If Secession Was Illegal - then How Come...?

The Patriotist ^ | 2003 | Al Benson, Jr.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Wrt the constitutionality of secession see my #360. You might also review the Madison-Hamilton correspondence during the NY constitutional convention. Lomax, Shracter, and Mitchell's bios of Hamilton also give a good summation of that question as it was faced in NY state.

[justshutupandtakeit]

"Party" line of the Arkansas schools was essentially the crap Lincoln haters here spout and based upon the same lies.
My conclusions on any matter are not the result of Illinois schools since I never studied either American history or the Civil war in them. They are, however, the result of extensive reading outside the schools. Original documents relevence to any matter depends on who wrote them your comments appear to have been based without considering that simple fact. What documents did you see which show slavery NOT to be a brutal de-humanizing tyrannic abomination?

Nothing wrong with large groups of people wanting to govern themselves but secession was illegal from the beginning of the constitution as was pointed out in 360. Should an amendment been ratified allowing secession I would have nothing to object to morally but that never happened so treasonous revolt was tried. Proper distinctions are appropriate. Revolt against the King (who was the sovereign of the colonies except for Pennsylvania) is not the same as revolt against the document the American People created to govern it. Revolt against the People's government is Treason just as revolt against Virginia's government in 1860 would have been a form of treason.

If your study is such, how can you deny the persistent and on-going activity against Black people in the South? How can you pretend that there was equal justice or equal opportunity for Blacks and Whites? How can you deny the murders, beatings, forced exiles of politically active Blacks or the ease with which Black men were railroaded to prison for "offenses" against white womanhood. The riots in Tulsa, New Orleans, Arkansas directed at murdering Blacks. Did your historical studies leave you ignorant of these things. Events which form the background of TKaM and which, without knowledge of, the book loses its relevence and appeal. You don't have to like the book and it is not one of the greatest novels ever written but it is not un-real or trite except ex-post facto.

[nolu chan]

Cohens v. Virginia brought a writ of error to the Supreme Court. It examined a point of law. The point examined was *not* secession.

[4CJ]

The judicial power of the United States lies in the Supreme Court.

Whoop te do. The states created the federal government. Not "A" state, not ALL states in unison. Not a collective hive Borg mentality. Even Justice Thomas disagrees with Marshall, and Marshall himself disagreed before ratification. The founders explicitly & emphatically rejected the asinine & ludicrous position later espoused by Marshall.

[4CJ]

And this from the court:

'That decision was made in the case of Chisholm v. Georgia, 2 Dall. 419, and created such a shock of surprise throughout the country that, at the first meeting of Congress thereafter, the Eleventh Amendment to the Constitution was almost unanimously proposed, and was in due course adopted by the legislatures of the States. This amendment, expressing the will of the ultimate sovereignty of the whole country, superior to all legislatures and all courts, actually reversed the decision of the Supreme Court.'
Justice Bradley, Hans v. Louisiana, 134 U.S. 1, (1890)

Not all states en masse had to ratify, just a portion. The states never have, and never will be a single entity.

[4CJ]

Alexander Hamilton wrote, '[t]here is no position which depends on clearer principles than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void.' And this, [t]o deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principle; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of power may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.'

[nolu chan]

Mr. Justice Grier gave a nice assessment of the legal issue:

Now, whether we assume the State of Texas to be judicially in the Union (though actually out of it) or not, it will not alter the case. The contest now is between the State of Texas and her own citizens. She seeks to annul a contract with the respondents, based on the allegation that there was no authority in Texas competent to enter into an agreement during the rebellion. Having relied upon one fiction, namely, that she is a State in the Union, she now relies upon a second one, which she wishes this court to adopt, that she was not a State at all during the five years that she was in rebellion. She now sets up the plea of insanity, and asks the court to treat all her acts made during the disease as void.

[lentulusgracchus]

It is sad to see someone that far gone isn't it? Could it be some form of Alzheimers?

I think it's Weizenheimer's.

[lentulusgracchus]

And once again we see that apparently the Supreme Court had no jurisdiction over the matter merely because lentulusgracchus said that they didn't? And that a Suprem Court decision is invalid because lentulusgracchus said it is? I must have missed the part in the Constitution that laid that out.

Argument ad hominem, times two.

Either my point is valid, or it isn't. Don't argue that my point can't be valid because I'm not good-looking enough. You abuse our fellow conversants if you do, never mind me.

The point is that the Constitution of the United States does not cover all contingencies or remove all powers from the People of the States that ratified it.

You can't demand negative evidence as an excuse to deny me my rights, or the States theirs.

As an analogy, you might argue that the First Amendment says nothing about street corners, so that I'm arrestable for speaking on one on matters displeasing to you.

The Constitution confers NO authority on the several States -- it couldn't, could it? -- to deny other States the right to resume their sovereign powers and leave the Union.

The Supreme Court was addressing matters ultra vires when it pretended to adjudicate matters involving sovereign States that had left the Union and were no longer under either the Constitution or the authority of the Supreme Court. Is that clear enough for you?

Just because the Court had a gun in its hand doesn't mean it was right. That's appeal to force: "we won the War, so we're right about Article VI issues, no matter what we say."

The Constitution and con law are not a game of Simon Says. But ever since the Civil War, they have been -- can't you feel the noose tightening?

[lentulusgracchus]

Events which form the background of TKaM ...

Abbreviation?

[lentulusgracchus]

The Supreme Court was addressing matters ultra vires when it pretended to adjudicate matters involving sovereign States that had left the Union and were no longer under either the Constitution or the authority of the Supreme Court. Is that clear enough for you?

To clarify even further, the acts of the States by which they withdrew from the Union and the Constitution's law were sovereign acts of the People, creators and authors -- masters and betters of the Constitution and the Government it created -- and therefore not reviewable by the inferior authority. That is a basic precept of the human pecking order, violated apparently only in Canada, where provincial courts review the national constitution, that inferior authorities do not review their masters. The People are the Masters of this house. Their acts as Sovereign will not be reviewed by anyone whose last name isn't Who Am.

[lentulusgracchus]

You mean there is a further corroboration of States' rights in the implications of the XI Amendment? I've apparently overlooked it. Thanks.

[joesbucks]

This is not to diminish the horrors your family endured during that time (as described in your reply #17), however what you're saying is essentially the describing the same emotions that many blacks express when they desire reparations. I know that at least from your response, you haven't asked for any. But the pain inflicted on your family has passed on from generation to generation. It appears from my distant seat that I hear the same emotion based on past family pain in their plea (besides the chance to cash in.)

[lentulusgracchus]

A "federal" state is not a "centralized" state. Marshall was explaining what the constitution of a federal state meant. His logic was irrefutable and drawn completely from the document and the Federalist.

On the contrary, Marshall described a centralized, consolidated State and Government -- he even amalgamated the People in his dicta, which is precisely the teleology that I claim he indulged in. He was on the Supreme Court and Jefferson was not: ergo, the People were to be amalgamated and their reserved Powers despised, because Marshall said so in dicta, and he wouldn't have been Chief Justice if he hadn't been right. Teleology.

I defer to our friend 4ConservativeJustices in documenting the error of amalgamation, which is essential to Lincoln's and Marshall's purposes both but denied by the documentary record of the Founding of the country and the Framing of its only relevant constitutional document.

Marshall in the ratification debate conceded the obvious, which had been written into the Treaty of Paris in 1783, that the States were several, and free, and sovereigns equal to George III himself, by his own free admission.

People = State = Sovereign. That's the unbreakable equation. And that is what Jay and Marshall later attempted to deny, insisting in dicta that People = Union = Sovereign. Not true.

[lentulusgracchus]

Americans have been consistently educated to disparage and loathe Hamilton, ....

....by his contemporaries, who knew him.

[Non-Sequitur]

Don't argue that my point can't be valid because I'm not good-looking enough.

No, I'm arguing that you point isn't valid because it is your opinion only and is backed only by your view of how you think things should be. I disagree with it, obviously. The Constitution did grant the Supreme Court jurisdiction in this matter. The manner in which the southern states chose to secede was illegal and therefore invalid. The southern states did not cease to be members of the Union so Texas had the right to bring the matter of Texas v White to the Supreme Court.

[Non-Sequitur]

Mr. Justice Grier gave a nice assessment of the legal issue...

Mr. Justice Grier's opinion was a minority one.

[4CJ]

LOL - even more remarkable was the fact that Justice Grier authored the dubious majority decision in the Prize Cases of 1863.

[4CJ]

I think it's Weizenheimer's.

Nah, that would imply that he had a brain.

[4CJ]

To the SCOTUS & the union are gods. They forget who is master of them all. The people of the US have slapped SCOTUS more than once.