Posted on 12/22/2019 4:23:47 AM PST by Bull Snipe
"I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." General William T. Sherman's "March to the Sea" was over. During the campaign General Sherman had made good on his promise d “to make Georgia howl”. Atlanta was a smoldering ruin, Savannah was in Union hands, closing one of the last large ports to Confederate blockade runners. Sherman’s Army wrecked 300 miles of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines. It seized 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, and 13,000 head of cattle. It confiscated 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder, and destroyed uncounted cotton gins and mills. In all, about 100 million dollars of damage was done to Georgia and the Confederate war effort.
>>”I agree that there are decisions handed down that leave me scratching my head as well. But the solution is not doing away with the judiciary because could you honestly believe that that Congress or the President wouldn’t make more decisions that we feel totally ignore the Constitution?”
So, you believe five unelected lawyers with lifetime tenure, and who are answerable to no one (at least in theory,) are less dangerous to liberty than the elected executive and representatives of the people?
You may be right, now that the 4th Branch (state-appointed U.S. Senators) has been completely stripped of its power by the 17th Amendment.
Of course, you may also be terribly wrong. Imagine if Hillary had appointed two or three S.C. Judges? It is not too far-fetched to believe we would now be subjects of a world government.
Mr. Kalamata
Mention of this provision might have raised questions about President Lincoln’s commitment to the notion that “all men are created equal.”
“Congress may appropriate money, and otherwise provide, for colonizing free colored persons, with their own consent, at any place or places without the United States.”
You edited out “with their own consent” to suit your own personal agenda.
"It being among my first wishes to see some plan adopted, by which slavery in this country may be abolished by law.” - George Washington Letter to John Mercer, September 9, 1786
“I wish from my soul that the legislature of this State could see a policy of a gradual Abolition of Slavery.” - George Washington: letter to Lawrence Lewis, August 4, 1797
“Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States.... I have, throughout my whole life, held the practice of slavery in... abhorrence.” John Adams: letter to Evans, June 8, 1819
“It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished. The honor of the States, as we as justice and humanity, in my opinion loudly call upon them to emancipate these unhappy people. To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.” -John Jay: to R. Lushington - March 15, 1786
“Would any one believe that I am master of slaves by my own purchase? I am drawn along by the general inconvenience of living without them. I will not — I cannot justify it, however culpable my conduct. I will so far pay my devoir to Virtue, as to own the excellence and rectitude of her precepts, and to lament my want of conformity to them. I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be afforded to abolish this lamentable evil. Everything we cam do, is to improve it, if It happens in our day; if not, let us transmit to our descendants, together with our slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot, and an abhorrence of Slavery. If we cannot reduce this wished-for reformation to practice, let us treat the unhappy victims with lenity. It is the furthest advancement we can make toward justice. It is a debt we owe to the purity of our religion, to show that it is at variance with that law which warrants Slavery.” -Patrick Henry letter to John Alsop Jan13, 1773
So 620,000 men needed to die?
The 10th Amendment applies to all non-prohibitied powers not specifically enumerated to and for the general government. The power of secession is one of those un-enumerated powers reserved to the states and the people, as mentioned in the South Carolina declaration of Secession:
"The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue…
"By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May, 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.
"Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights."
["Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union." Avalon Project, Dec 24, 1860]
Therefore, South Carolina believed the 10th Amendment applied, and specifically expressed that belief.
Mr. Kalamata
It was the only one of 11 states that so stated that principle.
In addition, slavery is mentioned or alluded to many time in the South Carolina justification for secession. The 10 Amendment is mentioned once.
>>It was the only one of 11 states that so stated that principle.
Do you believe the remaining 10 were perhaps too ignorant to understand the concept of retained rights, or that it would have been redundant to mention it since South Carolina’s declaration had already made it crystal clear to those not well-versed in the constitution?
Let me ask another way: do you believe a constitutional power no longer exists if it is not declared?
Mr. Kalamata
You claimed several of the seceding states cited the 10th Amendment as part of their justification for secession. I pointed out that was not the case. Only South Carolina cited the 10th as one of the reasons for it actions.
That has nothing to do with a constitutional powers, merely that the 10th was not the crux of the arguments that the seceding states chose expound on in their defense of secession.
I just thought it was funny. Not as humorous as some of your posts perhaps, but amusing.
What point are you trying to make here?
Anyone who has spent any amount of time studying the 19th century is aware of colonization efforts that existed early on. Lincoln supported voluntary colonization, as did Madison, Monroe, Clay, Breckenridge, Robert Lee, and many others. Why is it such a surprise to you?
LOL! With oddball ideology of your own? Not much of a challenge.
Lincoln had absolutely zero constitutional authority to free slaves in states that were not in rebellion against the United States. However, due to the confiscation act passed by congress in August 1861 he did was given the authority to have the military confiscate any property that would help the insurrectionists. This included slaves. Here’s the text of the law that covered slaves.
SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That whenever hereafter, during the present insurrection against the Government of the United States, any person claimed to be held to labor or service under the law of any State, shall be required or permitted by the person to whom such labor or service is claimed to be due, or by the lawful agent of such person, to take up arms against the United States, or shall be required or permitted by the person to whom such labor or service is claimed to be due, or his lawful agent, to work or to be employed in or upon any fort, navy yard, dock, armory, ship, entrenchment, or in any military or naval service whatsoever, against the Government and lawful authority of the United States, then, and in every such case, the person to whom such labor or service is claimed to be due shall forfeit his claim to such labor, any law of the State or of the United States to the contrary notwithstanding. And whenever thereafter the person claiming such labor or service shall seek to enforce his claim, it shall be a full and sufficient answer to such claim that the person whose service or labor is claimed had been employed in hostile service against the Government of the United States, contrary to the provisions of this act.
APPROVED, August 6, 1861[5]
There are nine, and yes.
You may be right, now that the 4th Branch (state-appointed U.S. Senators) has been completely stripped of its power by the 17th Amendment.
There are three branches - legislative, executive, and judiciary.
I don't see the word 'specifically' in the 10th Amendment or anywhere else in the Constitution. Can you point out where it is?
“So 620,000 men needed to die?”
Rather than expand slavery into the West? Yeah. Rather than break up into a bunch of small states incapable of defense fro European powers? Yep.
It might be my comment in Post 109 (rather than a post by Kalamata) that you are referring to: "...the 10th Amendment was cited by the seceeding States in support of their formal severance of ties." The phrase 'formal severance of ties' was intended as a reference to secession as the mechanism (versus any less formal or lawful method), and your assumption that I was referring specifically to the written ordinances of secession is understandable, and due to my choice of words.
However, I was simply referring to the fact that several of the seceding States mentioned the 10th Amendment in support of the right of State secession, whether in an ordinance of secession or elsewhere. The Constitution of 1860 nowhere prohibited such a formal severance of ties by a member State, and it was therefore considered by some advocates to be among the rights reserved to the States and their people. I've provided a few specific citations that establish that point...
You have a reading comprehension problem.
For the rest of you, the right to secede is a retained right, and exercising it expresses that right, whether it is explicitly mentioned or not.
Few knowledgeable individuals questioned the right of any state to secede until King Lincoln showed up. Check out the Hartford Convention of the mid-1810's. A good book on that crisis is by James Banner, which contains this:
"While frowning upon the extreme of secession, however, the majority of Massachusetts Federalists did not give up the search for a defense of their minority interests. This they found in the more moderate course of state interposition. The Federalist theory of interposition, so widely held after 1808, was rooted in the premise that the nation was a collection of 'several independent confederated republics,' a 'league' of equal and sovereign states which had surrendered only a portion of their authority to the central government under the Constitution. In constitutional arguments sharply reminiscent of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions which they had only a few years earlier rejected, Federalists declared that the Constitution was variously a 'treaty,' 'contract,' or 'association.' Each state was a free republic 'united by a solemn compact under a federal government of limited powers.' These sovereign republics, and not the people, had been represented at Philadelphia, and the nation's sovereignty derived directly from the sovereignty of the states." [James M. Banner, "To the Hartford Convention: the Federalists and the origins of party politics in Massachusetts, 1789-1815." Alfred A. Knopf, 1970, p.118]
Note carefully the last section beginning with the phrase, "Each state was a free republic...". We sometimes forget that the constitution guaranteed each state a republican form of government.
"Article IV, Section 4 - The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;" [Law, "Constitution of the United States and Amendments." 1787]
King Lincoln must have also forgot that part.
Mr. Kalamata
The point was and is that no one in those days believed the Emancipation Proclamation was anything other than a war-time political stunt--not even Lincoln's chief thug and hatchet-man, Secretary of State William Seward.
One of those listed (the N. Y. World newspaper) that criticized the so-called "emancipation" was accused of treason and shut down the next year:
"Whereas, there has been wickedly and traitorously printed and published this morning, in the "New York World" and New York "Journal of Commerce," newspapers printed and published in the city of New York,—a false and spurious proclamation, purporting to be signed by the President, and to be countersigned by the Secretary of State, which publication is of a treasonable nature, designed to give aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States, and to the rebels now at war against the Government, and their aiders and abettors: you are therefore hereby commanded forthwith to arrest and imprison in any fort or military prison in your command, the editors, proprietors and publishers of the aforesaid newspapers, and all such persons as, after public notice has been given of the falsehood of said publication, print and publish the same, with intent to give aid and comfort to the enemy;—and you will hold the persons so arrested, in close custody, until they can be brought to trial before a military commission, for their offense. You will also take possession by military force, of the printing establishments of the "New York World," and "Journal of Commerce," and hold the same until further order, and prevent any further publication therefrom." [To Maj. General John A. Dix, Executive Mansion, Commanding, at New York. Washington, May 18. 1864, in Roy P. Basler, "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln Vol 7." Rutgers University Press, 1953, pp.347-348]
Mr. Kalamata
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