Posted on 01/23/2003 6:06:25 PM PST by one2many
Here son, try reading this... Abraham Lincoln / Thomas Keneally. Publisher New York : Viking, c2003. Description 183 p. ; 20 cm
Its available at your local library. Apparently there is some intelligent life down there in the piney woods..
Central Library (Conroe) Biography Area - 2nd Floor B Lincoln New Books Shelf
Malcolm Purvis Library (Magnolia) Non- Fiction Collection - 2nd Floor Newly Acquired
R.F. Meador Library (Willis) Adult Non-Fiction Collection - 2nd Floor Newly Acquired
South Branch Library (The Woodlands) Adult Area - 2nd Floor B Lincoln Checked out 02/11/03
West Branch Library (Montgomery) Adult Non-Fiction Collection - 2nd Floor Newly Acquired
Can you provide the exact portion/clause of theConstitution acknowledging this alleged fact?
If the framers contemplated states coming and going from the union, they would have provided structure for it.
See Amendment X.
The confederacy was formed to protect and expand slavery, which is tyranny in its purest form.
I certainly disagree. The same situation existed in 1776, when the founding fathers and the several states dissolved their former relationship with Great Britain, and again in 1787 when the Constitution was drafted, which did not prohibit slavery, it expressly protected it.
Territories purchased by the federal government or ceded to it by the several states, must be held in trust for the benefit of all states, not just those desiring a lily-white west (free from ALL blacks, not just slaves). By denying the slaveholders the right to emmigrate west, they were violating the Claims Clause (Article IV, §3, Clause 2 which states, "nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State".
According to Bouvier's Law Dictionary, 6th ed., 1856, prejudice is defined as:
To decide beforehand; to lean in favor of one side of a cause for some reason or other than its justice.
Nonsense. Can you provide any documentation that the message was provided to the peace commisioners and/or Supreme Court Justice Campbell? Until then, Campbell et al had been told by a representative of the federal government and Lincoln, that THEY would be notified.
Try again.
Why would Lincoln have been under any obligation to communicate the message to either the so-called peace commission or Justice Campbell? Neither had any official standing while Governor Pickens did. Lincoln quite correctly dealt with him.
Agree. Consider the Louisiana Purchase Treaty:
The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights and advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.
There were slaves, considered property at that time, throughout the whole length of the Mississippi Valley in 1803. They didn't have liberty. The treaty would seem to give their owners the right to settle with their slave property anywhere in the Louisiana territory.
They did say in Article I Section 10 that "No State shall enter into a Treaty, Alliance or Confederation;"
and Article III Section 2 vests the Supreme court as the judicial power " to all cases in law and equity, arising under this constitution"
But what gives any confederate the right to invoke the United States constitution? Perhaps you could explain why instead of pursuing their so-called claims in the United States Supreme Court, the slave powers chose instead to fire on its flag.
"It appears, on the one hand, that the [United States] Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by the deputies elected for a special purpose; but, on the other, that this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals comprising the entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, ( PAY REAL CLOSE ATTENTION TO THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT ... WALT! ) derived from the supreme authority in each state, - the authority of the people themselves." - Federalist #39 - James Madison
Hey Yankee! Read post 172! It tells you where the Southern States' right to secede came from. Ergo ... the people that have the ultimate authority to make the Constitution, had the ultimate authority to unmake it!
James Madison at the Virginia Ratification Convention of 1788 conceded the right of secession. Answering critics of the proposed Constitution, he said "If we be dissatisfied with the national government, if we choose to renounce it, this is an additional safeguard to our defence."
"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 so much of the territory as they inhabit." Abraham Lincoln, 1848.
They have the right to try. Your side just didn't try hard enough.
The Constitution says nothing about territories held in trust for the benefit of the states. On the contrary, the part of the Constitution that you failed to quote says that "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States". Congress decides what constitutes a needful rule and there is nothing in it that requires it to consult the states first.
By denying the slaveholders the right to emmigrate west, they were violating the Claims Clause
Nonsense. If Congress refuses to allow the expansion of slavery in the territories then how does that predjudice the claims of any state? Does it affect their ability to regulate slavery in their own borders? Does it hamper the citizens of that state to own slaves or deal in them? No. It in no way impacts the interest of the state. It may impact the ability of a resident of a state to emigrate to a territory with their chattel in tow, but the Constitution doesn't require that they be able to do that.
Not to mention that his diatribes are becoming more and more eratic, and lately I have noticed a sharp increase in his use of fabricated and/or severly twisted information. Checking his sources is something more people should do. Quite often he uses snippets from things that actually say the exact opposite of what he proposes they do. For example, once he pasted a sentence out of a PRO-colonization speech of Lincoln's as "proof" that Lincoln had abandoned the idea. He does things like that all the time and doesn't get called on it. I believe that if Wlat were to enter Heaven today, he would immediately demand to know why The Almighty was sitting on Abe's throne. I wonder if he's ever read "Forced into Glory" by Bennett. That book makes DeLorenzo's look tame.
As I said before, your understanding of the case is confused. I was being polite to word it that way. You have demonstrated a complete and total lack of understanding as to what the "Prize Cases" were about and what legal decisions resulted.
The Court agreed unanimously that secession was outside the law.
That, is a lie. The only thing they unanimously agreed to was that they would not decide on secession or the legality of the war. They dealt only with the legal issue at hand, which was NOT secession. The "Prize Cases" did not result in a decision on the legality of secession. You LIE every time you say it.
If the framers thought that it was "perpetual" and that states could not withdraw, then why did some States specifically declare they could do exactly that when they ratified the Constitution and created that union?
When New York agreed to ratify the Constitution it specifically stated in it's declaration "That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness."
Virginia's declaration included these words: "the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression"
A State's right to reassume the powers it ceded to the Union were very clearly stated when that union was created. The New England states certainly didn't think it was "perpetual" or they wouldn't have come within a gnat's hair of seceding themselves a few decades after the Constitution was ratified. (more than once)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.