Posted on 03/28/2008 12:15:10 PM PDT by cowboyway
Shooting clarifies things. Once the shooting started it became impossible to remain “neutral,” although Kentucky made a less than successful attempt to do so. The Upper South was faced with only two alternatives, fight on the side of or against the CSA. Not surprisingly, they went with their brothers in the Deep South.
I didn’t say the attack on Sumter was dastardly. I do say, though, that it made it a great deal more difficult for the CSA to portray itself as having the war forced upon it. This had major positive impact on northern public opinion, and in particular made it much easier for northern Democrats to support the war effort without losing face. They were fighting a war of defense, not of offense.
Prior to Sumter, public opinion in the North was deeply divided about whether force should be used. After Sumter, it was (temporarily) almost unanimous that war was necessary. This was absolutely critical, because the federal government had no mechanism by which it could force the northern people to fight. Without popular and state government support Lincoln could issue proclamations, but he most certainly could not raise an effective army.
It also did significant damage to the southern cause in Europe.
On the other hand, the accession of the Upper South states to the CSA almost doubled both its military manpower and its industrial capacity. Without these assets it could certainly not have fought for four years.
There’s an excellent discussion of these issues in American Iliad.
Well, Garrison, Brown and a few other wild-eyed fanatics did, but they never had true political power or any chance of getting it.
Garrison called Lincoln "the slave-hound from Illinois," publicly burned the Constitution and called for free states to secede from a Union dominated by slaveholders. As with the good Rev. Wright today, these are not actions that help one win elections.
If I understand the conventions correctly, a ship could be fired upon without it automatically being considered an act of war. The attack and conquest of a military post flying the US flag was viewed entirely differently than ineffectively shooting at a ship.
I will assume that the sarcasm was intentional.
My marriage failed. Does that mean I was never married?
Since it wasn't a country then it isn't a proper noun.
All historical and legal references disagree with you. All of them.
You're just another yankee floating down the river of denial.
Depends. If the marriage act was illegal to begin with then no.
All historical and legal references disagree with you. All of them.
I'll just have to learn to live with that.
You're just another yankee floating down the river of denial.
And you're just another lost causer clinging to your myths and fairy tales.
There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution or any other legal document which precludes any state or group of states from seceding from the United States. That was true in 1861 and its true today.
"The War Department presented its evidence for a treason trial against Davis to a famed jurist, Francis Lieber, for his analysis. Lieber pronounced 'Davis will not be found guilty and we shall stand there completely beaten'."---Frank Conner, The South Under Siege 1830-2000
"In 1866 President Johnson appointed a new U.S. attorney general, Henry Stanburg. But Stanburg wouldn't touch the case either. Thus had spoken the North's best and brightest jurists re the legitimacy of the War of Northern Aggression - even though the Jefferson Davis case offered blinding fame to the prosecutor who could prove that the South had seceded unconstitutionally."---Frank Conner, The South Under Siege 1830-2000
"He was imprisoned after the war, was never brought to trial. The North didn't dare give him a trial, knowing that a trial would establish that secession was not unconstitutional, that there had been no 'rebellion' and that the South had got a raw deal."---Richard Street, The Civil War
"He (Davis) died 'unpardoned' by a government that was leery of giving him a public hearing."---Richard Street, The Civil War
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 of 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.....from the Declaration of Independence
"[T]he several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by compact, under the style and title of the Constitution of the United States, and of certain amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for general purposes, delegated to that government certain powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no effect."----Thomas Jefferson
And you're just another lost causer clinging to your myths and fairy tales.
The only myths and fairy tales are the ones written in the damnyankee history books.
Whoop-de-do. The whole question of the legality of the confederate secession did go to trial, and the court ruled that the acts were illegal. To quote from the decision:
"When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.
Considered therefore as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State, as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired. It certainly follows that the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union."
A little-known fact of the Constitution is that two of the largest states -- Virginia and New York -- made the right to withdraw from the union explicit in their acceptance of the Constitution.
Absolutely meaningless. Both states in question also ratified the Constitution as passed out of covention, and could have included any clause they wanted in their ratification document. And if that clause violated the Constitution it was invalid.
"[T]he several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by compact, under the style and title of the Constitution of the United States, and of certain amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for general purposes, delegated to that government certain powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no effect."----Thomas Jefferson
"It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession." But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy." -- James Madison
There are many problems with his argument.
Not really, no.
Ditto here, unfortunately.
[rb]: States rights does not include the right of a state to violate the Constitution.
[SL]: Nope. But certain actions taken by the federeal government to enforce a constitutional provision could be a violation of states' rights. The clause you quote contains no prescribed enforcement mechanism other than presumably for State 1 to sue State 2 in federal court.
The Supreme Court ruled the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 constitutional, and Lincoln said he would enforce it.
Another response to Northern laws that frustrated the Fugitive Slave Law was secession. Massachusetts' Daniel Webster said to Northern states concerning fugitive slaves, "A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side." I say: "You don't play by the rules you agreed to when the game began, then don't be surprised if the other player leaves." (Webster's quote is more eloquent than mine.)
There were concerns about the constitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Law. It didn't provide for trial by jury and the presumed slave might not have been able to question the witnesses against him. However, slaves were property under the laws of many states and didn't have a standing in those courts.
There were also concerns about the constitutionality of some personal liberty laws used to frustrate the return of fugitive slaves. From the Philadelphia Public Ledger of December 20, 1860:
Chief Justice Shaw, B. R. Curtis, Joel Parker, and other citizens of Massachusetts equally distinguished, have addressed a letter to the people of that State on the Personal Liberty Bills, which they declare to be unconstitutional. They urge strongly the repeal of them ... conspicuous and palpable breaches of the national compact by ourselves ...
Lemuel Shaw was Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court. Benjamin R. Curtis was a former Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court. He resigned from the Supreme Court in protest of its Dred Scott decision. Joel Parker was professor of constitutional law at Harvard and former Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
The Massachusetts law made it more expensive than the slave was worth to try to get him returned. The last fugitive slave returned from Massachusetts was in 1854, and there were large numbers of fugitive slaves living openly in Massachusetts.
I hope you folks realize that most folks in the South by the end of the war basically wanted to lynch JD for his incompetent handling of the war and the economy. It was only after he wrote his (heavily exaggerated) memoirs that he was "rehabilitated."
No doubt there were enough northern senators to pass the law, if all northern senators voted for it, which seems unlikely since it was a Republican issue. Since only 31 of the 68 senators were Republican, they would have been in a minority and unable to pass the bill without Democrat party support, which would have no doubt watered down any terms significantly.
The previous Senate passed the Morrill Tariff 25 to 14 on February 20, 1861. 24 Republican senators voted for the bill and one Democrat (Bigler from Pennsylvania, a manufacturing state; was Bigler an early DINO?). No Republicans voted against it.
Two Republicans did not vote (from Vermont and Connecticut) -- perhaps they were paired with some non-voting Democrat. Nine Democrats (from Delaware, New Jersey, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and California) did not vote, plus there were a significant number of Southern Democrats who had already resigned from the Senate and were not there. Two American Party members did not vote. The bill would have failed in the 36th Senate had all elected present and resigned Democrats been present and voting against.
The 37th Senate would have been another matter. Senator Wigfall, who knew the majority of the senators of the 37th, in December 1860 had counted the 37th as 34 versus 34. His projection would have been true for the tariff bill if all Southern senators remained in the Senate and all Democrats, including those from manufacturing states, had voted against the bill (not a sure thing) and all others voted for it. There were, as you said, 31 Republicans in the 37th Senate. There were also three Unionist senators who were neither Republican nor Democrat. Wigfall's nose count said that in a 34-to-34 situation Vice President Hamlin would cast the deciding vote.
You must have him confused with US Grant..............
What a counter! I'm speechless................
Not really, no.
Yeah, really.
It's worse than that. The Dred Scott decision claimed that all persons of African descent (presumably meaning any trace of African blood) were by definition not citizens of the US and had no standing in federal courts. Given the direction things were trending at the time of the KN Act and the Scott decision, it is quite possible the Court would eventually rule that "Africans" could have no standing in any state court, and that a US citizen could not be prohibited from taking his property into any state, thus making slavery legal nationwide.
The Scott decision was factually incorrect in many areas, and stated that Africans were citizens of no state at the time of the formation of the Union. This required ignoring the fact that free men of color were full citizens under the law in several states at the time. Ironically, North Carolina was one of them. This inconvenient provision was gotten rid of by a new state constitution in the early 1800s.
Whether blacks were allowed to exercise their rights as citizens in these various states is of course another question entirely.
The truly hilarious part is that the CSA constitution prohibited any state from seceding.
I'm not an economist, so I'm not able to poke the appropriate holes in this argument. I suspect, however, that it is ridiculously simplistic.
I would also like to point out that southern apologists can hardly be considered more reliable to prove a point than Wikipedia. Also, the very quote you use shows that the Northwest was affected as much by the tariff as was the South. All non-manufacturers were equally affected, throughout the Union. A New England farmer paid the same "tax" to his New England manufacturer neighbor as a South Carolina planter.
I took three economics courses as an undergrad, but I'm no economist either. As an engineer though I am used to doing material balances around chemical plants or other parts of a system. Let's do that for domestically manufactured items items.
Draw boxes around the 1860s North (say Pennsylvania or Ohio and points east), the West (today's Midwest and West), and the South back in 1860 before the Morrill Tariff. Prop up manufacturing prices with a nationwide tariff so that manufactured items from the North box can compete with European manufactured items. I know the tariffs before the war were not supposed to be particularly protective, but there are protective effects with any tariff. I'll modify the actual numbers some below for purposes of this discussion.
The North sells 100 million dollars worth of items each to the South and West and 150 million are sold in the North. Suppose that 20 percent of the price of those goods was due to the tariff (roughly matches the percentage of import price that was collected as tariff). Forty million of that 200 million dollars sold to the South and West could be attributed to the increase in the price of those goods because the price was propped up by tariff.
The West and the South would each be paying about 20 million dollars to the Northern manufacturer that was due solely to the tariff. That money would go to support Northern manufacturers and provide jobs for Northern skilled workers. It would have been transferred out of the West and South because of the tariff.
Yes, the farmer in the North would also have to pay higher prices on domestic goods because of the tariff. Some 30 million dollars in our example. But regionally that money would stay in the North benefiting the Northern economy. If Northern politicians were in the pockets of manufacturers then, surprise, they might vote to benefit their big money contributors.
Is there some other effect I'm forgetting? My figures above are not meant to be exact.
I found it interesting that six of the 14 Senate votes of February 20, 1861, against the Morrill Tariff came from the West. The other eight votes against came from the South (if you include one vote from Maryland). No votes against it came from the North.
One way of interpreting that vote was that Southern and Western senators voted against the sectional aggrandizement that the Morrill Tariff represented. Their regions were already having to pay increased prices for domestic goods because of the old tariff on imported goods. The Morrill Tariff meant that the portion of the price of domestic goods that they would have to pay due to tariff would increase by about 50%. The South and West would have to pay 30 million dollars each to the Northern manufacturer rather than the 20 million they had been paying before.
Sectional aggrandizement and partial legislation favoring the North were listed as causes for secession in at least the Texas and Georgia cause documents.
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