Posted on 09/07/2010 12:43:35 PM PDT by gjmerits
The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination - that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.
(Excerpt) Read more at wolvesofliberty.com ...
You have two options: either you get the approval or you exert your natural right of rebellion and hope that you win.
It makes sense that you union card holding, liberal yankees would think that free will is 'unthinkable'.
Chase. Texas v White. The case wasn't about secession so the opinion that you posted above has no merit on the legality of secession.
Can’t argue with such an intellectual point of view. You have me stumped. You can go back to watching cartoons now.
I presume it meant the people of the state or the people of the state acting through special conventions, such as a ratification convention like themselves or a secession convention. Various seceding states in 1861 put the question of secession directly to the voters of their states. That did not occur during the ratifications of the Constitution, so the secessions of those particular states would seem to have more legitimacy as an act of the people than the ratifications of the Constitution.
The Tenth Amendment says "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The state ratifying conventions that said they could reassume their governance or proposed wording like the Tenth Amendment in their ratification documents were a majority of the states ratifying the Constitution. And, of course, three quarters of the states ratified the Tenth Amendment making it part of the Constitution.
Monorprise went over all this last night.
Pokie doesn’t watch cartoons. His usual pastime is to run up & down the fence-line barking at the neighbors...
[you]: Yes. If only because the alternative was unthinkable.
Large numbers of delegates to the ratification conventions voted against ratification, so it was not unthinkable. In New York's case, the final vote was 30 to 27, but there were seven or eight Anti-Federalists who abstained in that vote. They were willing to let the convention ratify the Constitution so long as the ratification document had all the clarifying statements about what the Constitution meant, such as the reassumption of governance statement, a statement that the people capable of bearing arms could bear them, and various other clarifying statements.
So all that you have to do to make it unconstitutional for the government to suppress your insurrection is to issue a document that says "I secede"?
It wasn't insurrection.
It wasn't insurrection.
Not unilaterally, no.
Did you get my point? Did you get my point?
Please excuse the double post:)
Of course it was. Insurrection: an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.
Although I can see why you might wish it otherwise, as the suppression of insurrection is specifically enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
It's true that folks from several states, north and south, had reservations about 'joining the club'. Those reservations are memorialized in their writings and records of their debates. The unthinkable alternative that I spoke of was the proposition of of trying to go it alone. No single state had the strength to do so - for very long at least.
There wasn't a single state - even the hotheads in South Carolina - who didn't realize that going it alone was a death sentence for their communities.
Several of these states chose to include 'signing statements' like you mention in their ratification declarations. They are very nice, often well spoken, and not a one of them had the force of law.
At what point were the seceded states in revolt?
Opinion varies but certainly when they seized federal property.
Technically, they were in revolt at the time of secession. The question of what to do at that point was not clear, especially given that Lincoln had not been inaugurated at the time, and Buchanan was not willing to act.
The nice gentlement of South Carolina kindly broke the logjam when they fired on Ft. Sumter.
Which, unfortunately for you, was an act of insurrection.
Never pick a fight with the dictionary, son. It just makes you look stupid.
The only state to unilaterally secede(so far) was S.C. When Mississippi joined S.C. the 'unilateral' part went out the window.
Well, I disagree.
Proper methods of Secession would include horizontally, trilaterally, unilaterally, cross circumferentially, and in single file.
Hope this helps :)
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