If you honestly believed that the “Supreme Court -is- the final arbiter of the law in this country,” I had assumed you would respect their rulings – and your comments regarding Dredd Scott were hardly respectful. On the other hand, perhaps you’re like a serf living under an absolute monarchy, dictatorship, or judicial junta: you believe your masters possess a completely legitimate and unbounded authority to issue any command whatsoever, but you whine and complain about their “rulings” anyway.
;>)
You don't like their rulings on ACW issues, hence your blue smoke and mirrors.
LOL! It is your argument, not mine, that is completely dependent on court “opinions.” By way of contrast, I consider ‘the Constitution supreme over the court,’ not ‘the court supreme over the Constitution.’ Therefore, “their rulings on ACW issues” are completely irrelevant, insofar as they are unsupported by the Constitution. And the Constitution nowhere prohibits secession.
Moreover, the ratification documents of the States, the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of Jefferson and Madison, Madison’s Report on the Virginia Resolutions, Jefferson’s Declaration of 1825, and numerous other official public documents from the early days of the Republic (all of which you apparently consider “blue smoke and mirrors” ;>) make clear that the States, not the federal courts, have the final say in constitutional matters...
I keep the text I need handy. Why don't you?
What did the seceding states say publicly was the reason for their secession?
Allow me to correct you: you keep carefully selected texts handy. You cite carefully selected portions from five carefully selected texts. (Gosh, Walt – I thought there were more than five States in the Confederacy! Were there really only five?) Let’s take a look at a few you omitted:
AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union now existing between the State of Arkansas and the other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America."
Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:
Therefore we, the people of the State of Arkansas, in convention assembled, do hereby declare and ordain...[that] the union now subsisting between the State of Arkansas and the other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby forever dissolved.
And another:
An act declaring the political ties heretofore existing between the State of Missouri and the United States of America dissolved.
Whereas the Government of the United States, in the possession and under the control of a sectional party, has wantonly violated the compact originally made between said Government and the State of Missouri, by invading with hostile armies the soil of the State, attacking and making prisoners the militia while legally assembled under the State laws, forcibly occupying the State capitol, and attempting through the instrumentality of domestic traitors to usurp the State government, seizing and destroying private property, and murdering with fiendish malignity peaceable citizens, men, women, and children, together with other acts of atrocity, indicating a deep-settled hostility toward the people of Missouri and their institutions; and
Whereas the present Administration of the Government of the United States has utterly ignored the Constitution, subverted the Government as constructed and intended by its makers, and established a despotic and arbitrary power instead thereof: Now, therefore,
Be it enacted by the general assembly of the State of Missouri, That all political ties of every character new existing between the Government of the United States of America and the people and government of the State of Missouri are hereby dissolved...
And another:
Whereas, the Federal Constitution, which created the Government of the United States, was declared by the framers thereof to be the supreme law of the land, and was intended to limit and did expressly limit the powers of said Government to certain general specified purposes, and did expressly reserve to the States and people all other powers whatever, and the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatics, and because we now seek to hold our liberties, our property, our homes, and our families under the protection of the reserved powers of the States, have blockaded our ports, invaded our soil, and waged war upon our people for the purpose of subjugating us to their will; and
Whereas, our honor and our duty to posterity demand that we shall not relinquish our own liberty and shall not abandon the right of our descendants and the world to the inestimable blessings of constitutional government:
Therefore,
Be it ordained, That we do hereby forever sever our connection with the Government of the United States, and in the name of the people we do hereby declare Kentucky to be a free and independent State...
And of course you neglected to mention this little gem:
Resolved by the General Assembly of Virginia, That the Union being formed by the assent of the sovereign States respectively, and being consistent only with freedom and the republican institutions guaranteed to each, cannot and ought not to be maintained by force.
That the government of the Union has no power to declare or make war against any of the States which have been its constituent members.
Resolved, That when any one or more of the States has determined, or shall determine, under existing circumstances, to withdraw from the Union, we are unalterably opposed to any attempt on the part of the federal government to coerce the same into reunion or submission, and that we will resist the same by all the means in our power.
[Acts of Virginia, 1861, 337.]
Ten days after the passage of the above quoted resolution by the Virginia legislature, "the people of Tennessee” declared that they would “as one man resist such invasion of the soil of the South at any hazard and to the last extremity." (Acts of Tenn., 1861, 46.) One author also notes that “Texas, Feb. 1, and Missouri, Feb. 21, declared that if coercion was attempted they would make common cause with ‘their southern brethren’ in resisting ‘such unconstitutional violence and tyrannical usurpation of power.’ (Texas, copy in Va. Docs., 1861, No. 33, p. 7; Laws of Mo., 1860-61, 773.) Kentucky also condemned coercion as ‘tending to the destruction of our common country.’ (Acts of Ky., 1861, 49.)”
“What did the seceding states say publicly was the reason for their secession,” you ask? Gosh, friend Walt – it looks like several specifically cited the use of federal military force to coerce the States! The references are everywhere! How on earth did you ever miss them?
;>)
You can say the cause wasn't slavery until the cows come home. It doesn't mean a thing.
I can quite safely say, with ample documentation to prove the point beyond any shadow of a doubt, that “the Civil War” did NOT have “one and only one cause --- S-L-A-V-E-R-Y.” But then, I look at the actual historical record, not just the carefully selected sources you prefer...
Enjoy!
;>)