Posted on 01/23/2003 6:06:25 PM PST by one2many
Some states, specifically Vermont, New York, and Virginia, did so because they were concerned that the US constitution does not provide a mechanism to allow them to withdraw unilaterally.
If state ratification declarations are the legal mechanism for secession, then the first seven states, (with no withdrawal language in their ratification declarations), withdrew illegally. Only Virginia, which withdrew later would have done so without violation of the US constitution.
Are you saying that each state entered the union under different and distinct terms as determined by their ratification declarations?
So the state(s) process of secession was set out (documented) ahead of time somewhere, correct? Otherwise how would the People know it was being done properly?
Did every state have its own procedure for doing this, or did they all follow the same set of rules?
Was any provison made for what would happen if they didn't follow the correct procedure?
After all they wouldn't want to make such changes for light or transient causes, right?
The states, as sovereign entities, created the federal government as their servant - not their master. They each seceded from the existing Articles of Confederation & Perptual Union, their right to do so stated by Madison in Federalist 43: "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. ... The time has been when it was incumbent on us all to veil the ideas which this paragraph exhibits. The scene is now changed, and with it the part which the same motives dictate."
In other words, while the right of secession was "veiled", the unwritten right still trumphed the legal requirements. Implying that one group of people cannot bind a future group by their actions (which Congress follows even today - one Congress cannot pass legislation binding another).
No. Each state followed it's own internal requirements for ratification and secession, based upon centuries of English precedent/colonial actions/state ratifications.
Did every state have its own procedure for doing this, or did they all follow the same set of rules?
See above. Some states voted for representatives in varying manners (by district, counties etc), with varying numbers necessary etc), there was no one perfect method.
Was any provison made for what would happen if they didn't follow the correct procedure?
No - there was no incorrect procedure - even if there were - they states, as parties to the compact, could have protested any dubious ratifications. The only stipulation was that ratification occurred in a convention of people from each of the several states separately. ("The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States ..."). It's not anything new to the states, as each had ratified it's own state Constitution previously.
After all they wouldn't want to make such changes for light or transient causes, right?
Who determines what is light or transient? Ask Rhode Island & Providence Plantations, which didn't even send delegates to the convention. It only took them 14 attempts before the finally ratified, and then only because they & North Carolina suffered threatened economic sanctions for failure to ratify. Either way, there is no requirement proscribed in the Constitution.
I would like to point out that those conditions were accepted, and therefore validated as correct principles. The union was not a spider's web one fell into by deceit and became trapped unto death. The acceptance of those declarations stating the right to reassumption of powers was part of the agreement.
If state ratification declarations are the legal mechanism for secession, then the first seven states, (with no withdrawal language in their ratification declarations), withdrew illegally. Only Virginia, which withdrew later would have done so without violation of the US constitution.
They are not the "legal mechanisms" for secession. The secession conventions held by each State were the legal mechanisms by which they decided whether or not to excercise their right to reassume those powers, that is, to secede. Whether or not to reassume those powers was the individual decision of each State, and one of the rights reserved unto it. The form of each State's convention was based on that State's pre-existing format for public referendums to determine the will of the people. After that, if it was determined to be the will of the people, it would be addressed to the union as a declaration, the same as when the State joined. No action was necessary on the part of the union. The ratification declarations are legal testimony to the existence of that right and it's acceptance by the framers. They are the documents that created the union. If that right existed for one, it existed for all.
Are you saying that each state entered the union under different and distinct terms as determined by their ratification declarations?
Absolutely not. That some States included that language in their ratification declarations only proves that it was an accepted idea at the formation of the union, and that States had the right to reassume those powers. If one could, they all could. If not, the framers would not have accepted and allowed those conditions to become part of the documents that created the union. It is worth noting that Vermont was not one of the original 13 and joined afterwards. Even after the original formation of the union, the right to reassume those powers was recognized.
The USS Harriet Lane.
Who organized an army of 100,000?
Both sides.
Though I have admittedly not studied that case for some time, the last being an undergrad constitutional law course, a reading of this thread indicates that there is significant doubt about this favorite assertion of yours. Accordingly, I'll yield the floor to others who have already taken you to task on the issue of the Prize Cases.
No. I'm just pointing out that an argument you attempted fails due to fallacy.
I'm not trying to split hairs, mind. Just pointing out that an claim you are attempting fails due to fallacy.
Funny how trade and tariffs were never even mentioned it in the 1860 NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY (BRECKINRIDGE) PLATFORM
That platform, written totally by the Southern States, had only 6 planks. And EVERY one of those planks was about slavery, either directly or indirectly.
Again, I ask you to use primary sourceas, not some DiLorenzo/Crown Rights propaganda. The South never called for a "Free Trade Zone" and in fact they set up protective tarrifs of their own as one of the first acts of their Congress.
Stop living the Lost Cause Myth, C-45. All the information, from primary sources, is easily available. Look it up instead of simply buying the spin of propagandists like DiLorenzo. The reality is much more facinating than any of his myth making.
The Harriet Lane (Coast Guard Cutter) fired a shot across the bow of a ship entering Charleston Harbor that flew no flag. The Lane would have fired on such a ship in 1850, 1860, 1870, or 2003. When it hoisted the Stars and Stripes, it was allowed to proceed.
You guys are really desperate for arguments if you need to cite the Lane as the first shot of the war.
Absolutely false, as Ditto points out.
"Before the ACW, the rate of Federal taxation was tiny by today's standards. The total revenues of the Federal government in 1860 amounted to a mere $56,054,000. The population of the whole US in 1860 was 33,443,321. Thus, Federal taxation per capita was less than $2 per person. Even if the 9,103,332 people in the soon-to-secede Southern states paid all of the Federal taxation in 1860 (which they did not), their per capita cost would still have been less than $7 for the entire year. From these inconsequential sums, another secessionist myth has been created and sustained for 140 years.
Be that as it may, the record shows that tariffs were an irritant, however irrational, to Southern interests up to 1846. In that year, accordingly, Federal tariffs were generally lifted in response to Southern pressures and in favor of free trade. From 1846 until early 1861, what was essentially a free trade regime existed in the whole of the USA. It was only after (and because) rebellion broke out that the US Congress passed the hated Morrill tariffs.
It is instructive to note again that the tariffs that the South protested before the ACW were actually taxes on goods and services imported into the South. In the real world, these imports included significant proportions of luxury goods such as fine British furniture and whiskey, French fashions and perfumes and Cuban rums and cigars. Most of these things were available from the North, and Northern interests wanted to protect their markets in both North and South by adding costs to their foreign competition. Likewise, the South also wanted to protect its markets in the North on products produced in the South but not the North. Accordingly, well before the ACW, southern legislators in the US Congress sought and received substantial tariffs on imports impinging on the domestic markets of Southern agricultural products.
For example, the prewar sugar growers of the deep South and the hemp growers of the upper South got protective Federal tariffs on imported products from their foreign competition.
In point of fact, the long-standing Federal sugar import tariff imposed to protect Louisiana sugar growers was extensively debated at the Montgomery Convention and, in spite the highly-touted Confederate devotion to free trade principles, was retained in the Confederacy through out the ACW. Additionally, the Confederacy placed tariffs on exports, including a duty on exported cotton. I repeat here for emphasis --- tariffs on Southern cotton exports were prohibited by the US Constitution. So much for high secessionist principles concerning tariffs! They talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk, as goes the modern formula for hypocrisy.
It is humorous to note that the prewar Federal iron import tariff, so despised by Secessionist firebrands, was continued by the Confederacy after some of the realities of fiscal and industrial policy set in. On 16 February 1861 the Provisional Confederate Congress blithely passed a bill providing for free import of railway iron. A month later, however, fiscal realities set in and an ad valorem import tax was imposed on such goods at the rate of 15% --- a rate confirmed in the Confederate Tariff Act of 21 May 1861.
For further details, see Robert C. Black's THE RAILROADS OF THE CONFEDERACY (Chapel Hill, NC: U. of NC Press, 1998)."
-- From the AOL ACW forum
As usual you are ignorant of the real events. Or you are just lying.
Walt
The USS Harriet Lane.
No, that would the rebels firing on the Star of the West In January. The Lane was fired upon on April 12-13.
Liar.
Who organized an army of 100,000?
Both sides.
Well, that is an improvement. It's only a half lie.
The rebels called for an army of 100,000 when the U.S. Army was only @ 17,000.
That the Star was fired on in January was in the timeline I provided in the note to which you responded.
You can't even be rational, let alone objective.
Walt
You can't look at the Constitution as a mere legal contract. A clause like those put into the ratification documents by states like Virginia and New York would be binding only if both sides agreed to it. But ratification wasn't a negotiation between two sides, it was the acceptance of the Constitution by the individual states. The framers weren't accepting anything, it was the states that were. Therefore, the clauses would be binding only if both sides agreed to it. Instead the clauses in the ratification document were a one-sided assumption of what was permitted under the Constitution. The Constitution was the final word on what was legal and illegal and the Supreme Court ruled that the path that Virginia chose to follow in 1861 was illegal.
I do, and I believe that had the matter been left to be peacefully settled then future cases would have clarified the court's decision. Many people believed that the court overstepped the bounds of the issue before the court. The southern side must have suspected that the decision wouldn't stand since they chose the path of rebellion.
Show that in the record. (As you are so fond of saying.)
I've posted it over and over:
"By the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare a national or foreign war. It cannot declare was against a State, or any number of States, by virtue of any clause in the Constitution. The Constitution confers on the President the whole Executive power. He is bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He is Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States. He has no power to initiate or declare a war either against a foreign nation or a domestic State. But by the Acts of Congress of February 28th, 1795, and 3d of March, 1807, he is authorized to called out the militia and use the military and naval forces of the United States in case of invasion by foreign nations, and to suppress insurrection against the government of a State or of the United States."
-- Majority ruling, The Prize Cases, December 1862 term
As to the Congress, it voted more than adequate funds to prosecute the war, and as for the people, in case you missed it, they fought the rebel armies toe to toe until the latter were defeated and the rebel armies riven by desertion.
Walt
In fact, "The South" accounted for only 25% of all Federal revenues and were a net tax drain on the rest of the Union.
This is a page from soon to be CSA Vice President Alexander Stephens speech before the Georgia secession convention in January of 1861. Stephens surely knew the budget details after all his years in the House and Senate.
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