[Walt] What, that disunion by armed force is treason?
I made no reference to disunion by armed force. The southern states had seceded before there was any use of force.
[Walt] Why did the rebels raise an army of 100,000 when the U.S. armyy was only 17,000?
Defense.
[Walt] They knew it was treason. They just didn't care.
They did not know it was treason. They did not believe it was treason. They believed it was lawful. After the war, the government tried to make a case against Davis. It went through a series of special counsels, each of whom concluded the case would be an embarassing loser.
Had the government thought it could prove a case of treason against Davis, it might have tried to do so.
[Walt] But to speak to your point, what the Illinois State Journal did was to say plainly what the Supreme Court had said at least implicitly.
[Illinois State Journal as quoted by Walt] "South Carolina...cannot get out of this Union until she conquers this government. The revenues must and will be collected at her ports, and any resistance on her part will lead to war. At the close of that war we can tell with certainty whether she is in or out of the Union."
Exactly what court decision said anything like that, implicitly or explicitly?
Cohens v. Virginia.
"That the United States form, for many, and for most important purposes, a single nation, has not yet been denied. In war, we are one people. In making peace, we are one people. In all commercial regulations, we are one and the same people. In many other respects, the American people are one; and the government which is alone capable of controlling and managing their interests in all these respects, is the government of the Union. It is their government and in that character, they have no other. America has chosen to be, in many respects, and in many purposes, a nation; and for all these purposes, her government is complete; to all these objects it is competent.
The people have declared that in the exercise of all powers given for these objects, it is supreme. It can, then, in effecting these objects, legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory. The constitution and laws of a state, so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of of the United States are absolutely void. These states are constituent parts of the United States; they are members of one great empire--for some purposes sovereign, for some purposes subordinate."
--Chief Justice John Marshall, 1821
It's mighty cheesy to wait 40 years and then say you don't agree.
Walt
No state can get out of the Union on its own motion.
What kept the Army of the Potomac from marching into Richmond in the summer of 1862?
Walt
You can try that; how do you think it will turn out?
If you think that is the way things work, you should never pay another nickel in taxes.
Walt