Posted on 11/13/2004 11:12:00 AM PST by LouAvul
And if Bush went ahead and still went to war, what would Congress do?
If they felt it to be an act of a tyrant, they would impeach him.
Bills fail all the time, many times due to wording the Congress does not like, not direct opposition to the bill's intent.
Impeachment, not refusal of bills is how Congress deals with tyranny.
Amen!
Nonsense.
I said that the States were not too happy with turning over the slaves, but the Federal gov't was enforcing the act. Gee, what happened to State rights?
I presume you mean the rights of the Northern states to do as they chose, as in not returning fugitive slaves? If so, you do not understand states rights. Why am I not surprised?
States rights concerns the rights and powers of the states not delegated or assigned to the Federal government in the Constitution, not the right to violate the Constitution or go back on their word. Northern states agreed that fugitive slaves should be returned when they ratified or accepted the Constitution.
Do you argue that under states rights Northern states were free to pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they would obey and which they would not? If so, how is it that I am for anarchy in your opinion, but you are not?
Daniel Webster made a cogent statement about this issue in 1851 when he was Secretary of State:
If the South were to violate any part of the Constitution intentionally and systematically, and persist in so doing, year after year, and no remedy could be had, would the North be any longer bound by the rest of it? And if the North were deliberately, habitually, and of fixed purpose to disregard one part of it, would the South be bound any longer to observe its other obligations? I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat, that if the Northern States refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side.
Good on ya, Daniel. This is fun, but I'm heading to bed. Will address the rest of your post tomorrow.
Not necessarily. If Bush's party controlled congress they may let it slide. Alternatively, if Bush started using his military to round up and imprison the opposition's leaders they probably wouldn't impeach him either.
Bills fail all the time, many times due to wording the Congress does not like
...and you have offered absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Congress was simply upset at the "wording" of Lincoln's bill when they killed it. Much to the contrary, the congressional record is full of stated objections to the bill's intent itself to the point that members specifically sought out assurances that other military bills did not try to slip in a habeas corpus suspension through the back door.
There's no way around it, ftD. Lincoln went to congress and used his joint address to ask congress for a habeas corpus suspension. His habeas corpus bill was then designated S. 1 as the most important piece of legislation of the session. In a clear and direct rejection of Lincoln's request, Congress killed the very same bill he explicitly and publicly pled with them to pass.
Ofcourse it is anarchy.
That is why the Articles of Confederation had to be replaced with the Constitution, the nation was falling into anarchy.
I said that the States were not too happy with turning over the slaves, but the Federal gov't was enforcing the act. Gee, what happened to State rights? I presume you mean the rights of the Northern states to do as they chose, as in not returning fugitive slaves? If so, you do not understand states rights. Why am I not surprised?
Oh, so now a human being is property that must be returned to their Southern ówners'.
And who do the Southern State righters run to, why the Feds ofcourse.
States rights concerns the rights and powers of the states not delegated or assigned to the Federal government in the Constitution, not the right to violate the Constitution or go back on their word. Northern states agreed that fugitive slaves should be returned when they ratified or accepted the Constitution.
And the South agreed to abide by the results of elections when they entered into the Consitution, but it seems they have a very subjective view of 'rights'
Do you argue that under states rights Northern states were free to pick and choose which parts of the Constitution they would obey and which they would not? If so, how is it that I am for anarchy in your opinion, but you are not?
No, I am not arguing that the Northern states had a right to break the law.
I would be against them if they chose to secede from the Union over it.
Although if they did they would have had a much stronger moral claim then the South with its crying over not being allowed to take slavery whereever it wished or the unfair tarriffs.
I am not defending States breaking the Constitution, you are.
And that is simply anarchy.
Daniel Webster made a cogent statement about this issue in 1851 when he was Secretary of State: If the South were to violate any part of the Constitution intentionally and systematically, and persist in so doing, year after year, and no remedy could be had, would the North be any longer bound by the rest of it? And if the North were deliberately, habitually, and of fixed purpose to disregard one part of it, would the South be bound any longer to observe its other obligations? I have not hesitated to say, and I repeat, that if the Northern States refuse, willfully and deliberately, to carry into effect that part of the Constitution which respects the restoration of fugitive slaves, and Congress provide no remedy, the South would no longer be bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side. Good on ya, Daniel. This is fun, but I'm heading to bed. Will address the rest of your post tomorrow.
Yea, and I agree with him.
That is why Federal troops were used against Northern states to uphold the law.
Yet, even that was not good enough for the South who were looking for an excuse to spread the cancer of slavery into the rest of North America.
You are such a phoney.
What Congressional leader did Lincoln put into prison for attempting to impeach him?
So the Republican Congress would 'let it slide' an act of tyranny?
After defeating the bill, they would let Bush go ahead and do it anyway and not lift a finger to stop him?
Bills fail all the time, many times due to wording the Congress does not like ...and you have offered absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Congress was simply upset at the "wording" of Lincoln's bill when they killed it. Much to the contrary, the congressional record is full of stated objections to the bill's intent itself to the point that members specifically sought out assurances that other military bills did not try to slip in a habeas corpus suspension through the back door.
I am sure there was opposition and yet, none of the men opposed were arrested so the bill could get passed.
Yet, the opposition was not enough to bring forth any attempts to impeach?
So, there could a vocal outcry against the bill, but when the President goes ahead and acts anyway, not a peep from Congress?
If the act was criminal, it would have been impeached or at least an attempt to impeach.
Lincoln did not attack anyone for attacking him, he attacked those who hindered the war effort.
There's no way around it, ftD. Lincoln went to congress and used his joint address to ask congress for a habeas corpus suspension. His habeas corpus bill was then designated S. 1 as the most important piece of legislation of the session. In a clear and direct rejection of Lincoln's request, Congress killed the very same bill he explicitly and publicly pled with them to pass.
And no doubt about it, Lincoln still suspended the writ as he thought necessary and the Congress did nothing to stop him with any impeachment precedings.
Now, a way to stop getting in deeper is simply to stop digging.
Lincoln had the support of Congress, many of which thought he was being too conservative.
No impeachment was ever attempted.
And it was not due to any fear of imprisonment by Lincoln.
By the way, I do not have to show the reasons why the bill was defeated.
You have to show why a man who you regard as a tyrant was allowed to run roughshod over the Congress, the same congress who still had enough independence to kill his bill.
http://www.vectorsite.net/twcw03.html#m2
3.2] THE 37TH CONGRESS CONVENES
* In fact, while Mr. Lincoln may have been hopeful that the Confederacy would fall over at the first push, he wasn't counting on it, as he made publicly clear early in July.
The first session of the 37th Congress of the United States met in Washington on Thursday, the 4th of July 1861, having been called to special session by the President after the fall of Fort Sumter. 80 days grace had been provided to the President to conduct military actions as he saw fit, and now the time was up.
Congress was no longer the place it had been with the secessionist fire-eaters gone. A newspaper editor wondered: "What will our New England brethren do without an opportunity of denouncing the peculiar institution in the presence of its devotees?" There were in fact still some Congressmen present defending State's Rights and slavery, the most prominent of them being John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, who many suspected of being a de facto agent of the Confederacy. Another was a Democratic Congressman from Ohio named Clement Laird Vallandigham, who attempted to introduce measures to send commissioners along with the Union Army in the field to receive Confederate peace overtures, and to censure President Lincoln for measures taken by the administration before Congress had met.
Vallandigham's measures went nowhere. The Southern sympathizers were a small minority. The Republicans had complete control of both houses of Congress. Of the 48 senators, 32 were Republicans, and of the 176 representatives, 106 were Republicans. The House quickly elected a pro-war speaker, Galusha Grow of Pennsylvania.
New Englanders now controlled the four powerful Senate committees that influenced war policy. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, still scarred from the murderous caning given him by Senator Brooks, was chairman of Foreign Relations, and his colleague, Henry Wilson, presided over Military Affairs. John P. Hale of New Hampshire was in charge of Naval Affairs, and William P. Fessenden of Maine led the Finance committee. These men and their associates, most prominently Senator Ben Wade of Ohio and Senator Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, were all radical Republicans, determined to punish the South and put an end to slavery once and for all. In the House, clubfooted old Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, a bitter enemy of the South and its "peculiar institution", ran the powerful Committee on Ways and Means, which exerted control on government appropriations.
* On the first day of the 37th Congress, 4 July, President Lincoln addressed the body in a joint session. The president listed the actions he had taken on his own authority: he had called up the militia; declared a blockade of the Confederacy; increased the regular military forces; suspended the writ habeas corpus; and committed the government to great expenditures. All this had been done without Congressional approval, and Lincoln needed that approval to proceed further.
He justified his actions by citing recent events: secession; seizure of Federal property; attacks on Fort Sumter, Harper's Ferry, and Norfolk; and the creation of an "insurrectionary government"; all events intended to destroy Federal authority. Lincoln expressed his intent to deal with the rebel government, as well as to recognize the new Unionist state government in western Virginia as the legitimate authority for that state. He denied the right of secession, and denied that the border states had a right to be neutral. This, he said, was "treason in effect". This last remark clearly meant Kentucky. Lincoln was not being as cautious as he had been, since Congressional elections in that state on June 30 had revealed overwhelming Unionist support among the voters.
Then the president dropped his bombshell: he requested 400,000 soldiers and $400,000,000 in funds to prosecute the conflict. Lincoln clearly expected a hard war. Finally, Lincoln expressed his hope that the Unionist majorities he believed, against all evidence, were lying quietly in the South would assert themselves, and spoke his belief that the Union could be reconstructed into an order directed by the Constitution and no different than that which existed before hostilities.
Reconciliation was unlikely. The mood of Congress was for war. The body did pass by an overwhelming majority a resolution proposed by Senator Andrew Johnson, a tough east Tennessee Unionist who had stayed in the Senate even though his state had left the Union. Johnson's resolution stated that the war had been forced by Southern secessionists, and that the Federal government would prosecute the war simply to restore the Union and uphold the Constitution. The resolution stated there was no intent to either subjugate the South or to interfere with slavery.
However, Congress still supported the drastic steps Lincoln had taken, voting him the resources he required, and resolutions providing reassurances to the South were meaningless in the face of measures taken towards making war on it. Southern sympathizers in and out of Congress were hobbled by the unilateral actions of the secessionists. The polarization was irreversible.
Despite the weakness of the pro-Southern antiwar faction, the dominance of the Republicans, and the hot rhetoric of the pro-war radicals, a bill to allow the government to seize the property of rebels led to intense dispute. At issue was one section in the bill that stated that slaves used in the Confederate war effort should be declared free. The border-state Congressmen protested angrily, calling this measure unconstitutional and a de facto proclamation of general emancipation in the rebel states. Republicans replied that it was simply a practical measure against rebels themselves, a formal endorsement of Ben Butler's policy concerning contrabands. The radicals used the opportunity to blast their opponents, Thaddeus Stevens angrily responding:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Who pleads the Constitution against our proposed action? Who says the Constitution must come in, in bar of our action? It is the advocates of rebels, of rebels who have sought to overthrow the Constitution and trample it in the dust ... I deny that they have any right to invoke this Constitution ... I deny that they can be permitted to come here and tell us we must be loyal to the Constitution.
END QUOTE
The measure was adopted.
Lincoln had a man hung for it.
The big difference between New England and the South was that the those who sold the slaves never tried to pretend that it was moral.
I hope you don't mind me asking, but how, exactly, can you determine those are "slave ships" in "New York docks"?
Likewise in its own Confederate Constitution it did also.
So, how can selling something be immoral, yet not immoral to own it?
Lincoln stated that no one holds the seller of pigs or horses in contempt, but the slaver is held in contempt by the Southerners as well as the Northerners.
So, Lincoln reasoned, slavery was an evil that had entangled the South and which the South had to find a way out of.
Instead her leaders sought to make it a virtue and a right to be defended even to the point of destroying the United States itself.
And to defend this insanity they marshall economic, legal, and political arguments to cast smoke over the real reason for the Souths secession- slavery.
I see you got your picture from here:
http://www.melfisher.org/lastslaveships/slaveships.htm
I find it odd that most of the ships shown have a clipper stem (at least in the foreground), and yet clipper ships did not become common until after the slave trade had been outlawed.
Which was illegal in every state of the Union.
The article cites three ships (Wildfire, Bogota, William), one of which was apparently French, and another owned by a fellow in Baltimore. These (new) owners participated in the illegal slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean.
I didn't prove your point at all. Next time read the article first and please give the link - although it wasn't too hard to find.
What they were doing was illegal in New England.
The American Revolution put an end to the economic viability of the slave trade by preventing the importation of slaves. By 1790, all New England states had abolished the slave trade.
Did New England attempt to secede to defend the slave trade?
What a defense!
It was illegal for any American to participate in the slaver trade after the early 1800's. It was considered something akin to piracy.
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