Posted on 06/29/2023 4:16:36 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp
I seldom ever read BroJoeK, and for two reasons.
1. For just such false equivalences as you point out.
2. Because his messages are usually far too long.
Back when I found those quotes, I should have bookmarked it, because I have found it becomes increasingly difficult to find specific bits of information I want when I am discussing the Civil War.
I do know I posted the quotes on Free Republic years ago, and I usually post a link to stuff like that, so there may be somewhere in my vast store of comments, a way to source the quotes.
But my commentary is so vast that it is difficult to search.
Again, the "procedure" was spelled out 11 years earlier in the Declaration of Independence, and nobody at the constitutional convention had so soon forgotten it.
You would have us believe the framers forgot what the founders did.
Fair enough.
If the colonies had lost the war, they would have lost their heads, as generations of Irishmen and Scotsmen had. They were deathly serious about their revolution in a way that you aren't.
But they didn't, and they *ESTABLISHED* the principle that people have a right to independence.
Why would they think this principle should only apply to England, and not to Washington DC?
Lincoln sent a respectful letter, then loaded up five warships and a troop carrier and gave *THEM* orders to attack if the Confederates did not comply.
It was the arrival of the ships that convinced General Beauregard that Lincoln was serious about using warships against them. If you look at the details you find that the decision to attack Sumter was made right after the arrival of the Harriet Lane.
Your argument that Lincoln was wrong and Davis was right is really not relevant.
Well I guess that depends upon whether or not you consider the truth relevant or not, and from what I have seen of civil war discussions, most people would rather believe what they have always been told.
The bottom line is Jeff Davis turned a winning legal case into a losing war.
If you had read all the statements from the people involved that I have read, you would quickly realize that Lincoln was going to have his war, whether it be started at Fort Sumter or started at Fort Pickens in Pensacola.
The orders Lt. David Porter followed in Pensacola (attacking ships and such with no knowledge of Sumter) makes it clear that Lincoln was going to create the war that *HE* and only *HE* needed.
Lincoln was not going to allow Jeff Davis to secede peacefully. He was going to keep provoking him until he triggered some sort of confrontation.
The money issue would never have allowed Lincoln to acquiesce to the South's secession. Lincoln's backers would not tolerate the Federal government sitting on it's hands while their vast fortunes were jeopardized by direct Southern trade with Europe.
Lincoln was the clever manipulator, and one way or the other, he was going to get his war.
Legal arguments mean nothing when massive amounts of money are involved. (750 million in 1860 dollars.)
As I said to another commenter earlier:
You would have us believe the framers forgot what the founders did.
Well three states said so explicitly at the beginning, and two of them were among the most important states in the nation. At least two more said so at the Hartford Convention in 1814, (Massachusetts and Connecticut) and so whether or not it was "universally assumed" can be proven, it can certainly be proven that significant numbers of important states believed it to be true.
The evidence in favor of legal secession far outweighs the evidence against.
I’d say that secession was a subject for consideration by the courts, but Jefferson Davis thought it was a war-worthy point.
Lincoln was never going to allow this to be settled by the Courts. Lincoln needed the war, and he was going to get it no matter what Jefferson Davis tried to do to prevent it.
The money evidence shows that it is naive to believe the South could have just been allowed to go. Once it threatened the money streams of the connected people, it was only a matter of time before war would be launched to stop it.
Of course, they did, but it was, factually, all a pack of lies and nonsense which nobody who was not 100% committed to the Southern slavocracy accepted or recognized.
Well, yes, there were a few, here and there, Charles Dickens comes to mind -- he was so embittered and angry at Northerners for having copied and sold his books without paying royalties, that he was happy to employ Southern lies & nonsense against the Union cause.
And the English aristocracy, generally, recognized kindred spirits in the Southern slavocracy.
So Confederates were not without sympathizers, but no major government and no majorities anywhere bought into Confederate propaganda.
Because:
They didn't, not for one minute, but the "principle" that you allege is a deliberate misunderstanding of their words.
They never once said what you so often claim they said, or intended.
But you believe it, and therefore you project your own beliefs back onto our Founders, who never had any such intentions.
That's your problem, and it's a serious mental defect, regardless of what name you give it.
If Lincoln wanted war (which I don’t personally believe, read his first inaugural address), Jeff Davis should have understood the overwhelming importance of the Yankees being seen to have fired the first shot.
But instead the Confederacy took it upon itself to fire that first shot. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Lt. Henry S. Farley, acting upon the command of Capt. George S. James, fired a single 10-inch mortar round from Fort Johnson against Fort Sumter. James had offered the first shot to Roger Pryor, a firebrand Virginia secessionist, who declined, saying, “I could not fire the first gun of the war.” After the war, Pryor moved to NYC and became the law partner of General Benjamin Butler!
FDR for certain wanted war, and the Japanese stupidly accommodated him.
Both historical episodes remind me of the famous Talleyrand quote “It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake”.
In my opinion, going to war with the USA was almost the only way for the Confederacy to lose its independence.
James Madison, Secession, & State Sovereignty
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.war.civil.usa/p5V_C8Hm8yw
"The first question [how an AOC state could secede without approval from the other states] 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." (Federalist No. 43)
Do States Have a Right of Secession?
https://www.capitalismmagazine.com/2002/04/do-states-have-a-right-of-secession/
DiLorenzo does a yeoman’s job in documenting Lincoln’s ruthlessness and hypocrisy, and how historians have covered it up. The Framers had a deathly fear of federal government abuse. They saw state sovereignty as a protection. That’s why they gave us the Ninth and 10th Amendments. They saw secession as the ultimate protection against Washington tyranny.
James Madison on Secession
https://almostchosenpeople.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/james-madison-on-secession/
The former as one only of the parties, owes fidelity to it, till released by consent, or absolved by an intolerable abuse of the power created.
I don’t have link to his quotes in “His Notes on the Constitutional Debates of 1787”, so here is the text from May 31 where Madison seems to speak most directly to session.
“The last clause of Resolution 6 authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole agst. a delinquent State came next to consideration.”
“Mr. Madison, observed that the more he reflected on the use of force, the more he doubted the practicability, the justice and efficacy of it when applied to people collectively and not individually. A union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force agst. a state, would look more like a declaration of war, than infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound. He hoped that such a system would be framed as might render this recourse unnecessary.”
The presence or absence of laws on the subject seems to have little impact on what actually happens. In the last century, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia went their separate ways and Ostmark became Austria again.
The Colonies were already at war with Britain for over a year when the Declaration of Independence was signed. If the signers had survived into the 1860s they would have urged Southerners to be prudent and not rashly plunge into conflict.
The Founders didn’t forget that the didn’t write secession into the Constitution. Madison was quite clear that the Constitution didn’t allow unilateral secession at will.
The Hartford Convention rejected calls for secession. I also hope that if New York ever felt dissatisfied with the union that they’d try to work things out in Congress, rather than declaring themselves independent and seizing or bombarding the Statue of Liberty.
Also, was the government really that corrupt or tyrannical in 1861? And if it was, wouldn’t the slaveowners who had controlled the government for so long bear a big share of the responsibility?
James Madison, Secession, & State SovereigntyMichael T. Griffith
Dec 26, 2003, 2:17:18 PM
When James Madison discussed the conditions under which a state could secede from the Articles of Confederation (AOC) without the consent of the other states, he appealed to the *natural* right of self-preservation and to the principle that the safety and happiness of society were the objects to which all institutions "must be sacrificed." Said Madison,
"The first question [how an AOC state could secede without approval from the other states] 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." (Federalist No. 43)
The part emphasized in blue are the words of Griffith, not Madison.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed43.asp
Madison, Federalist 43
9. "The ratification of the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States, ratifying the same. ''This article speaks for itself. The express authority of the people alone could give due validity to the Constitution. To have required the unanimous ratification of the thirteen States, would have subjected the essential interests of the whole to the caprice or corruption of a single member. It would have marked a want of foresight in the convention, which our own experience would have rendered inexcusable. Two questions of a very delicate nature present themselves on this occasion:1. 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.
For context, Madison was writing an anonymous sales pitch to the People of New York in an effort to persuade them to ratify the proposed Constitution.
The Constitutional Convention was held in secret with no official record being kept. Madison's notes were revealed after his death.
To make any amendment whatever to the AoC required unanimous agreement of all the member states. The larger and more affluent states had no power to dictate changes to disadvantage the small and less affluent states. Each member state was recognized as sovereign and independent; all members joined as equals.
Madison did not refer to changes to the AoC document, but to change of the confederation itself, and under what conditions could nine (or more) member states replace the first confederacy with a very different confederacy, for those nine (or more) states.
While it is a good sounding sales pitch for how to evade the provisions of the AoC, in truth, there is no good reason why the ratifications of nine states could create a new confederation, independent of the existing confederation. Why not seven, a simple majority? Or, under the given logic, why not one state? After all, does the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God only apply to a majority of 9/13ths of the whole or greater?
As for one state under the AoC, Vermont proclaimed its independence in 1777, waged a successful revolution, and established itself as a free and independent state with self-appointed borders, independent of any union or confederation. It joined the constitutional union in 1791 under the provisions allowing for an independent state to do so, as opposed to a territory of the United States. It seems apparent that one state could secede from the AoC perpetual union, and one state (or part of a state) actually did it. And the U.S. Supreme Court said that they did it.
U.S. Reports: Vermont v. New Hampshire, 289 U.S. 593, 607-608 (1933).
Or, as Lincoln on January 12, 1848 put it to Congress:
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 teritory 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 old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones.
Collected Works Vol. 1, pp. 438-439.
Of course, that was before the Confederacy attempted to secede and it was discovered that there was an indestructible union of indestructible states and that no state could ever secede.
As for the argument that, "To have required the unanimous ratification of the thirteen States, would have subjected the essential interests of the whole to the caprice or corruption of a single member," consider what was unanimously agreed upon by the Framers of the AoC.
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/artconf.asp
XIII.Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.
The states unanimously and wilfully adopted a provision that allegedly would subject the whole to the caprice or corruption of a single member. The Constitutionalists would only subject themselves to the caprice or corruption of five members.
I would note that "the Union shall be perpetual" signifies that it shall have no set date for extinguishment but shall continue without need for any renewal, as may a corporation or partnership. The parties may change, grow or shrink. When all members withdraw, the perpetual union ceases to exist. When eleven states withdrew from the AoC Confederation, the two not ratifying the Constitution withdrew and the old perpetual union ceased to exist. One might say Vermont seceded to become free and independent of any confederation, eleven states seceded from the old confederation to form a new confederation, and two seceded from the old confederation and extinguished it, leaving themselves as free and independent states and members of no confederation.
The AoC also provided:
II.Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.
Prior to the Constitution, the states were undeniably sovereign, free and independent. They delegated powers, not sovereignty, to the Confederation. It is not clear how this was changed by the Constitution. Eleven states formed a new confederation and delegated additional powers to their new Confederation. They still did not transfer any sovereignty to the new Confederation.
Or perhaps it is clear that it was done by wordsmithing and obfuscation. The federal government exercises delegated authority in certain spheres of responsibility, and the state governments exercise delegated authority in other spheres of delegated authority. Neither government exercises sovereignty. The government is not sovereign over the people who created the government to serve their desires. The people, the citizens of the states, are the sovereigns and exercise their sovereign power as political groups called states. The people can call a constitutional convention and change the current confederation in any way they may choose, or even just extinguish it. The government is powerless to change anything in the Constitution. The government may propose amendments, but they hold no power to ratify any amendment.
Says virtually everyone at the time who was not fully committed to the Southern slavocracy.
Even most Northern Democrats, who had every reason to buy into Southern lies, when push came to shove, they refused and instead served the Union cause.
Mostly, and sometimes very briefly.
Let me clarify this point. Lincoln did not want war, but he most certainly wanted it more than he wanted the South to escape. If he could not stop the South with persuasion, (Corwin Amendment) he had no qualms about stopping them with war.
Jeff Davis should have understood the overwhelming importance of the Yankees being seen to have fired the first shot.
I have studied this incident quite a lot, so I don't hold it against you to not know specific details that most people don't know.
The problem facing Beauregard is that his forces would be under the guns of both the fort and the warships at the same time. His men would have been caught in the crossfire between the two hostile groups.
Beauregard was not going to let that happen. To him, the military necessity dictated that he first neutralize the fort *BEFORE* the Warships managed to get into position to attack.
The confederates knew that the Powhatan was the command ship, and that none of the other ships would attack until Captain Mercer arrived to take charge of the forces.
Yes, the confederates knew what the ships orders were because they had spies and sympathizers all through the government.
They believed the warships were going to fire the first shot, and the sending of those warships was itself an act of war.
Both historical episodes remind me of the famous Talleyrand quote “It was worse than a crime, it was a mistake”.
They fell for a clever trap set by Lincoln. If you've studied Lincoln, you know he was a quite clever and manipulative fellow, (see how he won the nomination at the Chicago convention) and the sort of trick he pulled with the Powhatan is right in his wheel house. Even the New York Times said so shortly thereafter. They congratulated Lincoln on his clever ruse to get the Confederates to fire first.
In my opinion, going to war with the USA was almost the only way for the Confederacy to lose its independence.
You speak as if they had a choice. When the more powerful side stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars by doing nothing, it is axiomatic that they will reach for the gun.
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the behavior of Lt Porter in commanding the Powhatan leads me to believe Lincoln was going to get his war in Pensacola if he didn't manage to get it in Charleston.
Porter literally tried to attack the Confederate troops on shore the moment he arrived in Pensacola, and were it not for the deliberate efforts of Captain Meigs stopping him, (interposing his ship between the Powhatan and the forces he was positioning to attack) he *WOULD* have started the war there, and with absolutely no knowledge of the doings in Charleston.
He was under secret orders directly from Lincoln. What can we make of his efforts to attack the Confederates other than that Lincoln condoned/authorized it?
Those are very good quotes. Thanks for finding them. I will bookmark this page and try to remember them for when I might need them in the future.
No doubt they would have done, but the Southerners appear to have been wanting independence for many decades prior to the Civil War, so you could hardly call them "rash". If anything, they waited too long. They let the other side become insurmountably powerful instead of striking out when the forces against them were too weak to stop them.
The Founders didn’t forget that the didn’t write secession into the Constitution. Madison was quite clear that the Constitution didn’t allow unilateral secession at will.
While Madison's contribution to the effort was very significant, Madison was not the authority which granted the Constitution it's powers, and what he believed is irrelevant when compared to what the people ratifying the document believed.
With three states making it quite clear they believed secession was legal, (and for that matter, see Madison's quotes up above) and the other states not objecting, it is quite reasonable to believe that secession was legal under the Constitution and that nothing in it contradicted the Declaration of Independence.
In fact, you have to reach a lot to suggest there is any evidence that secession was illegal. The bulk of the evidence is on the side of legal.
The Hartford Convention rejected calls for secession.
Meaning they recognized it as a right which they chose not to exercise.
Also, was the government really that corrupt or tyrannical in 1861?
I've found indications it was corrupt far earlier, but not on the same scale it achieved in the 1860s. The 1860s appears to have been the pinnacle of crony capitalist, kickbacks, influence selling, theft, bribery and other sorts of corruption. Lincoln was highly amused at another cabinet member's characterization of Simon Cameron, "he wouldn't steal a red hot stove." And yes, Simon Cameron was very corrupt, but Lincoln's reaction tends to make you think he didn't see it as that big of a deal.
And if it was, wouldn’t the slaveowners who had controlled the government for so long bear a big share of the responsibility?
The same sort of responsibility that slaves would have for their work in making their masters wealthy.
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