Posted on 08/21/2010 7:17:45 AM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
Today, the U.S. Treasury released a $1 coin commemorating former President James Buchanan. And people aren't happy about it.
To understand why, some background is helpful. In 2007, thanks to a bill promoted by then-Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire, the Treasury began minting $1 coins with the likenesses of former Presidents, starting with George Washington.
The coins -- which have been appearing ever since, featuring a new President every three months -- are meant to improve use and circulation of America's dollar coins, which are often seen as an awkward misfit among currency, neither fish nor fowl.
Sununu's initiative drew inspiration from the 50 State Quarters Program, which launched in 1999. The runaway success of that effort, according to his legislation, "shows that a design on a U.S. circulating coin that is regularly changed... radically increases demand for the coin, rapidly pulling it through the economy."
The bill also suggested that a program wherein Presidents are featured on a succession of $1 coins, and First Spouses commemorated on gold $10 coins, could help correct a state of affairs where "many people cannot name all of the Presidents, and fewer can name the spouses, nor can many people accurately place each President in the proper time period of American history."
So the bill passed, and the Washington dollar coin appeared not long after. It was followed by Adams, Jefferson, et al., with the First Spouse coins minted alongside.
Now we're up to Buchanan, the fifteenth President, who took office in 1857 and turned things over to Abraham Lincoln in 1861, and whose coin (produced at the Philadelphia and Denver Mints and purchasable through the U.S. Mint website) has occasioned the aforementioned grousing. Here's where some feel the coin program is falling short:
1. The coins aren't circulating.
Many Americans have never gotten into the habit of using $1 coins, and as a result, over a billion commemorative Presidential coins are sitting around in a stockpile at the Federal Reserve. As BBC News reports, if these coins were stacked up and laid on their side, they'd stretch for 1,367 miles, or the distance from Chicago to New Mexico.
2. They don't seem to be educating people, either.
In February 2008, a year after the first presidential coins were minted, The New York Times reported that a survey had found large numbers of American teens to be woefully ignorant of their country's history. It was far from the first time Americans had gotten a dismal grade in history, suggesting that Sununu's commemorative-coin campaign isn't having much of an effect in that arena, either.
3. James Buchanan was kind of a crappy president.
In fairness, this is a grievance with a specific president, not the presidential coins program as a whole. Still, it seems to come up in all the coverage of the new coin: Buchanan wasn't very good at his job.
That's the consensus of historians, anyway, who have traditionally censured Buchanan for his failure to prevent the Civil War. Last year, a C-SPAN survey of historians granted Buchanan the dubious distinction of worst president ever.
Still, all of this isn't reason enough to declare the commemorative-coins program a total failure. If more coin collectors start avidly pursuing the presidential coins, it could have the effect of pushing down the national debt, thanks to the way the value of the coins fluctuates with their availability. And if the dollar coins were to catch on and replace paper $1 bills entirely, it could save the country between $500 and $700 million each year in printing costs.
Plus, if things stay on track, 2012 will see the release of the Chester A. Arthur dollar coin -- marking the first time that long non-commemorated president's face has ever appeared on any nation's currency. And who are we to deprive him of that?
Speaking for myself, if I’m celebrating “the socialist takeover of America.”, why don’t you get the Mods involved instead of just playing this stupid game?
Oh yeah, that’s right, there’s NOTHING there. Haha.
That would be correct.
The states that seceded never gave up their power to secede. As John Marshall said, "... does not a power remain till it is given away?" Nowhere in the Constitution is there any prohibition against secession. But we've been through this many times before.
Nowhere is there anything to support the idea that a state can secede unilaterally, as we've also been over many times before. Madison said that a proper secession requires the consent of the states. Nothing in the Constitution disputes that.
Where in the Constitution is the right that says Northern states could, with impunity, strip mine the Southern economy with a protective tariff that benefited Northern industrialists and provided jobs for Northern workers?
Rabid Southron yperbole aside, in Article I, Section 8: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises...but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." And they were. Consumers in the North paid the same tariff as consumers in the South and paid the same artificially inflated prices for domestic goods protected by that tariff. The South was no more impacted than the North was, and actually paid a smaller percentage of the tariff than the North did. If any economy was 'strip-mined' it was the Northern one.
Where is it said, that Northern states could sign on to a Constitution that said fugitive slaves were to be returned to their owners, then turn around and pass laws that blocked the return of those slaves? Sounds like a bait and switch.
Nowhere is it said in the Constitution that state's rights were denied non-slave states but that didn't stop Congress from passing fugitive slave laws that struck down many of the rights that the South later said they were rebelling to prevent. States could pass laws guaranteeing civil rights and due process so long as they were for whites. If they tried to do the same for escaped slaves the Supreme Court struck down those laws every time they came before them. Congress passed laws allowing the abduction of runaway slaves by anyone in any place under any circumstances. So please spare us all the 'bait and switch' nonsense. Southern slave rights were fully protected to the greatest extent that Congress and the Courts could go. At the expense of the non-slave states.
Texas had to fund its own protection from Indian and Mexican invaders despite what was in the Constitution because Northern Congressmen would rather spend the money on a pet project to study the Great Lakes. That's OK. Who cares about Texas?
Now you're just getting ridiculous. I would point out that in the 15 years of Texas statehood leading up to the rebellion, Southerners held a disproportionate level of influence in Congress as committee chairmen. Southerners were either President or Vice-President for the whole period. Southerners held the office of Secretary of War for the entire decade prior to the rebellion. If Texas had a problem getting the resources she needed to protect her own borders then it's because Southerners denied them to her.
At some point, the South was going to say, "Enough of this. We exercise our power to leave.
It took a president elected on a platform opposing the expansion of slavery for them to say 'Enough is enough' and to launch their rebellion. Not Indians. Not tariffs. Not runaway slaves. Opposition to slavery's expansion and the asinine Scott v Sanford decision.
You talking about those NE states that are full of european socialists and commies, right?
And the New Englanders didn't call it "secession," either.
That's because some of them, who considered themselves British to the core, weren't totally committed to separating from England.
They called in what it was, a rebellion.
I believe it was called a 'revolution' but, whatever....
Let me put it this way. I sense a lot more outrage from most rebs over an old lady’s broken mirror if it was broken by Sherman’s men than I sense over a dead Southern mudsill Unionist killed by a Confederate home guard.
Washington not only freed all of his slaves at his death, he had them educated, which in many Southern states was a felony.
‘That’s because some of them, who considered themselves British to the core, weren’t totally committed to separating from England.’
There were no Tory armies in New England.
If not for those NE states, y'all would still be sippin' tea, whuppin' the chattel, and toasting "God Save the King, Y'all".
I suppose that you hate Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Fast Food, etc., for what they do to us 'mudsills', too.
It's kinda interesting that you despise Southern planters for alleged atrocities against your mudsill ancestors but you but admire the yankee rabble who did far, far worse.
I think you've got issues....
As far as Lee, I respect the fact that he recognized the stupidity of secession.
But yet he fought so hard and gallantly to ensure it's success....
Too bad Virginia did not stay in the Union or it might have been Robert E. Lee burning South Carolina instead of Sherman.
Lee was an honorable man, totally unlike that rabble from the north. It is inconceivable that he would commit atrocities against noncombatants the way that your stinking heros did.
Don't believe it? Read High Tide at Gettysburg for a detailed account of the behavior that Lee expected from his troops when they were on foreign soil and compare that to your stinking yankee heros actions.
[rockrr]: Oh, I don't know...so they could avoid a bloody and ultimately futile war by doing their due diligence first?
[mac]: Out of respect for their fellow countrymen and for the US Constitution they swore to uphold. Secession may have been legally possible in 1860 but the way the Confederacy went about it wasn't.
Actually the South wanted to leave in peace with the same rights that they had when they came in the Union. As Jefferson Davis said on the floor of the Senate [Source: Congressional Globe, January 10, 1861]:
For the few days which I remain, I am willing to labor in order that catastrophe shall be as little as possible destructive to public peace and prosperity. If you desire at this last moment to avert civil war, so be it; it is better so. If you will but allow us to separate from you peaceably, since we cannot live peaceably together, to leave with the rights that we had before we were united, since we cannot enjoy them in the Union, then there are many relations which may still subsist between us, drawn from the associations of our struggles from the revolutionary era to the present day, which may be beneficial to you as well as to us. (pg 312)
...if we must leave you, we can leave you with the good will which would prefer that your prosperity should continue. If we must part, I say we can put our relations upon that basis which will give you the advantages of a favored trade with us, and still make the intercourse mutually beneficial to each other. If you will not, then it is an issue from which we will not shrink; for, between oppression and freedom, between the maintenance of right and submission to power, we will invoke the God of battles, and meet our fate, whatever it may be. (pg 310)
Is there a Senator on the other side who to-day will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the Territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases, and equally bled in their acquisition in war? Then, is this the observance of your compact? Whose fault is it if the Union be dissolved? Do you say there is one of you who controverts either of these positions? Then I ask you, do you give us justice; do we enjoy equality? If we are not equals, this is not the Union to which we were pledged; this is not the Constitution you have sworn to maintain, nor this the Government we are bound to support. (pg 311)
For a great many years the South had been fighting against unconstitutional Northern state laws that blocked the return of fugitive slaves. How much longer should they have put up with the North on this issue?
The North had just passed a tariff law that greatly increased the transfer of wealth from the South to the North. The South had been fighting tariff battles for years, and they were about to take one on the chin.
The Southern economy was based on slavery, which large numbers of Republicans wanted to end. (IMO, the end of slavery was the best thing about the old Republicans.) Thus, the Southern economy and livelihood was threatened by the Republicans if they stayed in the Union. It is not surprising to see why the South seceded, and why they would see Northern actions as oppression.
I'd say there's a difference between restraint on the one hand and indecisiveness and drift on the other, as well as a difference between firmness and saber-rattling. If Buchanan had laid out early just what his notion of the constitutional framework was, just what states and state conventions could and couldn't do in response to Lincoln's election. He could have saved the country its worst agony.
What Buchanan did -- nothing -- was worse than making even a bad, but definitive decision. If he'd said, the federal government wouldn't stand in the way of secession, or wouldn't tolerate secession, or would pursue the matter in Congress, in the courts or in a constitutional convention, it would have been better than just punting and letting the next guy figure out how to respond.
It's too easy to let Buchanan off the hook for his dithering because he was a "constitutionalist" and blame Lincoln for taking action. Lincoln had to deal with the situation Buchanan left him, and his options were limited by Buchanan's earlier inaction. In any case, constitutionalism ought to mean something more than federal or presidential inaction. It has to involve an understanding of what Washington can and must do and the ability to do it.
FWIW, it is possible that Pierce was actually a worse president. At least Buchanan wasn't entirely the author of the troubles that overwhelmed his administration. Pierce, by contrast, let Douglas and Congress open Pandora's box, with the Kansas-Nebraska Act. If he'd simply said no, perhaps the crisis could have been put off for a while longer.
All you yankees are Godless. Gutless, too, boy.
Sorry, I meant to post 249 to you as well as rockrr.
I wouldn’t be so sure about Lee. Lee did what he had to do to win the war. He couldn’t do what Sherman did because he had a huge enemy army close by to fight. He also had no wish to unite the North over what would have been an incomplete destruction. Had he been in Sherman’s place he might have done the exact same thing in SC to hasten the end of the bloodshed. Besides, I suspect Lee had no more respect for the South Carolina knucklehead secession element than any other thinking person.
It’s amazing that you’re able to channel Lee and be so dead on about what he would have done. /sarc
The murder and rape was greatly exaggerated. Where in Sherman's orders is there a sanction for murder?
Interesting.
All Yankees are godless.
now if I wanted to pick a fight, I’d say all southerners are hillbilly inbreeders or something else similarly useless, except that I KNOW most southerners aren’t.
Therefore, I’d just be making a personal attack, and we don’t want to do that here.
So I ask again, if I’m so “Godless” or such a “liberal”, get the moderators involved.
This continual garbage about the Civil War does NOTHING to advance conservatism which is what I THOUGHT this place was all about.
No, he also beat you like a rented mule. That's what pisses you off the most.
Just the mirror image of your being able to state what he would not do if he had been in Sherman's place.
ROTFLMAO!!!! I guess rounding up free blacks in Pennsylvania and shipping them South doesn't constitute 'atrocities'.
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