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...
"That's funny. Both Manassas battles occurred because Union troops had invaded the Commonwealth of Virginia. Without the Union "doing something", we wouldn't have had First & Second Manassas."
These historically challenged idiots don't realize that the South was defending itself. Ohhhhh ... that's right ... the brutal invasion and slaughter at Ft. Sumter ... hmmmmpph ... idiots.
There is a distinction between the terms 'not allow' and 'disallow' (i.e. prohibit). There is nothing that 'disallows' secession. Read Amendment X carefully: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively
As you can plainly see, Amendment X uses the term 'prohibit' which is synonymous with 'disallow'. And as we already know, there is nothing in the Constitution that 'prohibits' secession.
And secession without the consent of the other states is not allowed by the Constitution.
The Constitution says no such thing. You made that up.
Can you please show me where the Constitution uses the term 'explicit'?
The word 'explicit' isn't found in the Constitution. Neither are the words 'umbrella', 'imaginary', or 'privacy'. However, there are 'explicit' powers and limitations listed throughout - prohibitions against secession not being one of them.
had Japan not started the war to begin with then the U.S. troops would have had no reason to invade Okinawa or anywhere else. Likewise with Bull Run. Had the confederacy not launched a war then the Union troops would have had no reason to be there.
So you freely admit that the invasion of Virginia required the Union to 'DO' something while Virginia did nothing, just as the invasion of Okinawa required the US to 'DO' something while Okinawa did nothing. The Defense rests, your Honor.
Thanks for reminding me. I had forgotten about those thousands of Union troops that were massacred at Ft. Sumter.
“Thanks for reminding me. I had forgotten about those thousands of Union troops that were massacred at Ft. Sumter.”
It was just brutal.
No, it is you that has it backwards, and ass backwards at that. New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia agreed to adopt the Constitution with certain preconditions. Rhode Island declared, " In That there are certain natural rights, of which men when they form a social compact, cannot deprive or divest their posterity, among which are the enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the means of acquiring, possessing and protecting Property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." Hold on they didn't stop there, "That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness:-"
And secession without the consent of the other states is not allowed by the Constitution.
Federalist No. 43
On what principle the Confederation, which stands in the solemn form of a compact among the States, can be superseded without the unanimous consent of the parties to it? 2. What relation is to subsist between the nine or more States ratifying the Constitution, and the remaining few who do not become parties to it? The first question is answered at once by recurring to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.
Here's what James Madison said in a letter to Alexander Rives:
James Madison to Nicholas P. Trist
The compact can only be dissolved by the consent of the other parties, or by usurpations or abuses of power justly having that effect."
I think a one guy got shrapnel in his arm or something.
I’ll be interested to see what happens when you stop your mortgage payments on the grounds that the money you save is “necessary to your happiness.”
Au contraire.
Alexander Hamilton (an arch-Federalist) @ the ratification debate in New York state in 1788. He is speaking on direct taxation, but read what he is saying (please note his use of the word coerce/coercion.)
"It has been observed, to coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to a single state. This being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war?
"Suppose Massachusetts, or any large state, should refuse, and Congress should attempt to compel them, would they not have influence to procure assistance, especially from those states which are in the same situation as themselves? What picture does this idea present to our view? A complying state at war with a non-complying state; Congress marching the troops of one state into the bosom of another; this state collecting auxiliaries, and forming, perhaps, a majority against the federal head.
"Here is a nation at war with itself. Can any reasonable man be well disposed towards a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself -- a government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. This single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against such a government. But can we believe that one state will ever suffer itself to be used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream; it is impossible."
From Lincoln's first inaugural address (bold mine):
"In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices."
From the Arkansas Ordinance of Secession (bold mine):
"Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:"
Lincoln's response to the question: "Why not let the South go in peace?"
"I can't let them go. Who would pay for the government?"
Power and money, Colonel. Lincoln chose to destroy the Constitutional Republic for power and money.
Nice little straw man you got there. But as usual, it's that dreaded strike three call. Here is another way of looking at this.
Three men decide to have a little baseball game and they pick an umpire. After the rules of the game have been agreed to, two of these men work diligently in modifying these rules.
The one man decides that the rules have been violated and walks home. Later the Umpire decides he knew the rules better than the three that created them and informs this player that he cannot leave. This Umpire now labels this player as an insurrectionist and invades his home. This player is now forced to play by the rules he did not agree to; as they were created by someone that wasn't a party to the original agreement....
That’s a lot of words to say “no, you can’t just decide to violate a contract to which both parties have agreed.”
Your analogy doesn’t wash because the player who changed the rules is also the player who walked (taking the ball with him).
It's a lot of words saying " you cannot change the rules after the fact."
The Federal Government is but the mere agent of the States. Please describe how the agent can coerce and invade that which created it?
Sure it does... He left the ball and walked home.
Let us see what Madison had to say on conditional ratification, shall we? In a 1788 letter to Hamilton he wrote:
"My opinion is, that a reservation of a right to withdraw, if any amendments be not decided on under the form of the Constitution within a certain time, is a conditional ratification; that it does not make New York a member of the Union, and consequently that she could not be received on that plan. Compacts must be reciprocal - this principle would not in such a case be preserved. The Constitution requires an adoption in toto and forever. It has been so adopted by the other States. An adoption for a limited time would be as defective as an adoption of some articles only. In short, any condition whatever must vitiate the ratification...The idea of reserving a right to withdraw was started in Richmond, and considered as a conditional ratification which was itself abandoned as worse than a rejection."
The Constitution was binding, in toto, to all those who ratified it. If any state assumed that they were retaining a power that the Constitution did not allow them then they were mistaken. But their ratification still stood and their agreement to abide by the Constitution remained in force.
The compact can only be dissolved by the consent of the other parties, or by usurpations or abuses of power justly having that effect."
And as Madison wrote to Alexander Rives: "The characteristic distinction between free Governments and Governments not free is, that the former are founded on compact, not between the Government and those for whom it acts, but between the parties creating the Government. Each of those being equal, neither can have more rights to say that the compact has been violated and dissolved, than every other has to deny the fact, and to insist on the execution of the bargains."
In other words, the compact is not broken or the powers usurped just because one party said it was.
PSST — THE FRIGGIN WAR ENDED 145 YEARS AGO! PASS IT ON!
So if the Japanse had bombed Pearl Harbor and by some miracle nobody had been killed then you would have not considered it an act of war and would not have responded to Japanese aggression?
On the other hand it's a modest improvement over the lame marriage analogy that they keep trotting out.
“And I really do have a bust of Lincoln on my desk. It’s one of those brass jobs that they sell in D.C.”
non-sequitur back in 2001
The people of New York didn't see it that way. Are you going to reiterate rusbucket's previous statements, which is the Federal Constitution is and was a big bait and switch? Here is New York:
That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness; that every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the government thereof, remains to the people of the several states, or to their respective state governments, to whom they may have granted the same; and that those clauses in the said Constitution, which declare that Congress shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the said Constitution; but such clauses are to be construed either as exceptions to certain specified powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution.
And as Madison wrote to Alexander Rives:
"The characteristic distinction between free Governments and Governments not free is, that the former are founded on compact, not between the Government and those for whom it acts, but between the parties creating the Government. Each of those being equal, neither can have more rights to say that the compact has been violated and dissolved, than every other has to deny the fact, and to insist on the execution of the bargains."
In other words, the compact is not broken or the powers usurped just because one party said it was.
The private letters are nice and all, but we need to look at what he wrote and then defended. Both the Federalist papers and the Virginia Report of 1799. Here is the Virginia Report.
The constitution of the United States was formed by the sanction of the states, given by each in its sovereign capacity. It adds to the stability and dignity, as well as to the authority, of the constitution, that it rests upon this legitimate and solid foundation. The states, then, being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity that there can be no tribunal above their authority to decide, in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated and consequently that, as the parties to it, they must themselves decide, in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.
Since you're into letters, here's one for your collection:
Thomas Jefferson letter to Madison in August 1799;
"[We should be] determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government...in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness."
You could learn a lot on these threads. Secession is a viable alternative to knuckling under to statist collectivism.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.