April 14, 1865 President Lincoln Shot

At Ford's Theater in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally wounds President Abraham Lincoln. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War.

Booth, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces. In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy.

Learning that Lincoln was to attend Laura Keene's acclaimed performance in Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater on April 14, Booth plotted the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson, and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his conspirators hoped to throw the U.S. government into a paralyzing disarray.

On the evening of April 14, conspirator Lewis T. Powell burst into Secretary of State Seward's home, seriously wounding him and three others, while George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Vice President Johnson, lost his nerve and fled. Meanwhile, just after 10 p.m., Booth entered Lincoln's private theater box unnoticed, and shot the president with a single bullet in the back of his head. Slashing an army officer who rushed at him, Booth jumped to the stage and shouted "Sic semper tyrannis! [Thus always to tyrants]--the South is avenged!" Although Booth had broken his left leg jumping from Lincoln's box, he succeeded in escaping Washington.

The president, mortally wounded, was carried to a cheap lodging house opposite Ford's Theater. About 7:22 a.m. the next morning, he died--the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Booth, pursued by the army and secret service forces, was finally cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and died from a possibly self-inflicted bullet wound as the barn was burned to the ground. Of the eight other persons eventually charged with the conspiracy, four were hanged and four were jailed.

And unilateral secession as practiced by the confederates was not Constitutional.

Where does secession contravene the Constitution? In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what "the people" meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, "not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong." In Federalist Paper 45, Madison guaranteed: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."

The State's power to secede is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution does not forbid the State's the power to secede. In fact, the Constitution was specifically amended via the Bill of Rights to ensure "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." (9th amendment) "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." (10th amendment)

Now tell me where the Constitution forbids the people the right expressed in the Declaration of Independence to form political bonds of their choosing.

I would prefer 50 Republics tied together in mutual defense and free trade to one consolidated democracy where effort to curry political favor feeds an endless expanse of socialism

You ignore the much more likely scenario of 50 republics doing an imitation of the Italian states during the Renaissance or the European nations of the 17th and 18th centuries.

You left out the third choice. They can go their seperate ways.

The problem is that the entire point at issue was whether the people of the southern states constituted a separate "people" with the right to secede as stated by the D of I. Surely you will agree that not any random group of people constitute a "people" with the right to withdraw from the government. Carried to its logical conclusion, this would mean that any two people have the right to reject their governments authority and rebel against it, as they decided that the two of them constitute a "people." Therefore, the two of us probably agree that any random two persons are not a "people," but that the American colonists were.

Most southerners believed they were a "people." Unionists, most of whom lived in the North or border states, strongly disagreed, believing that the people of all the United States constituted a single "people." There really was no way to settle this particular disagreement without violence.

You ignore the much more likely scenario of 50 republics doing an imitation of the Italian states during the Renaissance or the European nations of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Why in your opinion is it likely that the States of a Confederacy instituted for free trade and mutual defense on the principles of Republican government constitute a threat akin to hereditary despotisms? Your putting the two in a sentence together is not an argument. Why do you consider Republics hostile to peace? It would seem, given the countless foreign nations we've marched troops to since the Civil War, that our consolidated democracy in Washington, D.C. is the biggest threat our States have to peace.

You're right, I don't. I accept Madison's definition of 'the people' with respect to the power granted to the Union and reserved to the States and 'the people'. In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what "the people" meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, "not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong." In Federalist Paper 45, Madison guaranteed: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."

Now tell me where the Constitution forbids the people the right expressed in the Declaration of Independence to form political bonds of their choosing.

Unionists, most of whom lived in the North or border states, strongly disagreed, believing that the people of all the United States constituted a single "people." There really was no way to settle this particular disagreement without violence.

Correction, there was no way for the 'Unionists' to exercise their tyranny on the South and establish a limitless, consolidated government without invasion and violence. When the 'Unionists' stacked the dead hundreds of thousands high they had to find something worth the price, their quest for power over their countrymen certainly wasn't justification, even if it had been their reason.

You really need to read Federalist #39. The Constitution was not intended to create a 'national' government, and Madison made them very clear:

"But it was not sufficient," say the adversaries of the proposed Constitution, "for the convention to adhere to the republican form. They ought, with equal care, to have preserved the federal form, which regards the Union as a Confederacy of sovereign states; instead of which, they have framed a national government, which regards the Union as a consolidation of the States." And it is asked by what authority this bold and radical innovation was undertaken? The handle which has been made of this objection requires that it should be examined with some precision.

Without inquiring into the accuracy of the distinction on which the objection is founded, it will be necessary to a just estimate of its force, first, to ascertain the real character of the government in question; secondly, to inquire how far the convention were authorized to propose such a government; and thirdly, how far the duty they owed to their country could supply any defect of regular authority.

First. In order to ascertain the real character of the government, it may be considered in relation to the foundation on which it is to be established; to the sources from which its ordinary powers are to be drawn; to the operation of those powers; to the extent of them; and to the authority by which future changes in the government are to be introduced.

On examining the first relation, it appears, on one hand, that the Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; but, on the other, that this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one 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, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a national, but a federal act.

That it will be a federal and not a national act, as these terms are understood by the objectors; the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules have been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a federal, and not a national constitution.

Sure. People of the states separately ratified. But not the people en masse, not one gigantic amalgamation ot the people in ONE convention. Not a consolidated democracy, but a republic of republics.

As I pointed out to him, by quoting yet again that section of Madison's Philadelphia Convention notes in which ratification was discussed and voted on, which you kindly pointed out to me last year or the year before and have repeated yet again after I posted it, Gouverneur Morris actually moved the question, that the Constitution be submitted to a mass convention of the massed States, confounding the People in just the way Non-Sequitur insists that they were, and the motion didn't even receive a second.

[Non-Sequitur]

#428 What I am agreeing with Washington on is that it was the People of the United States that rarified the Constitution. And it is the people of the United States, not the people of Virginia or South Carolina or Pennsylvania that the government is accountable to.

#350 So it WAS the People of the United States , that lumpenprolitariat that you have such contempt for, that ratified the Constitution and not your precious states.

#431 No. The people of the United States ratified it. Call it an amalgamation or lumpenproliteriat or whatever you want. The people spoke in the role as citizens of the United States.

Your Marshall quote in #431 supports us, not you. Between the transactions of the Philadelphia Convention, the manner of the ratification of the Constitution, and the quotation from John Marshall, it is only possible to conclude, Non-Sequitur, that you are

CONFUTED!

Where does secession contravene the Constitution?

Secession per se may not. Unilateral secession as practiced by the southern states does.

The State's power to secede is spelled out in the Declaration of Independence.

The Declarattion of Independence does not found the basis for our laws, the Constitution does.

The Constitution does not forbid the State's the power to secede. In fact, the Constitution was specifically amended via the Bill of Rights to ensure "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." (9th amendment) "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." (10th amendment)

The Constitution also requires Congressional approval for the admission of a state or any subsequent change in it's status. Implict in this is Congressional approval to leave the Union altogether.

Now tell me where the Constitution forbids the people the right expressed in the Declaration of Independence to form political bonds of their choosing.

Where to begin? Can the people of the states for a government of their own choosing? No, Congress will tell them what kind of government they may have. Can they form political bonds with other states? No. Can they form alliances with foreign nations? No. The Constitution places a lot of restrictions on the political bonds that they can form.

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