Posted on 03/30/2019 12:39:26 PM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
In his later years, Benjamin Franklin became vocal as an abolitionist and in 1787 began to serve as President of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.
The Society was originally formed April 14, 1775, in Philadelphia, as The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage...The Society not only advocated the abolition of slavery, but made efforts to integrate freed slaves into American society.
Preamble:
"It having pleased the Creator of the world, to make of one flesh all the children of men, it becomes them to consult and promote each other's happiness, as members of the same family, however diversified they may be, by colour, situation, religion, or different states of society. It is more especially the duty of those persons, who profess to maintain for themselves the rights of human nature, and who acknowledge the obligations of Christianity, to use such means as are in their power, to extend the blessings of freedom to every part of the human race; and in a more particular manner, to such of their fellow creatures as are entitled to freedom by the laws and constitutions of any of the United States, and who, notwithstanding, are detained in bondage, by fraud or violence.— From a full conviction of the truth and obligation of these principles, — from a desire to diffuse them, wherever the miseries and vices of slavery exist, and in humble confidence of the favour and support of the Father of Mankind, the subscribers have associated themselves, under the title of the 'Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, and the Relief of free Negroes unlawfully held in Bondage, and for improving the condition of the African race.'"
(Excerpt) Read more at benjaminfranklin.org ...
No, but the term "at pleasure" comes to us from James Madison's letter to Nicholas Trist where he contrasts "at pleasure" to mutual consent and necessity.
We today still occasionally use the old term "at pleasure", in for example, saying: the President may fire his FBI director at pleasure, meaning for any reason whatever, or indeed for no particular reason.
The President does not have to explain, justify or seek approval for his at pleasure decisions.
By stark contrast, many presidential appointments do require mutual consent by the US Senate.
So even today we recognize the differences between at pleasure and mutual consent or necessity.
Our Founders defined "necessity" in their 1776 Declaration of Independence, listing about two dozen items to (their word) "prove" it.
jeffersondem: "You write from rote and, when combined willy-nilly with rehearsed phrases, you end up posting conflicting ideas in the same sentence."
Nonsense, but it's true enough I don't always predict correctly which direction your nit-picking brain will take an argument.
jeffersondem: "Still, I can’t help but like you."
It's often remarked that "we may soon forget what you said, but we never forget how you made us feel."
In terms of personal interactions here on Free Republic, I try my best simply to return in equal strength the persona a poster launches at me.
So, if you ask me a nice question, I'll try to give you a nice answer.
If you launch insults at me, I'll mirror image them back to you.
Of course, if you persist in posting nonsense long after it's been revealed as such, I do get a little frustrated, on occasion... ;-)
Well... of the original 13 colonies, by 1787 five states plus Vermont and five more in the Northwest Territories had already begun abolition.
In addition, Southern leaders like Washington, Jefferson & Madison had expressed their opposition to slavery, long term, and Southern states like Maryland & North Carolina allowed freed-blacks to vote.
So there was reason to hope in 1787 that slavery was already on a long-term path to extinction in the United States, regardless of protections provided for it in the new Constitution.
Even as late as the Virginia debates on abolition in 1832, the Richmond Enquirer could still call slavery:
If you don't like the new role of courts and judges there's a lot to complain about today, and you can project your feeling back upon the past. That's understandable, we all view the past through the glass of more recent experiences. But one does want to have the ability to view more in something like its own light, rather than as a reflection of the present.
I guess it's a slippery slope: a sweeping court decision in one era that is necessary and justified can start a way of approaching the law that results in pernicious judicial meddling at a later date. But it is a slope and one we are always on. The school desegregation decisions weren't necessarily wrong because courts gave us abortion and gay marriage years or decades later. And the connection between a ruling against slavery 200 years ago and what the court is doing is even weaker.
One has to be able to view past events in their own light, rather than always just in that of our own time. Plus, when courts act suddenly and we think they should wait, we might consider that the "waiting" has already gone on for a very long time. I don't see anything objectionable in the 1780s decisions, especially since it was only upholding what juries had already decided and their was no outcry over it.
Agreed, just as SCOTUS did in 1857 with its Dred Scott decision.
But I am far from a legal expert and so my words on this are just one man's opinion.
Nevertheless, the decisions of various Massachusetts' juries in 1781 seem to me entirely consistent with the words and spirit of their new 1780 state constitution when it begins,
Point is, there was no great stretch of language or imagination (as in Dred Scott or Roe v Wade) to read the constitution's clear meaning -- anyone could do it, and juries did, and that was that.
It was not one action of the Mass supreme court, but rather many actions of local court juries simply reading & understanding what their law said.
Slippery slope?
No, I'd say it was just a matter of reading & understanding the law.
“I was concerned in several Causes in which Negroes sued for their Freedom before the Revolution,” Adams wrote in 1795. “The Arguments in Favour of their Liberty were much the same as have been urged since in Pamphlets and Newspapers, in Debates in Parliament &c. arising from the Rights of Mankind. . . . I never knew a Jury by a Verdict, to determine a Negro to be a Slave. They always found them free.”
Adams wasn't literally correct, but he was right that during the Revolution more and more juries ruled that slaves were free. So what were the courts to do? Follow the trend? Or try to stop it? There's a parallel to the larger context of the Revolution. The colonies rebelled because Britain tried to assert the authority that it assumed that it had over the colonies but hadn't exercised. When government decides to act after long neglect it can set off rebellions.
I also notice that modern historians dispute Adams's claim and argue that many lawsuits ended with a verdict for the slaveowners. Anyway, it is interesting that Adams participated in such legal actions, sometimes for the slaves, sometimes for the masters. The cases sometimes ended with fines for one party or the other, rather than with the slaves being freed or returned to servitude.
"Today, in a 6-1 decision, the Kansas Supreme Court held in Hodes & Nauser v. Schmidt, that the state constitution guarantees a right to abortion.The named plaintiffs, Herbert Hodes and his daughter Traci Nauser, are two late-term abortionists who challenged Kansas’ ban on live dismemberment abortions—abortions which cause death by ripping the limbs and torso off of a fetus. Over the last several years, federal courts have declared similar bans on dismemberment abortions unconstitutional, but today’s decision is significant because, unlike other cases, it is based on a state constitutional right to abortion."
The Kansas Supreme Court reasoned:
“This right allows a woman to make her own decisions regarding her body, health, family formation, and family life—decisions that can include whether to continue a pregnancy. Although not absolute, this right is fundamental. Accordingly, the State is prohibited from restricting this right unless it is doing so to further a compelling government interest and in a way that is narrowly tailored to that interest.”
After concluding that the Kansas constitution guarantees a right to an abortion, the state Supreme Court remanded the case for a determination of whether the Kansas Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act violates the newly defined constitutional right.
For further information, this is the clause out of which they squeezed this claim of the Kansas Constitution guaranteeing a right to abortion.
§ 1.Equal rights. All men are possessed of equal and inalienable natural rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Hmm.... reminds me of something we discussed recently. How about you?
Could you please post a link to Madison's letter to Trist?
“Remember when I told you that some Judges took a general statement of principles, extended it to a meaning which was not clearly intended by the lawmakers, and then regarded their overblown interpretation as actual law?”
After the disaster at Appomattox this was bound to happen. Our country was founded on “consent of the governed.” That was then changed in 1865 to “consent of the governed when authorized by the governors.”
Since then our nation has lived off its moral capital. But that is about all used up.
Sure, it's here.
FYI, Madison's letter is over 1,700 words in 17 paragraphs, so can't be read in one quick glance.
But it remains the most explicit expression of our Founders' original intentions regarding an alleged unlimited "right of secession".
Madison's letter to Trist was written 54 years after the Declaration of Independence, too long after to be considered contemporaneous with the nation's founding.
In the letter to Trist the former President wrote candidly about his advanced age and cited it as a reason his end-of-life musings could not be trusted.
If, as you say, this private letter “remains the most explicit expression” of the view that the Constitution forbids secession, then Brother Joe your Mother Church has a weak foundation indeed.
Well... "Mother Church" is your term and certainly applies to the religion of Lost Cause insanity, though naturally, being a born Democrat, you can't help projecting your own pathologies onto others, it's what Democrats do, by nature.
Be that as it may...
Your comment regarding Madison's letter to Trist is reasonable, or it would be if it didn't sound so much like jeffersondem calling Madison a "yapping dog" for his old age.
Funny how that works, isn't it?
Madison lived to age 85, about the same as my Dad, and I know he was perfectly capable of rational thought up until the end, especially on subjects he'd spent a lifetime studying & explaining.
So at 79 in 1830, there's no reason to think Madison was not expressing his decades long strong beliefs.
That's #one.
But #two is what convinced me, and that is the fact that nobody has ever produced quotes from Founders which flat-out contradict Madison's words, not even Jefferson's.
Indeed, any quote I've ever seen from actual Founders fits very nicely into Madison's framework of "necessity" (usurpations or abuses) or "mutual consent" versus "at pleasure".
Of course if you have quotes from Founders which do directly contradict Madison, I'd be interested in them.
But my guess is that for every one you might produce which directly contradicts Madison, I could find several consistent with him.
One of the reason's Jefferson didn't contradict what Madison wrote in his 1830 letter to Nicholas Trist may be because Jefferson died in the year 1819.
George Washington died in 1799.
John Adams died in 1826.
Samuel Adams died in 1803; Franklin in 1790; Hancock 1793; George Wythe 1806; and so forth and so on.
By some accounts Madison was the last founding father to die so he got the last word - but he never repudiated the theory of consent of the governed.
Jefferson died in 1826 on the same day that John Adams died, July 4.
“Jefferson died in 1826 on the same day that John Adams died, July 4.”
Thank you for the correction. I should have known that.
Sure, and neither Madison, nor any other Founder ever proposed or supported an unlimited "right of secession" at pleasure.
Madison said it best, but nobody directly contradicted him.
So feel free to prove me wrong by quoting a Founder who did.
Only someone lacking any intuition or historical knowledge would think that the US Constitution would have been ratified if it contaminated “roach motel” clause making unilateral state secession unconstitutional. It would have been a dead letter.
Caution: This was posted at a very radical anti imperialism kooky site but it raises some good issues.The Legality of Secession by George Desnoyers
And yet they did...
The signers of the Declaration of Independence incorporated strict guide rails into the document to ensure that their, and any future, independence movement would meet high thresh holds of legitimacy.
In their own words: “. . . 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.”
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