Posted on 01/23/2003 6:06:25 PM PST by one2many
Those that are still part of the union.
Wishful thinking.
No state, as the war showed, has been out the Union even for a single day.
Walt
Wlat: I'm paraphrasing Madison. You don't know the history.
LOL - Here's your original statement:
"There were no illusions in 1788-90 as to the permanence of Union under law".
I proved that lie for what it was, so you then modified your position with:
"The assumption at all the ratification conventions was that the Constitution was both binding and perpetual except for intolerable abuse."
Which leads us back to the top of this post for my response. The only thing you were doing was being proven ignorant of history. BTW, as I have already shown, your modified statement is just as false as your first. As to "intolerable abuse", that is not the condition stated in the declarations. For example, New York merely said the powers could be reassumed "whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness". That condition was accepted by the framers.
You don't know the history.
That is nonsense.
The Supreme Court said otherwise.
"All persons residing within this territory whose property may be used to increase the revenues of the hostile power are, in this contest, liable to be treated as enemies, though not foreigners. They have cast off their allegiance and made war on their Government, and are none the less enemies because they are traitors."
Walt
The Supreme Court has been known to utter nonsense; admittedly they don't do so as consistently as you do.
Sure. You people distort, pervert, rape, and malign history using 'the union' as your excuse and disguise. You are not 'unionists', you are subversive agents attempting to replace the historical union with a "new" union that is nothing more than twisted creation of your diabolical revisionism. You are "neo-unionists".
But not Madison.
And none of these state ratifying conventions even suggests that U.S. law applies.
Funny that the New Yorkers mention happiness, for it is the pursuit of happiness that Jefferson refers to in the D of I.
And the D of I was absolutely an appeal to natural rights. And none of these states says that anything but natural or God given rights are involved in reassuming their power. Even the newspaper article you wrongly put forward alludes to natural rights.
Walt
From the United State Constitution
Article III, Section 3:
"Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
"Attempts at unilateral state secession" don't qualify.
Sure.
That's right.
"Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."
But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity."
A. Lincoln, 3/4/61
Whatever else it is, it's not revision.
Walt
You should read the debates in the congressional record following the war, the ones regarding exactly what terms would be required for the re-entry of the Southern States. Johnson's intendedd leniency in regards to that matter was one of the reasons he was impeached. Congress certainly didn't agree with you. In fact, ratifying certain amendments to the constitution were prerequisites for re-admission at the time the votes were done. The Southern States during the war certainly would not agree with you, and neither would many (oftentimes most) northerners during and just after the war. The States that had to apply for re-admission obviously wouldn't agree with you.
On the contrary, there is a third choice - the decision is valid and the Union is unbroken. That is the one I chose.
"The Supreme Court In the Prize Cases held, by happily a unanimous opinion, that acts of the States, whether secession ordinances, or in whatever form cast, could not be brought into the cases, as justifications for the war, and had no legal effect on the character of the war, or on the political status of territory or persons or property, and that the line of enemy's territory was a question of fact, depending upon the line of bayonets of an actual war.
The rule in the Prize Causes has been steadily followed in the Supreme Court since, and in the Circuit Courts, without an intimation of a doubt. That the law making and executive departments have treated this secession and war as treason, is matter of history, as well as is the action of the people in the highest sanction of war. It cannot be doubted that the Circuit Court at the trial will instruct the jury, in conformity with these decisions, that the late attempt to establish and sustain by war an independent empire within the United States was treason."
-- Richard Henry Dana, U.S. attorney, 1868.
Walt
"Attempts at unilateral state secession are treason."
Your quote in your post #311, in its characterization of "treason", consistently includes reference to "war", so it does nothing to support your original statement.
So now you apparently believe they were never in the union to begin with, since those documents (and the stated conditions within) are what made them part of it.
You really are trying make the entire union void as a fraudulent agreement. No longer satisfied with merely calling the Constitution a "pact with the devil", it seems.
Sorry to disappoint you, but that was a sarcastic "sure".
The issue was whether or not to seat congressmen from the rebel states, not whether or not they had ever been out of the Union.
A part of Lincoln's last public address in 4/11/65 that might need more scrutiny is this:
"We all agree that the seceded States, so called, are out of their proper relation with the Union; and that the sole object of the government, civil and military, in regard to those States is to again get them into that proper practical relation. I believe it is not only possible, but in fact, easier to do this, without deciding, or even considering, whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than with it. Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these States and the Union; and each forever after, innocently indulge his own opinion whether, in doing the acts, he brought the States from without, into the Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of it."
Of course Lincoln always maintained from the very start of the war that the rebel states were -not- out the Union at all.
He might have foreseen the bitter wrangling that was going to befall the country after a cessation of hostilities. But we'll never know that.
Walt
Then you are either ignorant of basic legal principles or you simply don't care.
I will agree with you that Lincoln's personal opinion was that they never left. However, he was not Congress. Congress made the States reapply, and imposed conditions for their re-admission such as ratifying the Constitutional amendments and including certain things in their State Constitutions, etc.
Its been argued here that Amendment X of the US consitution is the legal mechanism for secession. Do you disagree?
I'm afraid I lost you.
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