Posted on 07/26/2006 3:22:50 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
do you KNOW how STUPID your posts make you sound????
why not dance over to DU & be a DU-DUMMY. take "Mr.SPIN" the BIGOT & "class clown" with you, when you go.
free dixie,sw
fwiw, i think the federal courts/judges need to be sent on "vacation" for a couple of years.
perhaps then, we common citizens could get things straightened out.
free dixie,sw
I'm going to go waaaay out on a limb here and guess that what South Carolina was talking about was the Fugitive Slave laws. If I am correct in this then the charge is bogus and without merit. It is true that when the first fugitive slave acts were passed in the 1840's 1850 northern states enacted what wered Personal Liberty Laws to thwart it. They figured that by requiring jury trials, writs of habeas corpus, rights to legal representation, extradition requests and so forth the legal process could be used to keep the runaway slaves from being returned. The Supreme Court, not surprisingly, ruled in Prigg v Pennsylvania that such laws had to be enforced by the federal authorities but that state and local authorities could not be forced to act in fugitive slave cases. With the passage of the 1850 act, the states again responded with a round of personal liberty laws which were being challenged but per the earlier Supreme Court decision while the states could not hinder federal authorities in retrieving runaway slaves they did not have to assist.
So South Carolina's beef is that the norhern states were following Supreme Court guidelines.
Don't know.
It is asserted in this passage that compacts that were enumerated as early as the Declaration of Independence had been broken.
It's pretty clear that that's what they're talking about, since the next three paragraphs go on to talk about fugitive slave laws and the states that have attempted to disrupt southern attempts to co-opt their governments into doing the dirty work of slavery.
Yes it talked about fugitive slave laws and that was specifically cited in the document. But the point was the loss of sovereignty.
No, the point was that they felt that because some states weren't happy about being compelling to help return runaway slaves, that South Carolina had been released from obligations.
We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.(...)
Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
(Except, of course, that there was an arbiter provided--the Supreme Court)
I don't see that you're making an opposing point. Slave extradition (if that's what you call it) was the incident cited. Broken contracts and loss of sovereignty was the upshot.
What about the lost sovereignty of the Northern states? Why couldn't they, in their sovereign role, require extradition hearings, jury trials, legal representation, and the life for fugitive slaves? A white fugitive would be entitled to such protection. But the overreaching federal government, at the behest of the slave states, stripped them of their right to do so. I guess states's rights is for southern states only.
Not at all. And there is nothing to say that the North couldn't have seceded from a slaveholding country under the idea that the contract of life, liberty and happiness had been violated. But that wasn't the axe the North had to grind.
It would have been interesting to see what the reaction of the seven deep south states if the rest of the country had said, "We're leaving. We're taking whatever federal property we can get our hands of with us. You've got what property's left and the national debt. Good luck paying for it. Good bye." The southern states would have pooped a brick.
What does sovereignty have to do with the return of runaway slaves from other states? If Brazil refuses to extradite some criminal, we don't argue that Brazil has undermined our sovereignty. You can argue property rights and their equal protection, but I fail to see how you can argue sovereignty. You're actually requiring that free states surrender sovereignty in order to support the slave system.
Property, debt? Isn't that the point? How much "Federal" property, how much "Federal" debt is too much. Where is the limit on the central government on those two things alone?
As cited in the articles, the issue of slavery was a symptom, states rights, lack thereof, was the disease. As unfortunate as the wording is it doesn't detract from the central issue.
Part of the point. in 1860 the South felt that they could secede and grab whatever property they could get their hands on, repudiate the debt (which admittedly wasn't that large when compared to today), and just walk away leaving the rest of the country to hold the bag. What gave them the right to stick it to the rest of the country and walk away?
How do you know the South was of this mindset?
Because that is exactly what they tried to do.
The WBTS was over a debt?
No, it was over the illegal secession of the southern states. For someone to believe that the unilateral secession of the southern states was legal then they would have to believe that walking away from the debt was legal and the appropriation of federal property was legal. In short, that only the southern states had Constitutional protections and the remaining states had none.
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