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To: BroJoeK
And yet, when President Jefferson suspected his own former Vice President Burr of planning to take over Louisiana and declare its secession, Jefferson had Burr tracked down, arrested and tried for treason. So, declarations of secession were far from trivial matters in Jefferson's eyes.

I would point out that one man plotting to subvert the Interests of the Government of which he is a part is a very different thing that many millions of people voicing their desire to separate from a government which no longer serves their interests.

Major Breach of Compact -- usurpations, oppression or injury.

I think we have already established that depriving people of "rights" which were explicitly enumerated in the larger body of the US Constitution, constitutes a breach of compact. The Refusal of states to return escaped slaves is a breach of this clause in the constitution. The efforts of the Government to ban slavery in future states would also be regarded in this light.

So even by your standards, what the Union was doing did constitute a "Major Breach of Compact -- usurpations, oppression or injury." You may not agree with this constituting an injury, but that is because you are looking at the "injury" with 2015 eyes, instead of 1860 eyes. According to the laws of that time, this was an "injury" and breach of compact.

679 posted on 08/27/2015 6:33:58 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
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To: DiogenesLamp
DiogenesLamp speaking of former Vice President Aaron Burr's arrest for treason by President Jefferson: "would point out that one man plotting to subvert the Interests of the Government of which he is a part is a very different thing that many millions of people voicing their desire to separate from a government which no longer serves their interests."

Well... first of all Aaron Burr was not acting alone, and may easily have held elections to declare secession "in the name of" whatever "citizens" then lived in the United States territory of Louisiana.

Second, those "millions" you refer to were led by a small group of Deep South Fire Eaters, which have now been defined and listed for you, above.
Fire Eaters both engineered the Democrat party split at the 1860 convention in Charleston, and then pushed for secession when their now split Democrats lost to Abraham Lincoln's Black Republicans.

DiogenesLamp: "The Refusal of states to return escaped slaves is a breach of this clause in the constitution.
The efforts of the Government to ban slavery in future states would also be regarded in this light."

But state responsibilities for capturing and returning Fugitive Slaves were eliminated by the Compromise of 1850 Law, which transferred the job from states to Federal Government.
That means your complaint is bogus regarding the states, though potentially valid in the sense, if Federal Government did not do enough to suppress Northern states-rights to abolish slavery within their own territories.

But even that much is bogus to the max, since those Deep South states which complained most loudly about it, and then declared their secession allegedly from it: those states suffered least from it.
Yes, Deep South states, despite protestations, did not suffer serious Fugitive Slave problems, precisely because they were, after all, Deep South.
To pick an example: a slave wishing to runaway from Georgia had to escape slave-catchers not only in his own state, but in South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland before he/she could hope to see freedom in Pennsylvania or states further north.
The result was, all through the 1850s, Deep South slave populations grew rapidly.

By contrast, slaves in Maryland or Kentucky could relatively easily run to freedom in, say, New Jersey or Ohio.
Therefore, Deep South Fire Eater complaints about non-enforcement of Fugitive Slave laws cannot have been serious, must only have been further propaganda, intended to inflame an otherwise Unionist Southern constituency.

718 posted on 08/27/2015 2:58:07 PM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective...)
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