Posted on 06/28/2017 11:20:43 AM PDT by Sopater
My "Rewriting American History" column of a fortnight ago, about the dismantling of Confederate monuments, generated considerable mail. Some argued there should not be statues honoring traitors such as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis, who fought against the Union. Victors of wars get to write the history, and the history they write often does not reflect the facts. Let's look at some of the facts and ask: Did the South have a right to secede from the Union? If it did, we can't label Confederate generals as traitors.
Article 1 of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the war between the Colonies and Great Britain, held "New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States." Representatives of these states came together in Philadelphia in 1787 to write a constitution and form a union.
During the ratification debates, Virginia's delegates said, "The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." The ratification documents of New York and Rhode Island expressed similar sentiments.
At the Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution," rejected it. The minutes from the debate paraphrased his opinion: "A union of the states containing such an ingredient (would) provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."
America's first secessionist movement started in New England after the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. Many were infuriated by what they saw as an unconstitutional act by President Thomas Jefferson. The movement was led by Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts, George Washington's secretary of war and secretary of state. He later became a congressman and senator. "The principles of our Revolution point to the remedy — a separation," Pickering wrote to George Cabot in 1803, for "the people of the East cannot reconcile their habits, views, and interests with those of the South and West." His Senate colleague James Hillhouse of Connecticut agreed, saying, "The Eastern states must and will dissolve the union and form a separate government." This call for secession was shared by other prominent Americans, such as John Quincy Adams, Elbridge Gerry, Fisher Ames, Josiah Quincy III and Joseph Story. The call failed to garner support at the 1814-15 Hartford Convention.
The U.S. Constitution would have never been ratified — and a union never created — if the people of those 13 "free sovereign and Independent States" did not believe that they had the right to secede. Even on the eve of the War of 1861, unionist politicians saw secession as a right that states had. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, "Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical and destructive of republican liberty." The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace.
Northern newspapers editorialized in favor of the South's right to secede. New-York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." The Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in extent." The New-York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is a growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."
Confederate generals were fighting for independence from the Union just as George Washington and other generals fought for independence from Great Britain. Those who'd label Gen. Robert E. Lee as a traitor might also label George Washington as a traitor. I'm sure Great Britain's King George III would have agreed.
“War may settle power, not necessarily moral right.”
It will probably take another nationally severely traumatic event to stem the rising tide of Federal Power. That is one thing that is still not settled since the Civil War - how big, how pervasive can the Federal entity grow at the expense of States Rights? Will the 10th Amendment ever be restored completely to it’s Constitutional intent?
Maybe not to you, and after researching, not to me, but obviously to a lot of people. Just read the comments from so many FReepers. The moral right for the South to seceded is an open issue to many.
Today, the legal and moral right and justification to seceded is also an open issue. It is certainly not a settled issue except to certain Leftist tyrants. Unconstitutional federal acts, which by definition are acts of tyranny, are the building blocks of justifiable secession
It was determined that it was not an option.
By whom? If you say the war, then we're in a circular argument that goes nowhere. The war decided power, not moral right.
There will be no seceding from the Union.
You deny the natural law principles stated plainly in the D of I that "it is the right of the people to abolish or alter [its destructive government]." The right to secede is a God-given natural-law truth that will never change. The issue is proper and valid application of the right to secede. That is a relevant issue today.
The Tenth Amendment and the whole Constitution is as alive and well as the American People want it to be. It is legally the supreme law of the land as written and originally understood and intended.
The Lying Leftist fascists have spent 117 years trying to rip this protector of our freedoms away from us.
It’s time for us to say, “ENOUGH” and take back that which is ours. With God’s help, we will. I believe it has started.
“The right to secede is a God-given natural-law truth that will never change. The issue is proper and valid application of the right to secede. That is a relevant issue today.”
I don’t disagree. The larger point is that if states truly have to secede based on natural law it will be because the Union is already dead.
“That is an eloquent statement of natural law which I did not include because although important, it is general background of natural law principles.”
When reference to “Consent of the Governed”, “as to them shall seem most likely” and “Safety and Happiness” is relegated to boiler plate or general background, it becomes easy for other people’s preferences to preclude secession entirely.
It’s not boilerplate. It’s the natural law of the right to secede. Why talk about the details of secession if you first don’t establish the right to secede? This statement of the natural law right to secede establishes what follows - the specific application of the valid and justifiable secession of the colonies.
The statement that establishes the right to secede and the specific application are not in conflict. They fit together very well.
You need both the rationale of the right to secede and the application for justifiable cession to make a case. The D of I does just that, probably better than any document every created.
Today’s issue with the states is not secession, but rejecting and nullifying unconstitutional federal acts of tyranny. The states haven’t done anything to justify secession.
“The statement that establishes the right to secede and the specific application are not in conflict.”
The DOI does not “establish” the right to secede. It recognizes the right to secede.
And the government does not give us our rights. When operating properly the government protects our rights.
Hopefully, we agree on those points.
I disagree with you on at least one point in post 365: “I believe the North had a constitutional right to fight them and get them back into the Union.”
The North fought a war of aggression over money and empire. That war stood the DOI and the U.S. constitution on their heads and killed over 600,000 people to boot.
But it did give us the government we have today, if that is a good thing.
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.
I think it is reasonable to say that Jefferson's purpose here was to establish the right to session based on natural law principles.
That war stood the DOI and the U.S. constitution on their heads
How was the South justified to secede according to the D of I and the Constitution?
The North fought a war of aggression over money and empire.
The D of I states that aside from a "long train of abuses", "Governments long established should not be changed". The D of I supports the North 's resistance of the South's unjustified secession which failed to identify any unconstitutional acts of the North against the South much less "facts submitted to a candid world" of a long train of abuses suffered at the hands of the North. Also, not that it is really germane to the moral and legal rights being discussed here, the South actually was the aggressor, firing the first shot at Fort Sumter.
it did give us the government we have today
No it didn't. It restored America's true free constitutional republic for the rest of the 1800's. Beginning in the 1900's The Fabian Socialist Left began the steady undermining of constitutional limitations with giant leaps of unconstitutional federal power by FDR, LBJ, and Obama.
“I think it is reasonable to say that Jefferson’s purpose here was to establish the right to session based on natural law principles.”
Jefferson contention was: “. . . the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them . . .”
And “ . . . they are endowed by their Creator . . .”
Jefferson didn’t claim he was establishing some new right in the DOI, or even advocating something new. Rights, Jefferson argued - even the right of secession comes from God - not from the government or the DOI.
“The D of I supports the North ‘s resistance of the South’s unjustified secession which failed to identify any unconstitutional acts of the North against the South much less “facts submitted to a candid world” of a long train of abuses suffered at the hands of the North.”
It is not much taught in government schools today but John Brown’s murder raid at Harper’s Ferry was financed by wealthy northerners. After the raid, the conspirators were identified and Virginia requested extradition for trial. The terrorists were given sanctuary by northern authorities. That broke the covenants of the constitution.
Start with that.
Who said anything about a “new” right or the right of secession coming anywhere but from God? You’re reading stuff into what I’m saying that I’m not saying. I’ve repeatedly said “God-given” and NEVER said government-given or the right emerging from the D of I. Jefferson used the D of I to establish the God-given natural right of secession, among other things.
What exactly in the Constitution was violated and how?
They were patriots. They fought for what America stood for. Anything else is revisionist history.
Bullshit.
Neither did the constitution of the USA.
I don't know how open you are to reading contrary views. I wish you would consider what author Garry Wills wrote:
Lincoln at Gettysburg “performed one of the most daring acts of open-air sleight-of-hand ever witnessed by the unsuspecting. Everyone in that vast throng of thousands was having his or her intellectual pocket picked. The crowd departed with a new thing in its ideological luggage, that new constitution Lincoln had substituted for the one they brought there with them. They walked off, from those curving graves on the hillside, under a changed sky, into a different America. Lincoln had revolutionized the Revolution, giving people a new past to live with that would change their future indefinitely.”
Understand, Wills was a fan of Lincoln.
“What exactly in the Constitution was violated and how?”
In the case of John Brown’s murder raid, Article IV, Section 2.
Maybe its just semantics, but semantics can be important.
Again, Jefferson didn't “establish” the right of secession, or the right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.
And the Constitution didn't “establish” the right to worship freely.
The documents simply recognized these God-given rights. Even if the King of England issued a decree, he could not abolish the human right to keep and bear arms. The King can only kill you.
There’s three clauses in Article IV, Section 2.
1) Which exact clause was violated and
2) HOW was it violated by applying the facts of the situation you’re citing?
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