Posted on 02/17/2010 3:43:05 PM PST by Constitutionalist Conservative
Prior to the American Civil War, it was popularly assumed that states which had freely chosen to enter the Union could just as freely withdraw from said union at their own discretion. Indeed, from time to time individual states or groups of states had threatened to do just that, but until 1860 no state had actually followed through on the threat.
Since then, it has been considered axiomatic that the War “settled the question” of whether or not states had the right to secede. The central government, backed by force of arms, says the answer is No. As long as no state or group of states tests the central government’s resolve, we can consider the question to be “settled” from a practical viewpoint.
This assertion has long troubled me from a philosophical and moral viewpoint. We are supposedly a nation of laws, and the central government is supposedly subservient to the laws that established and empower it.
In a nation of laws, when someone asks, “Do states have a right to secede from the Union?”, a proper answer would have one of two forms:
Here, x would be an explanation of the laws that supported the Yes or No answer.
With the secession issue, though, we are given the following as a complete and sufficient answer:
“No, because if any state tries to secede, the central government will use force of arms to keep it from succeeding.”
There is no appeal to law in this answer – just brute force.
Based on this premise, the central government can amass to itself whatever right or power it chooses, simply by asserting it. After all, who has the power to say otherwise?
Come to think of it, that’s exactly how the central government has behaved more often than not since the Civil War.
This issue came to mind today because of an item posted today on a trial lawyer’s blog (found via Politico). The lawyer’s brother had written to each of the Supreme Court justices, asking for their input on a screenplay he was writing. In the screenplay, Maine decides to secede from the US and join Canada. The writer asked for comments regarding how such an issue would play out if it ever reached the Supreme Court.
Justice Antonin Scalia actually replied to the screenwriter’s query. I have a lot of respect for Scalia regarding constitutional issues, but his answer here is beyond absurd.
I am afraid I cannot be of much help with your problem, principally because I cannot imagine that such a question could ever reach the Supreme Court. To begin with, the answer is clear. If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede. (Hence, in the Pledge of Allegiance, "one Nation, indivisible.")
He actually said that a constitutional issue was settled by military action. Oh, and by including the word “indivisible” in the Pledge of Allegiance, the issue became even more settled.
What if the president were to send out the troops to prevent the news media from publishing or broadcasting anything critical of his administration? This is clearly an unconstitutional action, but by Scalia’s logic, if the president succeeds, we must then say that the military action “settled the question” of free speech.
If these scenarios are not comparable, I’d like to hear why.
This does not....
"Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it." - Lawrence Keitt
"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our [slave] property?" - CSA senator from Virgina, Robert Hunter, 1865
As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.
What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black." -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. --Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession
SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana
This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession
What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention
Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?
Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention
This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.
If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable --- -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi
But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas
History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention
Southern perspective:
"We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Law in nature tells us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude. Freedom only injures the slave. The innate stamp of inferiority is beyond the reach of change. You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables him to be." -- Jefferson Davis, March 1861
"Considering the relation of master and slave, controlled by humane laws and influenced by Christianity and an enlightened public sentiment, as the best that can exist between the white and black races while intermingled as at present in this country, I would deprecate any sudden disturbance of that relation unless it be necessary to avert a greater calamity to both. I should therefore prefer to rely upon our white population to preserve the ratio between our forces and those of the enemy, which experience has shown to be safe. But in view of the preparations of our enemies, it is our duty to provide for continued war and not for a battle or a campaign, and I fear that we cannot accomplish this without overtaxing the capacity of our white population." - Robert Lee, January 1865
“I am with the South in life or in death, in victory or in defeat...... I believe the North is about to wage a brutal and unholy war on a people who have done them no wrong, in violation of the Constitution and the fundamental principles of government. They no longer acknowledge that all government derives its validity from the consent of the governed. They are about to invade our peaceful homes, destroy our property, and inaugurate a servile insurrection, murder our men and dishonor our women. We propose no invasion of the North, no attack on them, and only ask to be left alone.”
Major General Patrick Cleburne
The arguments of the anti-secessionists have two goals, create fear of violence in the minds of anyone who might contemplate secession and justify violence in the minds of those who would fight to keep their slaves. It does not get any more complicated than that. If you ever argue with an anti-secessionist you WILL be convinced of this.
Secession is a natural right of every human. There is no law created by men that supersedes natural rights and they cannot be "given up" by some "contract" nor taken away by some ancient war. Every single human has the right to break the bonds that tie them to others. When (not if) we decide to go we WILL be prepared for the violence of those who wish to keep their slaves. Count on it...
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
This statement by the founders of this union is as true today as it was then...
Once again you can stuff your sarcasm!
Questions in 325, as anyone can plainly see, have nothing whatever to do with Jefferson Davis and the chaff you continually throw up to muddy the water.
What everyone notices is that you are spinning like a top to avoid answering them!
I’ll be back on here tomorrow. I have other things to do for the rest of today.
A big issue in Alaska's statehood was which property transferred to the "state" and which remained "federal".
I really do think that considerations of secession must necessarily reflect prior ownership. Land which belonged to the United States must continue to be part of the United States. land which belonged to some other country that freely associated with the United States is a different issue to be addressed separately.
Your original 13 colonies and their land claims give rise to different issues than the rights of states created subsequent to the Treaty of Paris ~ such states necessarily being erected in/on property OWNED by those states as a group, or independently.
Recall the history of the State of Franklin. The locals felt it useful to have their own state. They elected a legislature and governor. The federal government (and North Carolina, the original property owner) said "na, na, na, na" and rejected the whole scheme.
No, the locals didn't have the right to create a state. However, the Constitution provides a mechanism for creating states, and when that process was followed Tennessee was created in virtually the same place the former state of Franklin had been created.
The only real difference between Franklin and Tennessee was the question of WHO OWNED THE PLACE! Apparently private ownership of small lots didn't qualify folks to create states on their own.
Secession necessarily involves the process of creating a state ~ independent or otherwise.
Making it all much more complex we have the case of the State of Northern Virginia and the State of West Virginia.
Northern Virginia had a legislature and a wartime "governor". However, it was not considered a state ~ more like a territorial government for that part of Virginia along the Potomac that was not otherwise occupied by the Confederate Army. That is, it was a rump government erected for the sole purpose of collecting taxes and running criminal courts.
West Virginia was different. With the rest of the state of Virginia in rebellion, Congress acted to accept West Virginia as a state on its own. In effect, West Virginia is really Virginia, and modern Virginia is a new creation made AFTER the Civil War, and then separately admitted ~ presumably with the permission of the state of West Virginia.
Other strange deals include the Union making good on the salaries of Postmasters in Southern states ~ ........ ~
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”—Abraham Lincoln. March 4, 1861
Grant to Nonsensical
“If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side.” —Ulysses S. Grant
Tyrant to Nonsensical
“Amend the Constitution to say it should never be altered to interfere with slavery.” -—Abe Lincoln, December 24, 1860
Your butcher offered up the 13th Amendment to FOREEVER protect slavery. Needless to say, it didn't work. Independence from Yankee-ville was much more important
“No Amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any state, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.” —Joint Resolution of Congress, Adopted March 2, 1861
” In effect, West Virginia is really Virginia, and modern Virginia is a new creation made AFTER the Civil War, and then separately admitted ~ presumably with the permission of the state of West Virginia.”
As I pointed out, WV units prior to 1863 fought as Virginia units. While the whole process of West Virginia statehood is admittedly a little murky, I think it is inarguable that West Virginia was “Unionist Virginia.”
And I agree that West Virginia should have been called “Virginia” after the war and Virginia should have been called “Southern Virginia” or “East Virginia” or something. The name West Virginia has always struck me as the greatest cause of this argument.
—12 United States Statutes at Large, 36th Congress, 2nd Session, 1861, p. 251.
How true - it was.......
“As for the South, it is enough to say that perhaps eighty per cent. of her armies were neither slave-holders, nor had the remotest interest in the institution. No other proof, however, is needed than the undeniable fact that at any period of the war from its beginning to near its close the South could have saved slavery by simply laying down its arms and returning to the Union.”
Major General John B. Gordon
If we must relate the events of today to past events for the sake of a clearer understanding then we should be centered on the British subjects who had residence in the British colonies of the north American continent and their ultimate secession from the British crown.
Feel free to amuse yourself with the obfuscations generated by mental masturbation... LOL If everyone on your side is too dense to see what this is about then so much the better for us I guess. heh.. I never expected to have the "element of surprise" but when your adversary is too preoccupied with an intellectual circle jerk to accurately gauge REALITY I guess anything is possible...
lol.. your right... Prior ownership... civil war settled everything... yadda yadda...state of franklin... Postmasters pay....yadda yadda... Jesus, this may actually be EASIER than I thought it would be.
Delivery error.
The hidden message behind Lurking Libertarian's post was that the South was and is a racist area that only cares about owning and abusing black people with the implication that the pious yankee was/is the black mans saviour and benefactor, which, by the way, couldn't be further from the truth.
Idabilly posted an example of how most yankees felt/feel about blacks by posting the Great Emancipator's own racist words.
Did if finally get to the right person?
You northrons must be technically challenged. Why didn’t you post the links?
Well I would suggest to Mr. Cleburne that he not start wars he wasn't prepared to wage to a successful conclusion.
Your entire post came from comments made by a judge in May 3, 2000.
It may sound romantic to you in this year, but it has no relevance in fact to Lincoln’s suspension in his role as President in 1861.
He used dictatorial powers to initiate his actions, and nothing changes that fact.
Miss Lou Lewis was introduced to General Forrest and then presented him with a bouquet of flowers and said, "Mr. Forrest, allow me to present you with this bouquet as a token of reconciliation, an offering of peace and good will."
General Forrest received the flowers with a bow and replied, "Miss Lewis, Ladies and Gentlemen, I accept these flowers as a token of reconciliation between the White and Colored races in the South. I accept these more particularly, since they came from a colored lady, for if there is any one on God's green earth who loves the ladies, it is myself. This is a proud day for me. Having occupied the position I have for thirteen years and being misunderstood by the Colored race, I take this occasion to say that I am your friend. I am here representative of the Southern People - one that has been more maligned then any other. I assure you that every man who was in the Confederate Army is your friend. We were born on the same soil, breathe the same air, live in the same land, and why should we not be brothers and sisters. When the war broke out, I believed it was my duty to fight for my country, and I did so. I came here with the sneers and jeers of a few of the White people, who did not think it right.. I think it right, and I will do all I can to bring harmony, peace and unity. I want to elevate every man, and see that you take your places in your shops, stores and offices. I don't propose to say anything about politics- but I want you to do as I do- go to the polls and select the best man to vote for. I feel that you are free men, I am a free man, and we can do as we please. I come here as a friend and whenever I can serve any of you, I will do so. We have one Union, one flag and one country, therefore let us stand together. Although we differ in color, we should not differ in sentiment. Many things have been said in regard to myself, and many reports circulated,, which perhaps may be believed by some of you, but there are many around that contradict them. I have many times been in the heat of battle, oftener, perhaps, then any within the sound of my voice. Men have come to me and ask for a quarter, both Black and White, and I have shielded them. Do your duty as citizens, and if you are oppressed, I will be your friend. I thank you for the flowers, and ensure you that I am with you in heart and hand."
Yep.
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