Might makes right? Appeals to force do not decide the LEGALITY of the issue - which is what Grier wrote in the Prize Cases. If might made right, men in white coats dragging you off to an asylum would make it justified and legal? 623,000 men were slaughtered to preserve a union that wan't destroyed when the states seceded. Waging a war on innocent men, women and children - black and white - raping, looting, destroying crops and homes, blockading your own ports, refusing to exchange prisioners and intentionally refusing to abide by the established rules of war, and subjecting innocents to starvation are not acts of friendship. They are the hallmarks of a dictator.
I think it's more a taunt than an actual appeal to anything. Had enough of this clown yet? I sent him back to pulling wings off flies a while ago.
Might makes right?
Their considered opinion.
You're trying to suggest something I bet you don't believe. You are trying to belittle what I say not because it has no merit, but because it doesn't fit with your agenda. The loyal Union men saw Jay's words, and Madison's words, and Washington's words, and this is a magnificent expresssion of why they fought:
"And this issue embraces more than the fact of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy--a government of the people, by the same people--can or cannot, maintain its territorial integtrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration, according to organic law, in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: "Is there in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness?" "Must a government, of neccessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existance?"
A. Lincoln, 7/4/61
The loyal Union men weren't going to allow the rebels to trample the principles of freee government. It took force. You're pathetic. It took a hell of a lot of force to allow you to sit in your den or computer room or whatever so you could say might shouldn't make right unless you like it.
But you should like it. You should thank God that you get to live in this country and you should thank God for the men that made that possble. And none of -them- wore gray.
Walt
That is not all he wrote in the Prize Cases ruling.
Unilateral state secession is illegal. See the Militia Act of 1792. Grier cites the Act, as you know.
Walt
Some comment on the Prize Cases:
"By a slim five-to-four vote, the Supreme Court upheld Lincoln’s action. True, the Court said, "Congress alone has the power to declare a national or foreign war." In contrast, the president "has no power to initiate or declare a war either against a foreign nation or a domestic state." But by statute [the Militia Act] he is authorized to call out the militia and use American military forces to repel invasion or suppress insurrection. Then comes the critical language: "If a war be made by invasion of a foreign nation, the President is not only authorized but bound to resist force by force. He does not initiate the war, but is bound to accept the challenge without waiting for any special legislative authority." Whether the hostile force is a foreign invader or a rebellious state, "it is none the less a war." When the rebellion burst out, the president "was bound to meet it in the shape it presented itself, without waiting for Congress t baptize it with a name; and no name given to it by him could change the fact."
The Court also clarified a key question: Did recognizing a state of war implicitly concede the legitimacy of the Confederacy? The answer was no. "It is not less a civil war, with belligerent parties in hostile array, because it may be called an insurrection' by one side, and the insurgents be considered as rebels or traitors." The independence of a rebelling province does not need to be recognized in order for it to qualify as a "party belligerent in a war according to the law of nations."
...The dissent agreed that if a civil war existed between the Confederacy and the United States, the blockade would be valid. They argued however, that only an action by Congress can "change the legal status of the Government....from that of a state of peace to a state of war." This did not mean, however, that the president was powerless to resist the rebellion until Congress met. Under the Constitution and by statute, the dissenters agreed, he was entitled to call forth the militia to suppress insurrection and execute the laws. He therefore "can meet the adversary upon land and water with all the forces of the government." But what he cannot do on his own is to invoke the laws of war, which "convert every citizen of the hostile State into a public enemy, and treat him accordingly, whatever may have been his previous conduct." For that purpose, "congress alone can determine whether war exists or should be declared." Hence, according to the dissent, a formal state of war did not exist until July 13, when Congress passed legislation endorsing the president's activities.
Thus, the Court was unanimous in holding that the president had the right to mobilize the nation to do battle after Sumter, and that an actual state of war existed by mid July at the latest.
...What was important was Lincoln's power, without specific approval by Congress, to engage in what was in fact a war. The Court's unanimity on this point is supported both by history and by common sense.
....Even under the most Congress-centered view of the war powers, the president has been accorded this power to defend the nation. The War Powers Resolution of 1973 is a powerful statement of Congress's claim to control the initiation of hostilities. Even this resolution, however, recognizes the president's authority to introduce the military into hostilities in " a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces." The resolution calls for consultation with the congressional leadership and gives the president up to ninety days to get congressional authorization. Naturally, Lincoln did not comply to the letter of a statute that was not passed until over a century later. But he did in effect "comply" with the substance of the statute. He did receive full authorization from Congress by July 13, within ninety days after he called up the militia. Thus, even under a highly Congress-centered view of the war power, Lincoln acted appropriately. Indeed, given current laments about the ineffectiveness of the War Powers Resolution, it is somewhat ironic that Lincoln's record of "compliance" with the resolution is better than that of the modern president's at whom it was aimed."
-- Lincoln's Constitution" pp. 139-42 by Daniel Farber
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean much.
Walt