Posted on 12/22/2019 4:23:47 AM PST by Bull Snipe
"I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." General William T. Sherman's "March to the Sea" was over. During the campaign General Sherman had made good on his promise d “to make Georgia howl”. Atlanta was a smoldering ruin, Savannah was in Union hands, closing one of the last large ports to Confederate blockade runners. Sherman’s Army wrecked 300 miles of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines. It seized 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, and 13,000 head of cattle. It confiscated 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder, and destroyed uncounted cotton gins and mills. In all, about 100 million dollars of damage was done to Georgia and the Confederate war effort.
>>Kalamata wrote: “Anyone who has studied the history of that day understands the South bore the brunt of the burden of the protective tariff.
>>rockrr wrote: “Logical fallacy. I have studied the history and do not believe that at all.”
I seriously question your historical scholarship.
Do you do anything besides snipe?
Mr. Kalamata
I don't GAS.
2) Don't post to me when I don't post to you.
3) Don't post to me when you have nothing interesting or new or true to say.
4) Have the common human decency not to post to me on holidays.
5) Don't post to me.
>>x wrote: “1) Don’t post to me. 2) Don’t post to me when I don’t post to you. 3) Don’t post to me when you have nothing interesting or new or true to say. 4) Have the common human decency not to post to me on holidays. 5) Don’t post to me.”
Don’t post historical inaccuracies, and I will not respond. Otherwise, I will exercise my right to correct the record.
Mr. Kalamata
Jefferson Davis was calling for war as far back as 1858. The problem with shoveling BS around here is people know too much actual history.
>>SoCal Pubbie wroteL “Jefferson Davis was calling for war as far back as 1858. The problem with shoveling BS around here is people know too much actual history.”
I am aware that Davis considered the Constitution a binding contract. I have also read that Davis argued against secession.
Perhaps you will show us a source for you claim, with context.
Mr. Kalamata
according to the Supreme Court decision in Texas v. White, secession was illegal.
>>Bull Snipe wrote, “according to the Supreme Court decision in Texas v. White, secession was illegal.”
Since when is the Supreme Court the Constitution?
The legal document called the Constitution gave the general government few and defined powers. The power over secession is not one of them. Therefore, the states retained that power.
The majority justices on that post-Lincoln Supreme Court were unelected oligarchic usurpers, and we have been plagued with SCOTUS usurpers since. They have completely turned our Constitution on its head. The sooner this nation relegates the Supreme Court back down to its constitutional role, the better.
Mr. Kalamata
Obviously, there are different points of view; some Americans believe the Constitution (including the Bill of Rights) means "exactly what it says." Others believe in a more expansive and flexible interpretation...
The Supreme has the power to determine what complies with the Constitution what does not does not.
Argue your point with the Supreme Court, they are the ones that declared Texas’s secession as Unconstitutional.
Since when has a justice ever been elected to the Supreme Court?
That power was not authorized by the legal document called the Constitution, and is therefore usurped. Usurpation is a high crime.
****************
>>Bull Snipe wrote: "Argue your point with the Supreme Court, they are the ones that declared Texas’s secession as Unconstitutional."
How does one go about arguing with unelected oligarchs appointed for life who believe it is their right to rule over the people? John Taylor explained the danger of such an attitude to liberty, and proposed a simple check:
"As the Senate and House of Representatives are each an independent tribunal to judge of its own constitutional powers, so the State and Federal governments are independent tribunals to judge of their respective constitutional powers. The same principle is applicable to the legislative, executive, and judicial departments, both State and Federal. It never could have been forgotten or disapproved of in the formation of the State and Federal departments. Being an essential principle for preserving theoretical liberty, used by the Federal constitution, it never could have designed to destroy it, by investing five or six men, installed for life, with a power of regulating the constitutional rights of all political departments, or at least of the most important. Suppose the Supreme Court should attempt to settle collisions of opinion between the Senate and the House of Representatives: are not the political rights of all the States as important for the preservation of theoretical liberty, as those of one of these houses? It was foreseen by the framers of the constitution, that the difficulty of distinguishing between political laws and judgments, and those intended for the distribution of civil justice, would not be diminished by the supremacy of a concentrated power, and that it required the acuteness of collateral powers to detect and control it. The remedy provided for this difficulty, is the only remedy hitherto discovered; and has been interwoven in some shape with the texture or forms of all governments, pretending to a construction at all calculated for the preservation of liberty. It consists of a mutual veto." [John Taylor, "Tyranny Unmasked." 1822, Section III]
Andrew Jackson, when confronted by a "constitutional" ruling by SCOTUS on the National Bank, followed Taylor's lead and told the court to pound sand:
"The Bank veto of July 10 is the most important presidential veto in American history. It was a powerful and dramatic polemic, cleverly written to appeal to the great masses of people and to convince them of the truth of its arguments. The President claimed that the Bank enjoyed exclusive privileges that gave it a monopoly of foreign and domestic exchange. Worse, eight millions of its stock were held by foreigners. "By this act the American Republic proposes virtually to make them a present of some millions of dollars," said Jackson — and why should the few, particularly the foreign few, enjoy the special favor of the country? "If our Government," he continued, "must sell monopolies... it is but justice and good policy... to confine our favors to our own fellow citizens, and let each in his turn enjoy an opportunity to profit by our bounty." Over and over, like the intense nationalist he was, Jackson reiterated his concern over this foreign influence within the Bank.
"Then [President Jackson] turned to the constitutional question involved in the recharter. He noted that [Marshall's] Supreme Court in McCulloch v. Maryland had judged the Bank constitutional. "To this conclusion I cannot assent," he declared. Elaborating, he announced that the Congress and the President as well as the Court "must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve." Ever since the writing of this passage Jackson has been unfairly faulted for attempting to make himself co-equal with the courts in determining the constitutionality of Congressional legislation. What [Jackson] actually said was that no member of the tripartite government can escape his responsibility to consider the constitutionality of all bills and to vote or act as his good judgment dictates. And, in the matter of the Bank now before him, Jackson did not agree with the Supreme Court. Since the Bank recharter was subject to legislative and executive action, he simply claimed the right to think and act as an independent member of the government." [Robert Vincent Remini, "Andrew Jackson and the Bank War: a study in the growth of presidential power." W. W. Norton & Company, 1967, pp.82-83]
Jackson recognized the doctrine of co-equal branches, a doctrine foreign to most modern "conservative" thinkers. Progressives, on the other hand understand its importance, and are scared silly that the executive and legislative branches will one day step up to the plate and put the Supreme Court in its rightful place.
****************
>>Bull Snipe wrote: "Since when has a justice ever been elected to the Supreme Court?"
That is my point. They have been answerable to no one since the days after Lincoln's reign of tyranny. It is time to put a stop to that madness.
Mr. Kalamata
Article III Sections 1 & 2 of the United States Constitution disagrees with you.
“according to the Supreme Court decision in Texas v. White, secession was illegal.”
Victor’s Justice. One branch of the feral government telling the other two that wrongdoing is good.
Inevitable after the disaster at Appomattox.
This set the stage for the Supreme Court justifying the killing of millions in Roe v Wade.
“according to the Supreme Court decision in Texas v. White, secession was illegal.”
Victor’s Justice. One branch of the feral government telling the other two that wrongdoing is good.
Inevitable after the disaster at Appomattox.
This set the stage for the Supreme Court justifying the killing of millions in Roe v Wade.
Amazing how no matter what the subject of the thread there are always a new Southron fanatic showing up spouting the same moronic opinions on tariffs and Lincoln and what have you claiming they are fact. I wonder where they all come from? Same people using different IDs do you think?
Something in the water..
How do you interpret those sections?
The reason I ask is, we would have to believe the founding fathers were blithering idiots to fight a long, terrible war, and then go through long, trying debates to establish a Constitution, only to hand over the ultimate authority over our liberty and posterity to five unelected government lawyers with life-time tenure. That would be the stupidest act imaginable.
However, that was the doctrine of an arrogant, big-government progressive named Alexander Hamilton:
"Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them." [Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, June 14, 1788, in Bill Bailey, "The Complete Federalist Papers." The New Federalist Papers Project, p.348]
Anyone familiar with the tyrannical history of the courts would have be an absolute moron to believe the courts have been the least dangerous to liberty, as Hamilton pretends. More from Hamilton:
"The interpretation of the laws is the proper and peculiar province of the courts. A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them [the courts] to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents." [Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 78, June 14, 1788, in Bill Bailey, "The Complete Federalist Papers." The New Federalist Papers Project, p.349]
I don't know anyone who believes the Supreme Court considers the Constitution to be fundamental law, or the intention of the people to be sacrosanct. Stare decisis is now the law -- the people and the Constitution be damned.
So, Hamilton's doctrine eventually prevailed, but for a while only in theory. John Marshall, who replaced John Jay as the Chief Justice, was a devout Hamiltonian who truly believed he had the final say over all the laws. However, Thomas Jefferson, state legislatures, members of congress and some presidents considered their opinions just as important as Marshall's, and they were able to suppress the usurpations until after Lincoln showed up. This is Jefferson:
"In denying the right they usurp of exclusively explaining the Constitution, I go further than you do, if I understand rightly your quotation from the Federalist, of an opinion that "the judiciary is the last resort in relation to the other departments of the government, but not in relation to the rights of the parties to the compact under which the judiciary is derived." If this opinion be sound, then indeed is our Constitution a complete felo de se [suicide]. For intending to establish three departments, co-ordinate and independent, that they might check and balance one another, it has given, according to this opinion, to one of them alone, the right to prescribe rules for the government of the others, and to that one too, which is unelected by, and independent of the nation. For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow; that such opinions as the one you combat, sent cautiously out, as you observe also, by detachment, not belonging to the case often, but sought for out of it, as if to rally the public opinion beforehand to their views, and to indicate the line they are to walk in, have been so quietly passed over as never to have excited animadversion, even in a speech of any one of the body entrusted with impeachment. The Constitution, on this hypothesis, is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass. They are inherently independent of all but moral law. My construction of the Constitution is very different from that you quote. It is that each department is truly independent of the others, and has an equal right to decide for itself what is the meaning of the Constitution in the cases submitted to its action; and especially, where it is to act ultimately and without appeal." [To Judge Spencer Roane. Poplar Forest, September 6, 1819., in Thomas Jefferson, "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson Vol 15." Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1903, pp.212-216]
I first became interested in the Judiciary back in the early 1990's, when I read this:
The Two Great Commandments of the Judicial System:
1) Thou shalt fill the halls to the rafters with Case Law.
2) Thou shalt build more halls.
Case Law has usurped the Constitution. It is high time it is banned and thrown into the trash heap of history where it belongs.
Mr. Kalamata
In other words you see the world the way you would like it to be, not the way it is.
Noted.
>>rockrr wrote: “In other words you see the world the way you would like it to be, not the way it is.”
I envision the future of our nation as a Free Republic, in the manner in which it was promised, with usurpers, scoffers, and dead-wood cast out. That is a Biblical vision.
Mr. Kalamata
Jefferson Davis had no use for the judiciary so why is it surprising his fanatics share the same contempt?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.