Posted on 12/03/2017 6:25:07 AM PST by Jonty30
I'm just trying to understand the relationship between the United States and the individual states on the issue of the legality of slavery at the state level. I know after the Civil War, the federal federal law trumped state law, but what about prior to the Civil War? Somebody told me the federal government was always the primary government when federal laws and state laws conflicted.
So, why couldn't the federal government just outlaw slavery at the state level instead of launching a civil war against the states?
> I tend to compare slavery to abortion. <
That is a very good comparison. In each case, one person has absolute, life-or-death power over another. And in each case, the weaker person isn’t even considered a person.
I think, Da Coyote, you suffer from the same ailment as all snowflakes. That is, you feel so enlightened that all 17th and 18th people were stupid. You try to put 21st mores on them, rather than remember that they were a product of their time, not ours.
ping
Seems like it was a majority issue. As more and more states joined the Union, the question was always: “is the state going to be a slave state or a free state.”
The issue kept getting kicked down the road, until it could no longer be contained. The results were disaterous and America has paid the price many times over, and we are still paying.
We are facing a similar problem with third-world illegals today. Because "it's good for business". The spineless open borders Senate is akin to the slave merchant politicians of the 19th century — here in the 21st century, country be damned, open broders is "good for business".
Lincoln, nor any other President has the Constitutional power to pass laws. Only the Legislature, i.e. Congress can make laws and back then Federal Laws only applied to things that the Constitution said the Federal Government was responsible for. Either way the Congress would have had to pass a law banning slavery and the southern democrats would never had allowed that to happen. Remember, in those days it took 67 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster so as long as one person was able to talk for 24 hours and the legislation could not garner 67 votes to break the filibuster that legislation was dead and could not be taken up again until the next Congress was seated. This was how the dems, during Jim Crow, were able to stop the R’s from passing anti-Jim Crow legislation, its also how the dems stopped the R’s from passing the Voting Rights Act, and the Civil Rights act from the end of reconstruction till the 1960’s.
It wasn’t until I had family members move to the south that I heard the expression, “The War on Northern Aggression”
http://www.marottaonmoney.com/protective-tariffs-the-primary-cause-of-the-civil-war/
Shhh. Don't tell the Southern leaders of the time. They all thought they were acting to protect slavery and God knows what they'd do if you told them they were really rebelling over taxes.
Hopeless political revisionism.
Actually we call it “The War OF Northern Aggression”.
I think of abortion as more like the Aztec's practice of human sacrifice. I expect that future generations will look back on it in much the same way.
I agree. It’s mass murder. Of innocents. History won’t be kind to it
So far as getting rid of legislatively it’s entrenched. Can’t have birth control without abortion. Birth control has to go. It will go with even a lot more difficulty than it’s appointed queen, Hilary
But it’s against natural law
State militias in the succeeding states surrounded Federal installations, unarmed them and made them march on foot home. The Federal government wanted their arms, horses,wagons, and other equipment back. The WAR started when an installation refused to leave without their equipment. Not over slaves.
Read the text of the Supreme Court Decision Scott V. Sanford (AKA the Dred Scott Decision). It is very explicit in that the Federal Government cannot interfere with Slavery in any state where it is legal. It declares the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional and it mandates the Federal Government enforce the Fugitive Slave Act. It is because of this court decision, that the 13th Amendment was passed. Changing the Constitution was the only way around the Dred Scott Decision.
It was a state’s business and there was no federal law against it until the 13th Amendment.
They said wrong. For example, a federal law was passed which purported to make possession of a firearm within 500 ft. of a school illegal. It was overturned in federal court because that was not an issue over which the federal government has authority.A lot more things than that should be off limits to the federal government, but the Seventeenth Amendment converted the Senators from representatives of the governments of the states to representatives of the people of the states. Consequently, federal judges (confirmed and possibly impeached in the Senate) have no fear of crossing the state governments. And accordingly give them less respect than the Constitution as designed did.
Because that's considered a state responsibility.
Why could the federal government ban alcohol throughout the country?
Because we passed a constitutional amendment allowing them to do so (big mistake).
Okay, so why can the federal government ban marijuana in all the states?
That's a tough one. It started by taxing hemp -- the federal government is allowed to impose excise taxes by the Constitution -- but the tax was replaced by a complete ban.
Today, I think the mandate for marijuana prohibition is the power to regulate interstate commerce, though it's a funny thing: there are a lot of websites dedicated to proving that Congress can't ban pot and not many devoted to the opposite proposition, even though it's the law of the land.
The tricky question is whether current federal bans on drugs could be extended to alcohol and tobacco.
It could happen I guess (so start stockpiling now).
What does all this have to do with slavery?
Congress could have created a voluntary compensated emancipation plan (if there had been enough votes for it), but it couldn't just emancipate the slaves against the will of the masters, because that would mean confiscating property without due process and interfering in a state's internal affairs.
Practically, though, almost all anti-slavery measures were defeated in the years leading up to the Civil War (the exceptions: the ban on international slave trade in 1807 and the ban on slave trading in the District of Columbia in 1850).
The slave states had too much power in Congress.
Unless the feds planned on replacing cotton pickers in Mississippi, the crop which had made Mississippi one of the wealthiest states, with federal troops, then some kind of conflict was inevitable.
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