Governor Banks final address to the Massachusetts legislature, given January 3, 1861:
While I would not withhold from the South what belongs to that section, I cannot consent that we should yield what belongs to us. The right to the Territory must be a common right, as to the people of the country, and their status must be determined upon the rights of the people, and not as to the rights of property. To base the fundamental ideas of the Government upon property is to change the purposes of government, and to establish the basis of that property upon the right to hold slaves, is to exclude the people of non-slaveholding States altogether. It has never been conceded as a right, and it ought not now to be established. There is no species of property entitled to such protection as will exclude men from Territories, aside from all considerations of property. Neither do I believe that a geographical line will give peace to the country. It must either by express agreement be restricted to territory now in our possession, and not to be applied to that hereafter obtained, or the establishment of such line in itself would be a signal for the acquisition of foreign territory in the South at the cost of foreign war, and the renewal of contests for its possession and control, when acquired at the expense of domestic peace. That the lapse of time alone will heal all dissensions upon this subject is shown by the efforts made to precipitate a revolution in order to secure advantage that otherwise must fail.
>>OIFVeteran wrote: “Thanks to these threads I have been doing more research on the secessionist winter. Lincoln is often accused of being a tyrant, but I am going to post some resolutions and statements from northern states to show that Lincoln was simply carrying out his constitutional obligations as he, and these state governments, saw it.”
The supreme law, as written into the Constitution, is not determined by how people feel about it at this or that particular time. The supreme law is determined by what is written, and why it was written.
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>>OIFVeteran quoting: “Governor Banks final address to the Massachusetts legislature, given January 3, 1861:”
I cannot make heads or tails out of his words.
Mr. Kalamata
This contradicts what the Founders did in separating us from the United Kingdom. According to his theory of government, the British people had just as much right to the property of America as did the residents.
It also contradicts Lincoln's statement on the subject.
" Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,—a most sacred right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by oldlines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones."