Posted on 06/12/2003 5:58:28 AM PDT by Aurelius
I've read about the struggle between Hamilton and Gov. DeWitt Clinton and the Antifederalists, too, and about the bareknuckle politics -- including a very serious threat of secession -- that Jay and Hamilton and their allies used to browbeat upstate New York Antifederalists into voting for ratification. In fact, that threat of secession was the major factor behind New York's ratification, in the views of most of the people who were following New York's convention, including George Mason and, in Canada, Lord Dorchester, who received his intelligence from American correspondents: and John Jay mentioned it in letters to George Washington.
Madison may have counseled Hamilton that, in Madison's opinion, ratification should be a threshold event, a single liminal event that would bind all the ratifiers and their progeny for all time. But by the terms of the document itself, whose drafting the Antifederalists had influenced as well, there is no such language and no such provision in the Constitution, and the provision instead for amendment gives Madison the lie. Therefore, ratification of the Constitution was not a threshold, but rather a "perpetual" and concurrent event, in the Lockean sense (though Locke himself uses slightly different language), that requires the continuing consent of the People, generation after generation, for its currency and validity.
If you assert that ratification of the Constitution meant that it could never be unratified by the same States that ratified it, you must point to the language in the Constitution that says so. You can't. It isn't there.
Madison may have intended, and Hamilton too, that ratification and membership in the Union be carved in stone. They forgot to include the language in the document, however, if that was their intention.
Jackson Turner Main, in his history of the Antifederalists, wrote of the Federalists' intentions with regard to the national Union,
A fundamental conviction of nearly all Antifederalists was that the Constitution established a national, not a federal, government, a consolidation of previously independent states into one, a transfer of sovereignty in which the states, once sovereign, would retain but a shadow of their former power. Whether this was actually the case is, of course, still warmly debated, too frequently with reference to what the Constitution has become [i.e., teleology], or what the debaters wish it were. The Federalists met this attack by an attempt to deny the accusation in public, but it seems from their private statements that they intended to create a national government, although prevailing opinion obliged them to compromise. The records of the debates in the Philadelphia Convention are convincing evidence of this intention; the real convictions of the Federalist delegates can also be discovered in letters and journals.-- Jackson Turner Main, The Antifederalists: Critics of the Constitution -- 1781-1788, p. 120 [emphasis added]
That was what the Federalists intended, and, even though they lied their faces off, they didn't get it. The Antifederalists insisted on, and got, Amendments IX and X, which amended and changed forever the real meaning of the Constitution, and nullified the mischievous intentions of the Federalists who deliberately wrote the opening words of the Preamble, "We the People...."
The Federalists tried for the amalgamation you refer to.....but the Antifederalists smelled them out, and they failed.
That's why John Jay handed down Federalist fiction from the Supreme Court bench: he was trying to crib one back. It doesn't matter. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments break his teeth: he couldn't repeal them by dicta, and neither could Marshall.
Oh, really? I'm from Missouri: show me.
Cite and quote the Constitution giving the Supreme Court the authority to deny the People their sovereignty.
Show me, in the Constitution, the instrument by which the People conveyed the last of their sovereignty to the Supreme Court, or to the United States, or agreed to amalgamation. Go ahead.
Not at all. But then, why don't you tell me what you think would have been a procedurally adequate method for the Southern States to have dissolved their bonds to the Union?
When Texas and all the other states joined the Union they agreed to abide by the Constitution. And the Constitution gave the court jurisdiction in the matter as per Article IV, Section 2, Clause 2: "In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction."
I think that the Constitution provides a guideline for that. The most logical method for states leaving the Union would be the same manner in which states joined the Union, through a majority vote in both houses of Congress.
I'm really glad you brought this up. Gives me something to think about. I do some historic preservation work with a group that seeks to preserve an historic slave cabin and also does research on the Underground Railroad as it appears in our area; next week I will be portraying an abolitionist lady at a reenactment at that cabin. Your remarks will give me some additional insight, and I thank you for them.
Then why doesn't it say 'In all Civil proceedings..."? It says in all cases, civil, criminal, whatever.
Besides, Texas v White was a civil case.
It did declare unilateral secession as practiced by the southern states to be illegal. No supposedly to it.
Gee, they're all Yankees, with the exception of Field from California. Kind of makes you wonder, eh?
And that's all the evidence you have? An entirely Yankee court, but a 5 to 3 decision. So what was it? Did Justice Grier, Justice Miller, and Justice Swayne have a rebel in their woodpiles somewhere? And BTW, California remained in the Union, it WAS a Yankee state.
You know that is not true.
See Martin v. Hunter's Lessee and McCullough v. Maryland.
The sovereigns of the country are the people, not the states.
And you know that.
Walt
Yeah, the whole spectrum of jurisprudence, from A to E.
And California was a Unionist and freesoiler state; they just didn't participate much in the War because of physical remoteness, though there were one or two deep-raiding incidents mounted by the Confederates (one into Arizona) that might have involved California garrisons.
Some States were recognized and joined the Union under Article IV, as you say, through admission by Congress, but the original 13 are, it seems to me, the acid test: they came in under Article VII, by conventions of the People assembled.
We obviously are NOT going to agree about the nature of the People. You, fully realizing what is at stake polemically, will never agree that the People are the States are the Sovereigns. This is dishonest, and IMHO, a loser's scheming. You want the Government to be sovereign "for" you......which works as long as the side you favor has working majorities in the Congress, and as long as the Executive and the Judiciary are still listening to the Congress, which is nowadays a debatable proposition.
You've decided to stand with Lincoln on his fictions, and take your chances that his successors will be nice to you. Good luck -- but meanwhile, you are threatening by your supinity before Hamiltonian duckspeakers to ruin all our freedoms. So I hope you'll understand why I'll be staying mad at you. Unions can't maintain a living wage if members break ranks and knuckle under, and dealing with tyrants is just like dealing with gold-plated SOBs -- and for exactly the same reasons. The servility of a few condemns all the rest. Hope you're happy -- not.
They're talking about causes at law, not Sovereignty.
Most states joined the Union under Article IV not some. And the original 13 ratified the Constitution and agreed to abide by its provisions.
So I hope you'll understand why I'll be staying mad at you.
I'll just have to learn to live with the disappointment, I guess.
Now let's make friends among the other Sunbelters, and go get our government back. Out with the Neocons and other East Coasters!
If it was me, I'd call Newt out of retirement and send him up to Congress with orders to make the New Englanders howl, and the New Yorkers wish they could join Canada so they could hide from us. I'd show those hot-stove-stealing Yankees what the ass-end of a Hamiltonian government really looks like!
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