years leading up to 1860 it was said over and over again that secession would lead to civil war. One state or one group of states or one collection of aggrieved citizens couldn't simply override the whole collection of laws and ties on their own, couldn't claim federal property as its own, couldn't take unwilling citizens out of the union without consultation and approval of the whole.
The right to revolution against tyranny also had problems. Rising up against a tyranny is bound to involve bloodshed. Rising up against a government that is legitimate and not tyrannical is also liable to cause bloodshed. You can say that an "aggrieved and unhappy state" can decide whether a government is tyrannical, but unhappy citizens with grievances about lost elections in and of themselves don't make a government tyrannical. You have to show actual tyrannical acts by the government and your own efforts to seek redress through established channels.
I didn't say that you were dishonest for believing what you did. I said that someone would be dishonest for saying that everyone or even most people in 1860 thought and felt that way, for saying that there wasn't an opposing school of thought that was at least as strong as the secessionist one.
Nor did I say that force decided the matter. I was arguing against that point of view. People can argue about whether the secessionist leaders were right or wrong constitutionally and morally -- people do argue about those things. But in terms of practical policy they were horribly wrong. That's not because they brought superior force upon themselves (though that has to be taken into account). It may be because they initiated the use of force (which very much does have to be considered).
But my point is that they didn't take into account the legitimately differing opinions of their fellow countrymen. They didn't respect the free political institutions that their grandfathers had established enough to work inside them to achieve their goals. The rebel leaders didn't recognize that making changes -- fundamental changes -- requires winning people around to your point of view, even if your goal is to separate from them. You can think what you will about Martin Luther King but he did have the right idea about changing things politically. Whether he deserves a holiday I don't know, but he certainly deserves one more than Jefferson Davis.
Now I'm going to put all of this repetitive stuff aside and try to enjoy what's left of my weekend.
I might ask the same of you. We differ substantially on our views of the Constitution, and we won't convince each other.
I go along with what several ratification conventions said in their clarification statements about what the Constitution meant with regard to resuming their own governance.
As far as I know, no other state at the time said those states weren't correct. If you know of such, please post it. If you know of anything in the Constitution that prohibits secession, please post it. If not, it seems to me you are arguing from the position of de Tocqueville's states that saw advantage to themselves to preventing the other states from seceding. I think that Lincoln fell into that category.
To whose advantage was it that the South not secede? Certainly the North gained by extracting Southern wealth by means of the tariff. That is why Northern Congressmen by and large voted for the Morrill Tariff and Southern ones voted against it. Northern manufacturers gained by protection against foreign competition and higher prices from everyone. Northern workers gained by having the South support their jobs. As the Daily Chicago Times editorialized on December 10, 1860:
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
You may be correct that large bunches of people didn't (and still don't) understand what the ratifiers said. I doubt if even once percent had/have ever read the ratification documents. I can't do anything about that but cite what the documents and the ratifiers said.
I take it we are done with this conversation. I have to disappear to a Baroque concert and dinner across town in a couple of minutes, so I'll be out for a while. Be well, x.
If Connecticut or South Carolina decided a few months after ratifying the Constitution that they wanted to rescind their ratification and go it alone, I doubt the federal government could have stopped them. If conventions in half the states didn't approve the Constitution and some of the other states declared that they were asserting or reassuming their sovereignty, there wouldn't be much of a federal government to do anything about it either. Eighty years later, when the nation had been a going concern for three generations, it wasn't going to be so easy to separate things out. The machinery was established for states or populations to change their status, and it wasn't by unilateral action.
I take it we are done with this conversation. I have to disappear to a Baroque concert and dinner across town in a couple of minutes, so I'll be out for a while. Be well, x.
Fine by me. Enjoy!
I would take it a step further back than that. If the Constitution had said no state can leave without the concurrence of other states, I suspect a number of states would not have ratified the Constitution.
Consider New York, for example. The Constitution was ratified by a vote of 30 to 27, but there were 7 or 8 Anti-Federalists who abstained in that vote. Those 7 or 8 allowed the convention to ratify the Constitution. If the Federalists had not agreed the inclusion of a statement saying governance could be "reassumed whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness," I suspect that those additional NY Anti-Federalists would have voted no.
The machinery was established for states or populations to change their status, and it wasn't by unilateral action.
That was true for some parts of a state's status, but it was not so for secession. You have to ask yourself, why was an important subject like secession left out of the Constitution?
There were about three attempts by Republican congressmen in 1860 and 1861 to amend the Constitution so that unilateral secession couldn't occur. Why did they feel an amendment was necessary, if, as you say, the mechanism was already established. Here's the text of one of those proposed amendments that was voted down 28 to 18 by the Senate (originally posted by Idabilly).
Under this Constitution, as originally adopted and as it now exists, no State has power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States; and this Constitution, and all laws passed in pursuance of its delegated powers, are the supreme law of the land, anything contained in any constitution, ordinance, or act of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
Earlier you mentioned that you thought that most experts didn't believe in the right of secession. That's possible. As for me, I would read what the experts had to say and also look at the original documents. If the original documents do not support what the experts say, then I would discount the opinions of the experts. That is what I was taught to do in science anyway.
Re my Baroque concert. Thanks, I did enjoy it. I didn't particularly care for the pieces that were played, but the musicians were excellent. Mrs. rustbucket and I tried a little Greek cafe afterward. Very good.
First of all many states didn't ratify the Constitution, so how could they rescind or withdraw their ratification? Ohio and Alabama, for example didn't accept membership in the US; the US accepted (and in a very real sense created) them. That's also true of states like Louisiana and Florida which were acquired from France or Spain by the US government.
Second, one of the problems with original intent is that it's not clear whose intent we're talking about, and just what constitutes an indication of intent. If the Framers didn't write the possibility of unilateral secession into the Constitution can we really just assume that they had that in mind? If the ratifying conventions accepted the Constitution without a provision for unilateral secession and didn't demand such an explicit provision in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights, did they really intend that unilateral secession be an option?
Third, it wasn't a question of whether a state could leave the union; it was a matter of whether some group representing could simply declare itself to be out of the union by its own decision or whether the union would have some say in the terms of leaving.
I'm certainly glad that my state government can't simply declare that my neighbors and I are no longer American citizens, and I suspect that many Americans feel the same way. Americans were bound to become more loyal to their country as time went on, and bound to think that checks on the power of all elements of the government -- including state governments and local politicians who promote disunion to increase their own power -- were called for.
While the more ferocious secessionist firebrands might have wanted that right to secede at will and the Anti-Federalists may have agreed with them, I'm not sure you can assume that that was the Founders' intent. But in 1860 much of the secessionist agitation involved the idea of a justified revolution against an unjust or tyrannical government.
It was largely later, when the idea of a slaveowners' revolt against tyranny came to look strange or absurd or offensive, that theorizing about a constitutional right to secede became the unquestioned centerpiece of secessionist thinking. It had been around earlier, of course, but the passionate enthusiasm for revolution had also been in the air.
First of all many states didn't ratify the Constitution, so how could they rescind or withdraw their ratification? Ohio and Alabama, for example didn't accept membership in the US; the US accepted (and in a very real sense created) them. That's also true of states like Louisiana and Florida which were acquired from France or Spain by the US government.
If original states could withdraw from the Union, so could any subsequent state. They could because it wasn't prohibited by the Constitution. NY, RI, and VA just documented what they could do and said it was what the Constitution meant. My Nicolas quote above said it was binding on the other ratifying states.
Perhaps you are not familiar with the Doctrine of the Equality of States [Link]. The equality of states wasn't a constitutional requirement, nor was it prohibited by the Constitution. It has been extended to new states by Congress in statehood agreements. From that link:
Since the admission of Tennessee in 1796, Congress has included in each State's act of admission a clause providing that the State enters the Union "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever." 257 With the admission of Louisiana in 1812, the principle of equality was extended to States created out of territory purchased from a foreign power. 258 By the Joint Resolution of December 29, 1845, Texas, then an independent Nation, "was admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever."
Second, one of the problems with original intent is that it's not clear whose intent we're talking about, and just what constitutes an indication of intent. If the Framers didn't write the possibility of unilateral secession into the Constitution can we really just assume that they had that in mind? If the ratifying conventions accepted the Constitution without a provision for unilateral secession and didn't demand such an explicit provision in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights, did they really intend that unilateral secession be an option?
The power to restrict or prohibit secession was not delegated to the Federal government nor to other states opposing the secession of any other state. If the Founders had wanted to restrict or prevent secession, they would have written it into the Constitution. The fact that the Founders didn't mention it or delegate it in the Constitution means that it was left among the powers of the states. IMO, that qualifies as "original intent." To argue that a state can't secede unilaterally is to assert something not in the Constitution.
Federalists argued that we didn't need to protect rights and powers by a Bill of Rights because the central government didn't have any powers other than what it was delegated. But many states were suspicious of that claim and wanted those basic rights and powers protected. The Federalists objected that specifying certain rights meant that everything not specifically protected was allowed by implication. The Tenth Amendment trumped that claim.
Third, it wasn't a question of whether a state could leave the union; it was a matter of whether some group representing could simply declare itself to be out of the union by its own decision or whether the union would have some say in the terms of leaving.
I don’t believe the Union had any say in it. They had not been delegated the power to have any say in it. It was a decision above the Union’s pay grade, so to speak.
I'm certainly glad that my state government can't simply declare that my neighbors and I are no longer American citizens, and I suspect that many Americans feel the same way. Americans were bound to become more loyal to their country as time went on, and bound to think that checks on the power of all elements of the government -- including state governments and local politicians who promote disunion to increase their own power -- were called for.
A number of the state governments or special secession conventions gave the final decision on secession to the voters of their states. The sovereign voice of the voters at the ballot box is the ultimate peaceful check. When that sovereign voice was queried, it voted for secession. If you lost such an election, you could accept it, or move out of state, or start blowing up railroad bridges like the East Tennesseans, or basically take your region out of your state backed up by the army of the opposing side like West Virginia did.
I suspect that most people, most conservatives anyway, believe in checks on the power of all levels of government. Southern voters basically checked the power of a sectional national government that was opposed to their basic interests by voting to secede.
Opponents of secession had every opportunity to codify their opinion by amending the Constitution. They tried in 1860 (before SC seceded) and 1861 but were not successful. The proposed 1861 amendment I posted above failed by 28 nays to 18 yes votes even though most Southern senators had already resigned from Congress.
It was largely later, when the idea of a slaveowners' revolt against tyranny came to look strange or absurd or offensive, that theorizing about a constitutional right to secede became the unquestioned centerpiece of secessionist thinking. It had been around earlier, of course, but the passionate enthusiasm for revolution had also been in the air.
Perhaps your words about "strange or absurd or offensive" are how an opponent of Southern secession might see it. Nice try at getting a slam against the South into the conversation. I'm not defending slavery, but secession did not seem "strange or absurd or offensive" to most slave owners nor to many others in the South given voters' sometimes overwhelming support for secession. Their way of life was being threatened, and their states were being treated like cash cow colonies by protectionist tariffs that benefited the North.
Are you calling the constitutional bases for secession "theories" because no state had ever made use of them before? Perhaps there wasn't sufficient justification to leave before. As long as there was sufficient incentive to stay in the voluntary Union, it made sense to stay. When the rest of the country was taking advantage of you (and about to get worse in that regard), violating the Constitution, and harming your interests, it became another matter. And yes, there was enthusiasm for leaving.
Why were important subjects like freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, right to trial by a jury of our peers, the right to reasonable bail left out of the Constitution?
Why did they feel an amendment was necessary, if, as you say, the mechanism was already established.
The fact that each and every one was voted down indicates that the majority did not feel an amendment was necessary.
If the original states could join merely by ratifying the Constitution then why couldn't any subsequent territories become states through the same means?
NY, RI, and VA just documented what they could do and said it was what the Constitution meant.
That doesn't mean they were right.
The power to restrict or prohibit secession was not delegated to the Federal government nor to other states opposing the secession of any other state.
The power to admit states and approve any subsequent change in their status was.
IMO, that qualifies as "original intent." To argue that a state can't secede unilaterally is to assert something not in the Constitution.
Obviously many people do not share your opinion, James Madison among them. The belief that to withdraw unilaterally is protected by the Constitution is to believe that the Constitution protects some states at the expense of others or that some states are more equal than others. I cannot believe the founders would have agreed with that.
Federalists claimed that since those things were not mentioned in the Constitution those rights were protected. A number of states said, no, we must protect those rights with a Bill of Rights. And those states prevailed. Given what Federalists later did by arresting newspaper editors for opposing the president and the government's actions, the states were right to have insisted on a Bill of Rights.
The fact that each and every one was voted down indicates that the majority did not feel an amendment was necessary.
More likely they simply didn't have the votes to pass them. Instead, you would have us believe that an unwritten restriction of unilateral secession somehow controlled.
That wasn't the statehood agreement offered them, though the new states did accept the Constitution, a Constitution which did not prohibit secession, unilateral or otherwise.
That doesn't mean they [NY, RI, and VA] were right.
Can you cite any contemporary statement of the time where other states said NY, RI, and VA's ratification documents stating what the Constitution meant were wrong?
The power to admit states and approve any subsequent change in their status was.
Any subsequent change? Any??? You would like that to be the case, but it is not. Show me where states are prohibited from seceding. They weren't.
Obviously many people do not share your opinion, James Madison among them.
Madison voted for the Virginia ratification document with its resume governance statement and didn't put any restriction against unilateral secession into that ratification document or the Constitution itself.
The belief that to withdraw unilaterally is protected by the Constitution is to believe that the Constitution protects some states at the expense of others or that some states are more equal than others. I cannot believe the founders would have agreed with that.
Now read what you said about doing things at the expense of others and see how it applies to tariffs that enriched the North at the expense of the South. Sectional aggrandizement by the North was one reason the South seceded from a government that was increasingly inimical to their interests.
That is a big if. Those who don't accept your premise won't accept your conclusion. In any case, the idea that states once were independent and retain sovereignty is weakened when it's applied to states that could never reasonably have claimed a period of independence.
By the Joint Resolution of December 29, 1845, Texas, then an independent Nation, "was admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever."
Hmmm ... Texans will be p.o.'ed to discover that they don't have the right to secede or split into five states like they thought they did.
The power to restrict or prohibit secession was not delegated to the Federal government nor to other states opposing the secession of any other state. If the Founders had wanted to restrict or prevent secession, they would have written it into the Constitution.
To argue that the states "reserved the right" to walk out on the whole Constitution is absurd. If you make an agreement and neglect to include an explicit opportunity for parties involved in the agreement to abandon it, you haven't explicitly included such an opportunity. The 10th Amendment doesn't give states a right to negate the whole Constitution at will.
The Federalists objected that specifying certain rights meant that everything not specifically protected was allowed by implication. The Tenth Amendment trumped that claim.
That "specifically" will get you into trouble. If the federal government can establish post offices, it can establish pension funds for postal employees. If it can maintain an army and a navy, it can create an air force. Just what the 10th Amendment allows the federal government to do and what it doesn't is a difficult question. The argument that it doesn't reserve to the states a right to disown the whole rest of the Constitution is at least as arguable as the opposing view.
It was a decision above the Union’s pay grade, so to speak.
Are you still in India, or have you moved on to Indonesia, Mr. President? That line was a cop-out when Obama delivered it, and it's certainly not a valid argument now. If you are charged with defending the country from foreign attack and protecting the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies, it's not "above your pay grade" to have a say in the disposition of US bases or the allocation of the national debt.
Look at Canada. It's not beyond the authority of the federal government there to assert that lands given to Quebec by the dominion aren't automatically to go to Quebec if that province withdraws from Canada. It's only fair, and it's a check on reckless withdrawal by the province. Why would it be beyond the authorization of our government to assert and ensure that federal bases and assets can't simply be seized by rebels in one state and that citizens who remain loyal to the United States are protected from harm?
A number of the state governments or special secession conventions gave the final decision on secession to the voters of their states. The sovereign voice of the voters at the ballot box is the ultimate peaceful check.
There was no established and certified procedure for secession at will. Georgia's vote had so many irregularities that historians still aren't sure about the legitimacy of the procedure. One state -- was it Arkansas? -- was supposed to hold a referendum and didn't. All the irregularities meant that there was uncertainty as to whether the people in the states concerned really did support secession. In hindsight we can say that probably they did, but it wasn't clear at the time. It wasn't beyond the authority or competence of the federal government to want to see an agreed-upon procedure, fair elections, and some involvement at the national level in setting the terms of separation.
Opponents of secession had every opportunity to codify their opinion by amending the Constitution.
As proponents of secession also had the opportunity to do so. If most experts in 1860 believed unilateral secession to be wrong, secessionists certainly should have tried to change people's minds or the text of the Constitution, or at least have proceeded in Congress, rather than simply assume that what they believed to be true was universally accepted and that no one would object to their taking things into their own hands.
Nice try at getting a slam against the South into the conversation. I'm not defending slavery, but secession did not seem "strange or absurd or offensive" to most slave owners nor to many others in the South given voters' sometimes overwhelming support for secession.
What was strange, absurd, and offensive was the argument that a rebellion in defense of slavery or slaveowner's rights was a rebellion against tyranny. It's not a gratuitous slam on my part. It's a recognition that the argument that Charleston 1860 was the same as Philadelphia 1776 -- a revolution justified by the right of rebellion against tyranny -- wouldn't fly after emancipation, so defenders of the rebellion had to rely on Constitutional arguments much more than natural law arguments.
When the rest of the country was taking advantage of you (and about to get worse in that regard), violating the Constitution, and harming your interests, it became another matter.
The Southern-dominated Democratic party had been the prevailing force in the country for 60 years. To bitch and moan because the political winds shifted was natural, I guess, but to get apocalyptic about it was excessive and unjustified. Or at least, it was unwise to get carried away by fear and rage and enthusiasm to the point where you call your fellow countrymen the enemy and refuse to work within legitimate, constitutional, democratically-elected representative institutions.
I really don't have time to continue with this, so I won't respond further, but don't think you won the argument because not everybody is enthusiastic about this stuff as you are.
Nothing rose above offense to a justifiable reason for such an egregious act. The states that formed their unholy confederacy still had voices and power - individually and collectively. They could have continued to negotiate legislation more favorable to their interests. Or they could have sued for secession. They did neither.
They charted a course that left no alternative other than war.
Those who don't accept your premise won't accept your conclusion.
So? I don't accept your arguments either.
In any case, the idea that states once were independent and retain sovereignty is weakened when it's applied to states that could never reasonably have claimed a period of independence.
As I posted above, the acts of Congress admitted new states "on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever."
Hmmm ... Texans will be p.o.'ed to discover that they don't have the right to secede or split into five states like they thought they did.
After the war, the Feds forced the occupied seceded states, basically at the point of a bayonet, to drop claims of the right to secession in their constitutions. Might makes right. Some examples:
- North Carolina, 1868 Constitution: "There is no right on the part of this state to secede"
- Alabama, 1868 Constitution: All voters have to swear "I will never countenance or aid in the secession of this State from the United States"
- Texas, 1869 Constitution: "The heresies of nullification and secession, which brought the country to grief, may be eliminated from future political discussion"
Radical Republicans who forced states to say these things tried to impose a constitution on Alabama after the war saying that Alabama had ratified a new Alabama constitution when Alabama had in fact rejected it at the ballot box.
Re Texas. We Texans will have to take solace in the fact that portions of four other states (NM, CO. OK, KS) were made from parts of Texas.
To argue that the states "reserved the right" to walk out on the whole Constitution is absurd.
Your discussion style seems to be to disparage the arguments of others with derision. To each his own debating style, I guess.
I don’t find states reserving the right to "walk out on the whole Constitution" as absurd. The original 13 had recently fought a long bloody war to free themselves from one oppressive government, and now they were proposing a new untried form of government that many feared would erode the rights of the states and the people over time. Why wouldn't they have reserved a peaceful way out of such an experimental Union? Why should they have to fight their way out again if things got out of hand? If you believe in checks and balances, secession is a strong check, a peaceful check.
Virginia ratification delegates worried about the fact that there were seven Northern states but only six Southern ones. Why wouldn't they protect themselves from a possibly hostile sectional government?
If you make an agreement and neglect to include an explicit opportunity for parties involved in the agreement to abandon it, you haven't explicitly included such an opportunity.
Some Northern states had been nullifying the fugitive slave laws for more than 20 years despite various court cases. Ten years before the war Daniel Webster said a bargain broken over the return of fugitive slaves on one side cannot bind the other. We are talking about a fundamental breach of contract here, i.e., [from Wikipedia] "A fundamental breach (or repudiatory breach) is a breach so fundamental that it permits the aggrieved party to terminate performance of the contract, in addition to entitling that party to sue for damages."
The 10th Amendment doesn't give states a right to negate the whole Constitution at will.
The Virginia ratification said [my bold], "…every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will." Sounds similar to the Tenth Amendment. Do you accept the entire ratification document or just the parts you like?
That "specifically" will get you into trouble.
Touché. Are you arguing that secession must not have been allowed in the Constitution because the Union would disintegrate if it were allowed? That kind of logic can be used to justify virtually anything, any abuse of the Constitution. The Union didn't disintegrate; the Northern remnant had roughly the population of the whole country in 1850, IIRC. And it fought a four-year long war against a determined foe.
If the Union were not providing sufficient benefits to a state for being a member or harming the state, why should that state stay? All the North had to do was treat the South fairly, and Southern resentment wouldn't have built up to the point of secession.
Are you still in India, or have you moved on to Indonesia, Mr. President? That line was a cop-out when Obama delivered it, and it's certainly not a valid argument now.
I didn't know Obama was arguing that states had a right to secede. Not that I would want his help in any event. The central government was not given the power to regulate or prevent secession. In the case of secession, secession was indeed above its pay grade. The ratifiers recognized the problem with respect to secession and said the right to resume governance was consistent with the Constitution. Do you have any contemporary documents that said other states rejected those ratifications and argued that those particular statements were wrong?
If you are charged with defending the country from foreign attack and protecting the Constitution against foreign and domestic enemies, it's not "above your pay grade" to have a say in the disposition of US bases or the allocation of the national debt.
Speaking of debt and things monetary, you've reminded me that it was not in Lincoln's Constitutional power to spend money for items other than what Congress had appropriated it for. He did that during the period he intentionally kept Congress from reconvening. Congress did not have the authority to later excuse his violation of the Constitution. That was above Congress' pay grade. As the Supreme Court said in a later unanimous decision, "The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government."
Look at Canada. It's not beyond the authority of the federal government there to assert that lands given to Quebec by the dominion aren't automatically to go to Quebec if that province withdraws from Canada. It's only fair, and it's a check on reckless withdrawal by the province. Why would it be beyond the authorization of our government to assert and ensure that federal bases and assets can't simply be seized by rebels in one state and that citizens who remain loyal to the United States are protected from harm?
The South offered to negotiate about the forts and debt and other properties. I think the reason that both Buchanan and Lincoln refused to negotiate a fair division of property with the seceded states was that the United States would owe some reasonable share of the territories to the Southern states, whose blood and money had gone toward obtaining them. The value of that land dwarfed by far the costs of any forts, etc., seized by the South, or for that matter the Southern share of any forts in the North.
Citizens in both parts of the country came to harm for stating their views. Remember the newspaper editors and legislators thrown in jail for months and years by the Lincoln Administration and the editor who was tarred and feathered by a mob in the North?
There was no established and certified procedure for secession at will. Georgia's vote had so many irregularities that historians still aren't sure about the legitimacy of the procedure. One state -- was it Arkansas? -- was supposed to hold a referendum and didn't. All the irregularities meant that there was uncertainty as to whether the people in the states concerned really did support secession. In hindsight we can say that probably they did, but it wasn't clear at the time.
Hmmm. I thought you argued above that "The machinery was established for states or populations to change their status, and it wasn't by unilateral action."
Can I assume that you would support secession if the voters of the state clearly supported it? That would be consistent with those pesky ratification statements. Yes, I've read that some historians aren't sure about the Georgia vote, and I think you are right about Arkansas. On the other side, you have the arrest of Maryland legislators, the invasion and takeover of Missouri (that had voted against secession) by troops from Illinois, and the invasion of Kentucky. Those don't seem to be exactly legitimate actions either.
If most experts in 1860 believed unilateral secession to be wrong, secessionists certainly should have tried to change people's minds or the text of the Constitution, or at least have proceeded in Congress, rather than simply assume that what they believed to be true was universally accepted and that no one would object to their taking things into their own hands.
I've read elsewhere that before the firing on Fort Sumter, most people accepted that secession was a right. I don’t know whether that is true or not. The actual act of secession was the only thing that got some Northern states to repeal or modify their unconstitutional personal liberty laws. They knew for years that those laws nullified the Constitution and threatened to cause the Southern states to secede, yet they did nothing about them until states started leaving. How do you reason with people who willingly violate the Constitution with impunity?
What was strange, absurd, and offensive was the argument that a rebellion in defense of slavery or slaveowner's rights was a rebellion against tyranny. It's not a gratuitous slam on my part. It's a recognition that the argument that Charleston 1860 was the same as Philadelphia 1776 -- a revolution justified by the right of rebellion against tyranny -- wouldn't fly after emancipation, so defenders of the rebellion had to rely on Constitutional arguments much more than natural law arguments.
There's a problem with your time line (among other things). As I posted above, Southerners were making Constitutional arguments about secession long before emancipation.
I looked at the declarations of the causes of the seceding states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas and didn't find the word "tyranny" anywhere. On the other hand, once Lincoln took power and Congress had adjourned, Lincoln assumed the legislative and judicial functions as well as the executive function and engineered the start of the war before calling Congress into session months later. As Madison said in Federalist 47:
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.
The Southern-dominated Democratic party had been the prevailing force in the country for 60 years. To bitch and moan because the political winds shifted was natural, I guess, but to get apocalyptic about it was excessive and unjustified. Or at least, it was unwise to get carried away by fear and rage and enthusiasm to the point where you call your fellow countrymen the enemy and refuse to work within legitimate, constitutional, democratically-elected representative institutions.
There had been fewer Southerners in Congress than Northerners since the earliest days of the new government. That imbalance had grown considerably over the years. The political situation had changed for the worse as far as the South was concerned. A majority of Republican Congressmen endorsed a vow to end slavery in the South, the basis of the Southern economy. A vote count in the Senate said the South would no longer be able to block a draconian increase in the tariff that would transfer even more Southern money to Northern manufacturers and workers.
The "legitimate, constitutional, democratically-elected representative institutions" were in the hands of sectionalists taking actions to the detriment of the South. Those "legitimate, constitutional, democratically-elected representative institutions" in some Northern states passed laws that interfered with the return of fugitive slaves contrary to the Constitution. Why wouldn't Northern representative entities "work" with the South for a change rather than applauding John Brown, nullifying the Constitution, and stiff arming the South economically?
Hmmm. I thought you argued above that "The machinery was established for states or populations to change their status, and it wasn't by unilateral action."
What I meant was that a state could change it's status by working through the federal government. As federal legislation was the machinery to admit states it could also presumably unadmit or deacess them.
What didn't exist was a constitutional standard for what state actions would result in secession. A vote by the state legislature? A vote in some state convention? Ratification of a legislative or convention decision by a popular vote?
As there was no authorized procedure it's not clear whether a particular act of secession was representative of the electorate's wishes or in accordance with some procedure that was recognized as legally valid. That's apart and on top of the question about whether secession was constitutional or not.
Moreover, in something as important as secession and in an atmosphere as impassioned as that of the 1860s, there should have been poll observers to make sure that the reported results were valid. You can bet that if secession procedures were adopted somewhere today, there would be an attempt to ensure accuracy through monitors at polling places and wherever the votes are tallied.
Finally something we can agree on. As a former poll officer, the first Republican one ever in my Deep South Democrat district, I'd be right there monitoring the election to see that there was no vote fraud.
The several States were bound by the original terms of the ratification documents, creating the United States Constitution, that obligation can't so easily be tossed aside.
Way cool.
Same inscription would be pertinent today, and maybe more so.
Hey, Sunken. I hadn't noticed until now that you had posted the above on this thread. I keep pointing out to you that the Arizona Territory seceded twice, once on February 3, 1861, before postal service was interrupted and the CSA formed and once again on March 16, 1861, after postal service was interrupted and after the CSA was formed.
The interruption of the postal service was not the pretext for either secession. It wasn't mentioned in the first secession document because the service had not been interrupted. That secession document said they wished to be attached to the Republic of Texas should Texas secede. The second secession document said they did not wish to be attached to a single state but instead wanted to be under the protection of the CSA. The second document said they would ask the CSA to resume the postal service. The postal route in question went through the CSA at the time of the second secession.
I checked on the link you kindly provided to the second Arizona secession document. I suspect the people who wrote the text for that link were not aware of the first secession document and overemphasized the role that the interrupted postal service had on Arizona secession. It was not a "pretext" for their secession.
As I've mentioned before, the February 23, 1861, issue of the State Gazette of Austin, Texas, reprinted the first Arizona secession document from a copy that had appeared in the Mesilla Times of Mesilla, New Mexico.
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