Lysander Spooner on Lincoln's War (1870)

No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority, Chapter XIX | 1870 | Lysander Spooner

[GOPcapitalist]

Ever wonder what the abolitionists thought about Abraham Lincoln's war, its purported motive of "saving the union," and the claim that it was fought to free the slaves?

Here's what leading abolitionist philosopher Lysander Spooner had to say about it all in 1870 (highlights bolded by me)

Now, what is true in Europe, is substantially true in this country. The difference is the immaterial one, that, in this country, there is no visible, permanent head, or chief, of these robbers and murderers who call themselves "the government." That is to say, there is no ONE MAN, who calls himself the state, or even emperor, king, or sovereign; no one who claims that he and his children rule "by the Grace of God," by "Divine Right," or by special appointment from Heaven. There are only certain men, who call themselves presidents, senators, and representatives, and claim to be the authorized agents, FOR THE TIME BEING, OR FOR CERTAIN SHORT PERIODS, OF ALL "the people of the United States"; but who can show no credentials, or powers of attorney, or any other open, authentic evidence that they are so; and who notoriously are not so; but are really only the agents of a secret band of robbers and murderers, whom they themselves do not know, and have no means of knowing, individually; but who, they trust, will openly or secretly, when the crisis comes, sustain them in all their usurpations and crimes.

What is important to be noticed is, that these so-called presidents, senators, and representatives, these pretended agents of all "the people of the United States," the moment their exactions meet with any formidable resistance from any portion of "the people" themselves, are obliged, like their co-robbers and murderers in Europe, to fly at once to the lenders of blood money, for the means to sustain their power. And they borrow their money on the same principle, and for the same purpose, viz., to be expended in shooting down all those "people of the United States" -- their own constituents and principals, as they profess to call them -- who resist the robberies and enslavements which these borrowers of the money are practising upon them. And they expect to repay the loans, if at all, only from the proceeds of the future robberies, which they anticipate it will be easy for them and their successors to perpetrate through a long series of years, upon their pretended principals, if they can but shoot down now some hundreds of thousands of them, and thus strike terror into the rest.

Perhaps the facts were never made more evident, in any country on the globe, than in our own, that these soulless blood-money loan-mongers are the real rulers; that they rule from the most sordid and mercenary motives; that the ostensible government, the presidents, senators, and representatives, so called, are merely their tools; and that no ideas of, or regard for, justice or liberty had anything to do in inducing them to lend their money for the war [i.e, the Civil War]. In proof of all this, look at the following facts.

Nearly a hundred years ago we professed to have got rid of all that religious superstition, inculcated by a servile and corrupt priesthood in Europe, that rulers, so called, derived their authority directly from Heaven; and that it was consequently a religious duty on the part of the people to obey them. We professed long ago to have learned that governments could rightfully exist only by the free will, and on the voluntary support, of those who might choose to sustain them. We all professed to have known long ago, that the only legitimate objects of government were the maintenance of liberty and justice equally for all. All this we had professed for nearly a hundred years. And we professed to look with pity and contempt upon those ignorant, superstitious, and enslaved peoples of Europe, who were so easily kept in subjection by the frauds and force of priests and kings.

Notwithstanding all this, that we had learned, and known, and professed, for nearly a century, these lenders of blood money had, for a long series of years previous to the war, been the willing accomplices of the slave-holders in perverting the government from the purposes of liberty and justice, to the greatest of crimes. They had been such accomplices FOR A PURELY PECUNIARY CONSIDERATION, to wit, a control of the markets in the South; in other words, the privilege of holding the slave-holders themselves in industrial and commercial subjection to the manufacturers and merchants of the North (who afterwards furnished the money for the war). And these Northern merchants and manufacturers, these lenders of blood-money, were willing to continue to be the accomplices of the slave-holders in the future, for the same pecuniary considerations. But the slave-holders, either doubting the fidelity of their Northern allies, or feeling themselves strong enough to keep their slaves in subjection without Northern assistance, would no longer pay the price which these Northern men demanded. And it was to enforce this price in the future -- that is, to monopolize the Southern markets, to maintain their industrial and commercial control over the South -- that these Northern manufacturers and merchants lent some of the profits of their former monopolies for the war, in order to secure to themselves the same, or greater, monopolies in the future. These -- and not any love of liberty or justice -- were the motives on which the money for the war was lent by the North. In short, the North said to the slave-holders: If you will not pay us our price (give us control of your markets) for our assistance against your slaves, we will secure the same price (keep control of your markets) by helping your slaves against you, and using them as our tools for maintaining dominion over you; for the control of your markets we will have, whether the tools we use for that purpose be black or white, and be the cost, in blood and money, what it may.

On this principle, and from this motive, and not from any love of liberty, or justice, the money was lent in enormous amounts, and at enormous rates of interest. And it was only by means of these loans that the objects of the war were accomplished.
 

And now these lenders of blood-money demand their pay; and the government, so called, becomes their tool, their servile, slavish, villanous tool, to extort it from the labor of the enslaved people both of the North and South. It is to be extorted by every form of direct, and indirect, and unequal taxation. Not only the nominal debt and interest -- enormous as the latter was -- are to be paid in full; but these holders of the debt are to be paid still further -- and perhaps doubly, triply, or quadruply paid -- by such tariffs on imports as will enable our home manufacturers to realize enormous prices for their commodities; also by such monopolies in banking as will enable them to keep control of, and thus enslave and plunder, the industry and trade of the great body of the Northern people themselves. In short, the industrial and commercial slavery of the great body of the people, North and South, black and white, is the price which these lenders of blood money demand, and insist upon, and are determined to secure, in return for the money lent for the war.

This programme having been fully arranged and systematized, they put their sword into the hands of the chief murderer of the war**,  and charge him to carry their scheme into effect. And now he, speaking as their organ, says, "LET US HAVE PEACE."

The meaning of this is: Submit quietly to all the robbery and slavery we have arranged for you, and you can have "peace." But in case you resist, the same lenders of blood-money, who furnished the means to subdue the South, will furnish the means again to subdue you.

These are the terms on which alone this government, or, with few exceptions, any other, ever gives "peace" to its people.

The whole affair, on the part of those who furnished the money, has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the laborers, of both North and South. And Congress and the president are today the merest tools for these purposes. They are obliged to be, for they know that their own power, as rulers, so-called, is at an end, the moment their credit with the blood-money loan-mongers fails. They are like a bankrupt in the hands of an extortioner. They dare not say nay to any demand made upon them. And to hide at once, if possible, both their servility and crimes, they attempt to divert public attention, by crying out that they have "Abolished Slavery!" That they have "Saved the Country!" That they have "Preserved our Glorious Union!" and that, in now paying the "National Debt," as they call it (as if the people themselves, ALL OF THEM WHO ARE TO BE TAXED FOR ITS PAYMENT, had really and voluntarily joined in contracting it), they are simply "Maintaining the National Honor!"

By "maintaining the national honor," they mean simply that they themselves, open robbers and murderers, assume to be the nation, and will keep faith with those who lend them the money necessary to enable them to crush the great body of the people under their feet; and will faithfully appropriate, from the proceeds of their future robberies and murders, enough to pay all their loans, principal and interest.

The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor." Who, but such usurpers, robbers, and murderers as they, ever established slavery? Or what government, except one resting upon the sword, like the one we now have, was ever capable of maintaining slavery? And why did these men abolish slavery? Not from any love of liberty in general -- not as an act of justice to the black man himself, but only "as a war measure," and because they wanted his assistance, and that of his friends, in carrying on the war they had undertaken for maintaining and intensifying that political, commercial, and industrial slavery, to which they have subjected the great body of the people, both black and white. And yet these imposters now cry out that they have abolished the chattel slavery of the black man -- although that was not the motive of the war -- as if they thought they could thereby conceal, atone for, or justify that other slavery which they were fighting to perpetuate, and to render more rigorous and inexorable than it ever was before. There was no difference of principle -- but only of degree -- between the slavery they boast they have abolished, and the slavery they were fighting to preserve; for all restraints upon men's natural liberty, not necessary for the simple maintenance of justice, are of the nature of slavery, and differ from each other only in degree.

If their object had really been to abolish slavery, or maintain liberty or justice generally, they had only to say: All, whether white or black, who want the protection of this government, shall have it; and all who do not want it, will be left in peace, so long as they leave us in peace. Had they said this, slavery would necessarily have been abolished at once; the war would have been saved; and a thousand times nobler union than we have ever had would have been the result. It would have been a voluntary union of free men; such a union as will one day exist among all men, the world over, if the several nations, so called, shall ever get rid of the usurpers, robbers, and murderers, called governments, that now plunder, enslave, and destroy them.

Still another of the frauds of these men is, that they are now establishing, and that the war was designed to establish, "a government of consent." The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this -- that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot. This idea was the dominant one on which the war was carried on; and it is the dominant one, now that we have got what is called "peace."

Their pretenses that they have "Saved the Country," and "Preserved our Glorious Union," are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that they have subjugated, and maintained their power over, an unwilling people. This they call "Saving the Country"; as if an enslaved and subjugated people -- or as if any people kept in subjection by the sword (as it is intended that all of us shall be hereafter) -- could be said to have any country. This, too, they call "Preserving our Glorious Union"; as if there could be said to be any Union, glorious or inglorious, that was not voluntary. Or as if there could be said to be any union between masters and slaves; between those who conquer, and those who are subjugated.

All these cries of having "abolished slavery," of having "saved the country," of having "preserved the union," of establishing "a government of consent," and of "maintaining the national honor," are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats -- so transparent that they ought to deceive no one -- when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has suceeded the war, or for now compelling the people to pay the cost of the war, or for compelling anybody to support a government that he does not want.

The lesson taught by all these facts is this: As long as mankind continue to pay "national debts," so-called -- that is, so long as they are such dupes and cowards as to pay for being cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered -- so long there will be enough to lend the money for those purposes; and with that money a plenty of tools, called soldiers, can be hired to keep them in subjection. But when they refuse any longer to pay for being thus cheated, plundered, enslaved, and murdered, they will cease to have cheats, and usurpers, and robbers, and murderers and blood-money loan-mongers for masters.

**Editor's Note: Spooner's "chief murderer" reference is to Union General and then recently elected President Grant

[Servant of the Nine]

"Do What Though Will is the whole of the law"

Malarkey, boy. You try to quote a once famous Satanist and can't do it because you can't spell 'thou'. If you aren't even familiar with Spooner's book you shouldn't try to horn in on a discussion of an essay from it. Servant of nine winos under a bridge? Is that what your nick means?

Do you always start with gratuitous insults you pompous sack of bullshit?

I admit that I don't bother to spell check, but I was not quoting Crowley, but Rabelais. I think you will find that Crowley is still a famous Satanist, though dead. No one is horning in here, excepting your fluttering around your betters

I know who Lysander Spooner was, and what his positions were. Taking his theories on the invalidation of compacts seriously is pure Tin Foil territory. He and Ignatious Donelly are the two most notorious American crackpots of the period

Was the War between the States about slavery, NO.
Was Lincoln acting Constitutionally when he attacked the Confederacy, NO.
Does either of those facts make Spooner rational, NO.

So9

[lentulusgracchus]

You try to quote a once famous Satanist

Satanist? Who's the Satanist? Spooner?

[lentulusgracchus]

Today's battle is not South or North, it is between Americans and the remnants of the Communists and the rabid idiots who want to murder us in the name of some non-existant so-called god.

Good post, and good point.

What you are seeing in the constant revisitation of American Civil War subjects is the broad joining of a debate over the character of the American governmental experiment, and the attempt by academic Marxists to hijack the subject to their own purposes, in much the same way that Dalton Trumbo and the other Hollywood communists tried to hijack H'wood's message machinery to put out Marxist-Leninist themes. Good examples are most of the films Burt Lancaster appeared in, in which, if he were playing the Marxist vanguardist Good Guy, the townspeople (the Bourgeoisie) were always vilified as low-ethics, low-courage, low-virtue, and generally contemptible.

In the current conversation series, the so-called Neo-Confederates (and the other side mostly calls them that) are arguing a series of constitutionalist and sectionalist positions, against Marxist themes of "people's revolution/liberation" propagated from the top by Lincoln and the Republicans (vanguardism, again).

Where the Marxists want to go is, to validate Government as the Sovereign, and the elite Vanguard as the proprietors of the Government. They have something to work with there, because something very similar is what Lincoln had to do, in order to justify getting rid of slavery by armed force and constitutional novelties. To trump the secessionists' constitutionalist arguments, or at least to meet and dispute them for political purposes, Lincoln had to posit a competing theory of Union that redefined the Union, the People, and Sovereignty. That is the Marxists' beginning material. As someone noted in another thread, it may be very significant that Marx himself approved of Lincoln's political theory and his war, a congruence that the Marxist apologists, of course, are a little shy about advertising; but instead, they pick up Lincoln's arguments and run with them.

To complete the hat trick, they identify their own politics as neo-Lincolnian, or standing in a tradition going back to Lincoln, and use his public cult as the figurehead of their own intellectual and political assault on the sovereignty and freedom of the American People.

That's what the food-fight is all about.

[dcwusmc]

Bump to a most interesting argument. Well spoken and lucid. Thanks.

[lentulusgracchus]

Do you think he's not one? Cause practically every analysis of that movement's intellectual side identifies Spooner and Garrison as the leaders. They're about the only two who consistently make the history books as well, plus Stowe I suppose as the literary side and Brown as the violent domestic terrorist branch of the movement.

I didn't find Spooner in a Civil War almanac or in my biographical section of my 1967 dictionary. There were some other very important abolitionists linked to Stowe and Garrison:

Theodore Weld was the eminence grise of the movement. Less well known because he wrote under pseudonyms and usually spoke in smaller venues, it was he who introduced the Beechers to abolitionism. Originally a seminarian interested in temperance, he came to the abolition issue in 1830, and introduced the Beechers, who were the children of a seminary president in Cincinnati whom Weld was hired to assist in 1831/2. He was a half-generation older than they (they were in their early 20's, she was still single), and he succeeded in getting himself dismissed over his "excessive" interest in the subject of abolition -- and took half the seminary's student body with him, including a young Edwin Stanton, who went on to read law instead -- an early warning of Stanton's character in office. Weld worked for the New York Emancipator for a while, and later on at another periodical serialized Uncle Tom's Cabin for Stowe in 1851. She also owed him a literary debt, which she acknowledged publicly, having drawn on his 1839 book, American Slavery As It Is. Except for publishing Stowe and publicly backing Lincoln, Weld largely withdrew from abolitionist activities after 1844. He lived until 1895, dying at age 92.

Wendell Phillips was the original "limousine liberal", a wealthy attorney who came to the abolitionist movement in 1837 and thereafter became a professional firebrand, joining with Garrison in attacking slavery and actually publicly cursing the Constitution in 1842 in a Boston rally. He remained a red-hot who criticized Lincoln until the Emancipation Proclamation. After the war, he went on to other "progressive" causes: woman suffrage, prison reform, attacking profit capitalism. He died in 1883.

The Beechers, Thad Stevens, and Garrison, everyone knows about.

[lentulusgracchus]

Why, thank you.

[lentulusgracchus]

I'm perfectly content with ceding that he was no friend of the south and that makes his testimony here all the more amazing.

My own immediate impression is of a tinfoil tablecloth stained with the juice of the grape.

Nevertheless, in between the extreme rhetoric of a bitter, disillusioned man who has also been severely disappointed in business, his POV has a certain internal coherence, and you can trace its direct descent from Jacksonian populism, and see his fury in realizing that the value system of his youth, and the public ideal that he grew up with, was being overreached by the "age of combinations" Rockefeller talked about, and the rise of the "malefactors of great wealth". This writing is shot through with pure rage. He's screwed, his countrymen are screwed, the country and its ideals are screwed, screwed, screwed, Orville Babcock is running wild, Victoria Woodhull is talking trash about Free Love, and P.T. Barnum is getting rich showing everyone the Egress. Remember, Spooner's generation grew up with the Great Revival, the beginnings of Temperance, and the abolition movement, and here the country seems to be turning into the Neo-Babylonian Empire before his eyes. I have to sympathize with him.....but still, I don't think his white heat serves him well, outside the confines of the political revival tent. Wendell Phillips, Thad Stevens, and William Lloyd Garrison all had the same problem. Stevens had to be surrounded by volunteer "bodyguards" when he spoke in the well of the House in the 1850's.

[lentulusgracchus]

Quoth R.E. Lee; "Texans always move them."

Yes, I think he said it standing in his saddle, too, in a loud, clear voice so that they could hear it. I think that that was at Spottsylvania, in 1864.

[GOPcapitalist]

I didn't find Spooner in a Civil War almanac or in my biographical section of my 1967 dictionary.

I'm surprised he wouldn't be in a Civil War Almanac. Several of the prominent politicians of the north were citing his works in their political speeches during the late 1850's.

Here's what a brief web search pulled up on him http://www.lysanderspooner.org/

As for this particular writing, my own take is that it has some interesting parallels with what Alexis de Tocqueville had to say about secession. Tocqueville wrote years before and essentially said that when the union acts to coerce obedience of one of its own, it will have violated the principles of its founding and therefore no longer exist as the union it was created to be.

Spooner's essentially saying 5 years after the war that this happened and the nation that was there before the war is now nothing more than another European style might-makes-right state posing as a principled libertarian democracy. It's inescapably frustration-driven and downright scathing in the harshest use of language imaginable, but that's also a type of flamboyance evident in Spooner and most of his books. In the time since he's become a quasi-icon of the libertarian and anarcho-libertarian types.

[GOPcapitalist]

My own immediate impression is of a tinfoil tablecloth stained with the juice of the grape.

Angry flamboyancy can often leave that impression. But Spooner was constantly flamboyent and often angry, so it must not be taken as anything out of the ordinary for him. He had his own share of crackpot ideas running all around him, but in his movement he was both influential and widespread.

Now, abolitionism itself was never anywhere near the size most make it out to be and was thoroughly a fringe movement, though one that lots of people paid attention to closely.

I think the center of Spooner's complaint is with what happened to the movement's name after the war. He saw a bunch of disingenuous yankee politicians who had advocated segregation and bigotry all their lives suddenly rallying around their victory in the war and pretending themselves to be abolitionists that they were not then and never had been.

The politicians seized his movement as their own after the fact and started using it to justify their own continued political gains. Spooner being a "true believer" was naturally repulsed (as was Garrison from time to time in his dealings with Lincoln). So in flamboyant Lysander Spooner style, he lashed out with this essay.

Many of its points are little different from what southerners argued, Spooner enjoys a position that is unique to only a few - he was a northerner lashing out at the northern radical "mainstream" from a side opposite of the south yet for many of the same reasons as the south.

[Dajjal]

Spooner bump

[one2many]

Great post. Thanks.

[one2many]

I don't believe he ever called Jefferson Davis the "chief murderer of the war." No, he saved that title for Ulysses S. Grant.

And I believe some research into that statement would show that he meant not only Grunt's actions against Southerners but his use of his own men as cannon fodder!

P*ss on him.

[one2many]

Hey here is something for those people over at the LIARS CLUB to chew on!

Who Cares about the Civil War?

by Harry Browne

July 31, 2002

I believe an understanding of the Civil War has great relevance to the future of liberty in America.

It may be the most misunderstood of all American wars. And so much of what we lament today — government intrusions on civil liberties, unlimited taxation, corporate welfare, disregarding of the Constitution, funny money — date back to programs started during the Civil War.

Although slavery was an ever-present political issue in the early 1800s, it wasn't the immediate cause of the war. In fact, Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address vowed that he wouldn't interfere with slavery. 

He also said the North wouldn't invade the South unless necessary to collect taxes.

Before the war, the main concern about slavery was whether new states and territories would come into the Union as free states or slave states. This affected the balance of power in Congress, and both Northerners and Southerners worried that the other region might dominate Congress.

Taxes

Why then was the Civil War fought?

As with most wars, there's no single answer. But the predominant cause was taxation.

Before his election, Lincoln had promoted very high tariffs (federal taxes on foreign imports), using the receipts to build railroads, canals, roads, and other federal pork-barrel projects.

The tariffs protected Northern manufacturers from foreign competition, and were paid mostly by the non-manufacturing South, while most of the proposed boondoggles were to be built in the North. Thus the South was being forced to subsidize Northern corporate welfare.

Certainly the Southerners were concerned about the future of slavery. But there was no threat in 1861 that the federal government would be able to outlaw it. 

Secession

When Lincoln was elected, South Carolina saw a grim future ahead and seceded. Other Southern states quickly followed suit. 

Lincoln asserted that no state had a right to secede from the Union — even though several geographical regions had considered secession before. Few people thought the Union couldn't survive if some states decided to leave.

Upon seceding, the Confederates took over all federal forts and other facilities in the South, with no opposition from Lincoln. The last remaining federal facilities were Fort Pickens in Florida and Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Lincoln at first promised to let the South have Fort Sumter, but then tried to reinforce it. The South moved to confiscate it — shelling the Fort for many hours. (No one was killed or even seriously injured.)

Why was Fort Sumter important? Because it was a major tariff-collecting facility in the harbor at Charleston. So long as the Union controlled it, the South would still have to pay Lincoln's oppressive tariffs.

Although there had been only scattered Northern opposition to the secessions, the shelling of Fort Sumter (like the bombing of Pearl Harbor almost a century later) incited many Northerners to call for war against the South. The South's seizure of Fort Sumter caused many Northerners to notice that the South would no longer be subsidizing Northern manufacturing.

As the war began, the sole issue was restoration of the Union — not ending slavery. Only in 1863 did the Emancipation Proclamation go into effect, and it didn't actually free a single slave — just like so many laws today that don't perform the purpose for which they were promoted. .

The Damage

The Lincoln Presidency imposed a police state upon America — North and South. He shut down newspapers that disagreed with him, suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned civilians without trials, and went to war — all without Congressional authority.

Just as future Presidents would do, he used the war as an excuse to increase government dramatically. He rewarded his political friends with pork-barrel projects, flooded the country with paper money, established a national banking system to finance a large federal debt, and imposed the first income tax. He also destroyed the balance between the executive and Congressional branches, and between the federal government and the states.

He set in motion many precedents we suffer from today. That's why it's important to understand the Civil War for what it was, not what the mythmakers want it to be.

Alternatives

Was slavery an evil? Of course.

Is it a blessing that it ended? Of course.

Was it necessary for 140,414 people to die in order to end slavery? Definitely not. The U.S. was the only western country that ended slavery through violence — outside of Haiti (where it ended through a slave revolt). During the 19th century dozens of nations ended slavery peaceably.

What Was Lincoln?

Was Lincoln opposed to slavery? Yes, he became an abolitionist in the mid-1850s, although he said he didn't know how slavery could be ended.

Lincoln's fans have portrayed him as the Great Emancipator, Honest Abe, who with great courage and single-minded determination fought a Civil War to free the slaves. Many of his detractors have tried to show that he was actually a racist.

I think it's important to understand that, more than anything else, he was a politician. Throughout his career he shaded the truth for political advantage, he played both sides against the middle, he lied about his opponents, and he used government force to get what he wanted. Like so many politicians, he continually uttered platitudes about liberty while doing everything in his power to curtail it.

His idolaters applaud him for being a dictatorial politician, saying this was precisely what America needed in 1861. No historian believes he acted within the Constitution.

Importance of Studying the Civil War

I believe the study of the origins and conduct of the Civil War is an important part of a libertarian education.

Although the Progressive era, the New Deal, and the Great Society each caused government growth to accelerate, only the Civil War caused a complete break with the past. It transformed a federation of states into a national government. It introduced the elements of big government that later movements would build on. And it set in motion the disregard for the Constitution that's taken for granted today.

You'll also find parallels between the Civil War and today's War on Terrorism.

Lincoln and the Civil War are fascinating subjects. I've read numerous books about them, and I can highly recommend two recent books that provide an excellent introduction.

Jeffrey Hummel's book "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men" (published in 1996) and Thomas DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln" (2002) are both well-documented and very well-written. You'll find reading either of them (or both) to be an adventure, rather than a task.

Hummel's book is longer, more complete, and perhaps more balanced. DiLorenzo's is faster reading. Both are well worth their inexpensive prices.

We're fortunate that Laissez Faire Books carries an enormous assortment of pro-liberty titles, and makes it easy to order books online. (You may want to bookmark the site for easy reference.)

Hummel's book is only $14.95, and DiLorenzo's book is only $17.50. 

Happy reading!

 

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[stand watie]

TRUE!

free dixie NOW,sw

[stand watie]

YEP!

[Colt .45]

You want to know truth, here's a mouthful for you to choke on ... 'Lincoln through his secretary of state, called out the militia of twenty-four states using as authority a 1795 act of Congress that gave the president the authority to do so, providing that authority would cease thirty days after the beginning of the next session of Congress.

Under the Constitution it is the duty of the president to call the Congress into session during "extrordinary occasions." Ft. Sumter, like Pearl Harbor, was such an occasion. Why didn't Lincoln follow the commands of the Constitution and call the Congress forthwith? Why did he, on 15 April 1861, call Congress to meet almost three months later in July? And then only after he had driven the nation headlong into war? Obviously, he did not want Congress to get involved-did not want the Constitution to get involved. Lincoln was assuming all the powers of a dictator.

After calling forth the militia, within less than a week after Sumter, Lincoln ordered the blockade of Southern ports. A blockade is an act of war, requiring Congressional resolution. On April 21, he ordered the navy to buy five warships, an appropriations act requiring Congressional approval. On April 27th, he started suspending the priviledge of habeas corpus, in effect just about nullifying every civil liberty of every citizen. Soon thereafter he started shutting down newspapers that were not supportive of the war on the South. On May 3, he called for more troops, this time for three years, again a prerogative of the Congress.' - 'When In The Course of Human Events' - Charles Adams 1999

Yet you say that the South had no right to lawfully seceed. Please read what the Founding Fathers thought about rebellion!

It is a traditional American motto that: "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." That is, resistance against tyranny is a moral duty. This motto was suggested by Benjamin Franklin in mid-1776 in the Congress as being an appropriate one for the seal of the United States; and it was so truly expressive of traditional American thinking that Jefferson adopted it for use on his personal seal.

A major part of the American philosophy underlying the resistance to the tyranny of the king and parliament prior to the Declaration of Independence, and in support of that Declaration in 1776, was as follows. Public officials who exceed the limits of the powers delegated to them by the people under their fundamental law and thus violate, or endanger, the people's God-given, unalienable rights thereby and to this extent make of themselves defaulting trustees, usurpers, oppressors and tyrants. They thereby act outside of this supreme law, which defines these limits and the scope of their authority and office, and therefore act without authority from the people. By thus exceeding and violating the restrictions of law, they act outside the Law: lawlessly, as "out-laws." As Samuel Adams stated: "Let us remember, that 'if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others [Posterity] in our doom.'" (Emphasis added.) They thereby, in practice, replace Rule-by-Law with Rule-by-Man. These defaulting trustees-thus acting lawlessly-thereby free the people from any duty of obedience; because legally and morally, under Rule-by-Law, obedience by the self-governing people is required only to Law and not to law-defying public servants.

The reasoning supporting the above-quoted motto's concept of moral duty is this: Man, being given by his Creator unalienable rights which are accompanied by corresponding duties, has the moral duty - duty to God - to safeguard these rights for the benefit of self and others, including Posterity. Man is therefore obligated to oppose all violaters of these rights and to fail to do so is to defy duty to God as the giver of these rights; and such failure betrays Man's duty as the temporary trustee of Posterity's just heritage.- 'The Spirit of 1776 - Twelve Basic American Principles' by Hamilton Albert Long published 1976 (Emphasis is mine)

So as we see, the South had every right to secede and not obey the tyranny of Lincoln who had usurped his Constitutionally delegated powers.

[stainlessbanner]

Great post. I have never heard of Spooner before now - I'll have to read up on him!

[Non-Sequitur]

The problem is that actions are not illegal because you say so, nor are they unconstitutional.

Under the Constitution it is the duty of the president to call the Congress into session during "extrordinary occasions."

No, what Article II, Section 3 says is that the president may on extraordinary occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them. It does not say he is required to. But that doesn't mean anything because, as you pointed out, Lincoln did call Congress into session in the same proclamation that called out the militia to supress the rebellion. Regardless of whether it was three weeks or three months later, Lincoln was constitutionally limited to what he could do until Congress convened and he didn't cross the line.

A blockade is an act of war, requiring Congressional resolution.

Again, your definition. It was not an act of war, because one wages war against other countries, but an action for supressing the rebellion. Lincoln believed that the same legislation that allowed him to call out the militia to supress rebellion also gave him the authority to use the military for the same purpose. That is why his April proclamation limited the length of the blockade until such time as Congress had assembled and deliberated on the unlawful actions of the southern states.

On April 21, he ordered the navy to buy five warships, an appropriations act requiring Congressional approval...On May 3, he called for more troops, this time for three years, again a prerogative of the Congress.

You're both wrong on that, not surprising when dealing with Charles Adams. As Commander in Chief there is nothing in the Constitution that prevented Lincoln from ordering those ships. As Commander in Chief there was nothing preventing Lincoln from calling for 75,000 troops. There is nothing in the Constitution that says only congress can do either of those things, because the act of ordering ships and calling up men do not constitute an appropriations. Had congess declined to pay for those ships or fund those soldiers then there was nothing Lincoln could have done. And if you look at the history of the period you would find that all those soldiers were supported by states and cities and counties in the expectation that the federal government would reimburse them.

On April 27th, he started suspending the priviledge of habeas corpus, in effect just about nullifying every civil liberty of every citizen.

In the first place, Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus was limited to areas on Maryland around Baltimore so he wasn't "nullifying every civil liberty of every citizen". In the second place, the constitutionality of Lincoln's actions has never been decided, as no less authority as Chief Justice William Rehnquist pointed out in a recent book. Again, it is not illegal just because you said so.

So as we see, the South had every right to secede and not obey the tyranny of Lincoln who had usurped his Constitutionally delegated powers.

Again, the opinions of yourself and the gentlemen in question. Their opinions do not make secession legal any more than my opinion makes it illegal. The Supreme Court ruled the southern actions illegal and in violation of the Constitution and their opinions are the ones that count. But I realize that a Supreme Court decision on this subject carries no weight with you. Supreme Court decisions meand nothing to the southern leadership, either. But the court did speak, and until the Constitution is amended or the decision is overturned by a future court then unilateral secession as practiced by the southern states will remain illegal.

[Twodees]

but I was not quoting Crowley, but Rabelais.

Who is quoting Crowley if indeed he wrote that line.

I know who Lysander Spooner was, and what his positions were. Taking his theories on the invalidation of compacts seriously is pure Tin Foil territory. He and Ignatious Donelly are the two most notorious American crackpots of the period

The Constitution was indeed violated and the seceded states had the rightful power to withdraw whether or not it had been. There's nothing tinfoilish about that. As to your observation about crackpots, all the radical abolitionists were crackpots. Spooner was the least cracked of them all. One of the worst, a man who was clearly insane ,was Thaddeus Stevens. He and his fellow bedbug, Charles Sumner did massive damage by participating in exactly what Spooner describes here. A massive fraud was perpetrated on the American people. It continues to this day.

What is really irrational is denying that what Spooner describes is accurate. He was not alone in his observations. Lunt says the same things without any passionate ranting on the subject.

In the future, when you quote someone, remember to put your quote in quotation marks or italicize it and attribute the lines to the author.