>>Kalamata wrote: "The constitution is clear that secession is a retained power in that there is no defined authority to suppress it."
>>Joey wrote: "The Constitution says nothing about secession, period.
Exactly! All FEDERAL powers are limited AND DEFINED! The rest belong to the states. The framers even appended an amendment to assist the legally-challenged in interpretation:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
[Amendment 10, Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791, in "Constitution of the United States and Amendments." 1787]
Obviously, the 10th Amendment didn't help Joey's understanding, revealing he is more legally-challenged than most. Perhaps if the framers had also explained that the delegated and prohibited powers are found in Article I, Sections 8 and 9, respectively, it would have been easier for him to understand them?
Naw. The "Joey's" of this nation would have found a way to misconstrue them, no matter what. Frankly, I am beginning to believe Joey is in love with an all-powerful government. He does sing the praises of the ACLU from time to time.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "The constitution is also clear that the use of central government force to present secession is treason."
>>Joey wrote: "And that is pure insanity, nothing else, typical of the way Democrats think & argue. In fact, President Jefferson signed the 1807 Insurrect Act authorizing the President to suppress rebellions."
Rebellion is not secession, Joey, except in the rhetoric of tyrant and their groupies. Besides, I am not referring to the secessionists, who were states within a foreign nation at the time Lincoln invaded. Rather I am referring to Lincoln making war on the state of Maryland to keep them from seceding. That was treason:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."
["Constitution of the United States and Amendments." 1787, Article III, Sect. 3]
A reasonable person could make a case that Lincoln also committed treason when he usurped power to suspend habeas corpus from the Congress, and then used that usurped power to arrest Union citizens at gunpoint without charging them with a crime, and to imprison them without due process.
But there is no doubt Lincoln committed treason against Maryland. All who gave and aid and comfort to Lincoln were also traitors.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Redefining secession as "rebellion" or "insurrection" [doesn't] make the suppression any less treasonous."
>>Joey wrote: "No, no, the truth is the reverse: even if you Democrats try to redefine your rebellion & insurrection as "secession", it remains no less treasonous."
Secession can never be rebellion or insurrection, except in the warped minds of tyrants and their groupies.
Obviously Joey is confused about the definition of 'republican'. I am a devout conservative republican. The laws in a republican form of government are bound by a constitution, not by the ever-changing whims of power-hungry politicians.
The big-government, central-planning progressive policies of the Lincoln administration, became the modern-day policies of the Democrat Party. That explains the love-affair of the progressive-Marxist democrats, like Joey, with Lincoln.
The fact that Marxist "historians," such as Eric "Phony" Foner, are hard-core Lincoln groupies should be a big red flag to all conservatives.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "The Lincoln gang committed treason when he declared martial law in Maryland, and prevented it from from seceding using federal troops."
>>Joey wrote: "That's a total lie because no martial law was imposed in Maryland, or anywhere else, until after Confederates formally declared war against the United States, on May 6, 1861."
Maryland was one of the United States, Joey, and it never made war against it. Rather, Lincoln usurped power from the people and made war against Maryland to strip it of its republican form of government.
The Confederacy was a foreign nation when Lincoln invaded, and could not possibly have committed treason against the United States.
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>>Joey wrote: "These also activated the 1807 Insurrection Act: "Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion."
So? The Confederacy was a foreign nation when Lincoln invaded, and could not possibly have committed insurrection or rebellion.
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>>Joey wrote: "Here is the Maryland sequence of events: After Fort Sumter, on April 27, 1861, Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus along the railroad tracks through Maryland, fearing Marylanders would destroy tracks to prevent Union troop movements to Washington. Two days later, April 29, the Maryland legislature voted 53-13 (four to one) against secession. A week later, May 6, Confederates in Mobile formally declared war against the United States. Two weeks later, Union Gen. "Beast" Butler declared martial law in Maryland. "
As usual, Joey is glossing over Lincoln's tyranny. Lincoln, being a slick trial lawyer and master rhetorician. had an uncanny knack of finding presidential powers in the Constitution that no one had previously noticed. In April of 1861, Lincoln found a previously unknown presidential power to suspend habeas corpus, which he then used to arrest and imprison anyone who opposed his political theory and ambitions, with particular animosity toward those who expressed support for the original construction of the U. S. Constitution. Lincoln's politics had now become the Constitution of the United States, which included a new-found presidential power to charge with treason those who opposed his politics. The Lincoln Constitution of United States, debated and ratified by Abraham Lincoln the instant he was inaugurated, had become the Supreme Law of the Land in 1861.
Fact: Lincoln formally declared war against the South on April 19, 1861 (less than a week after the Fort Sumter surrender) when he ordered the blockade of Southern ports.
Fact: By blockading Southern ports, Lincoln was either admitting the Confederacy was a foreign power, or admitting to his own treason. Take your pick.
Fact: Maryland legislators were threatened to avoid debating the issue of secession, or else; so naturally the majority secessionists eventually lost the vote:
"As the troops were landing, the shaken [Unionist Governor] Hicks signed a proclamation calling for a special session of the [Maryland] state legislature in Annapolis the following Friday, the one act the secessionists had tried for months to get him to do. Hicks" has turned traitor," wrote Horace Greeley when he heard the news. [Brigadier General Benjamin] Butler felt the same way and he decided to make this session of the legislature his personal responsibility. [Butler] told the governor that if Hicks recommended any discussion of secession in his message to the legislature, he would arrest him and if the legislature discussed it he would disperse the body, or better still, lock them all up. Hicks assured him that he had no intention of bringing up the subject and said he would never permit the great seal of Maryland to be affixed to any ordinance of secession. As proof of his intention he turned the great seal over to Butler and the latter held it during the entire session. Yet Butler's overbearing attitude convinced Hicks that an explosion would occur if the legislature met at Annapolis and he transferred the meeting place to Frederick, a town some fifty miles west of Baltimore and fairly well up in Union country. The enraged Butler was unable to do anything about it…
"It was on Monday, three days after the riots, that Governor Hicks finally gave in to the pressure from the secessionists and called a special session of the legislature. Ten Baltimore seats in the house of delegates had previously been declared vacant by the Maryland General Assembly as a result of election-day violence, and the secessionists in Baltimore determined to fill these seats with their own men. A States Rights convention was immediately called together on Monday night and candidates were nominated for a special election to be held just two days later. None of these men was a politician and in the midst of all the secessionist excitement no Union slate was even nominated. For this was destined to be perhaps the only election in American history in which every man who was nominated was elected and every man who was elected went to prison or into exile shortly afterward…"
[Dean Sprague, "Freedom under Lincoln." Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965, pp.23, 28-29]
Read carefully that last highlighted sentence; now read what happened to one of those new legislators, and also to a Maryland Militia Lieutenant:
"On May 14, when the special session of the legislature ended, Winans dutifully sent a telegram to his family in Baltimore that he would arrive by train that afternoon. The telegram was intercepted at Relay House and when his train arrived there a Union officer boarded it, went up to Mr. Winans, and told him to consider himself a prisoner. The governor and other legislators on the train protested vehemently but were only told he was being arrested for treason. Winans was held at Relay House until midnight and then forwarded to Annapolis. The next day he was sent to Fort McHenry in Baltimore…
"Ross Winans had been fortunate enough to get in and out of prison so fast that the judicial hierarchy did not become involved. But the case of John Merryman was different. The Pennsylvania militia had a special distaste for Merryman. As a lieutenant in the Maryland militia, Merryman had reconnoitered them during their brief stay at Cockeysville during the insurrection, and with his Baltimore County Horse Guards he had followed them when they retreated to the north. Later, when Pennsylvania troops had occupied the entire railroad line from Harrisburg to Baltimore, Major General William Keim, their commanding officer, decided the time had come to strike at treason. He called in Lieutenant Abel and told him to take some troops, arrest Merryman, and send him to Fort McHenry…" [Ibid. pp. 37-39]
Now Joey's spin:
>>Joey wrote: "On May 25 John Merryman was arrested and on May 28 a federal circuit court (pro-slavery, crazy Roger Taney presiding), ruled such arrests unconstitutional. Lincoln ignored Taney's ruling and the ruling was not supported by either the Supreme Court or Congress."
Joey is lying. Lincoln usurped power from the Congress when he suspended habeas corpus, which was the most dangerous usurpation of power against the citizens of the United States in its history. Chief Justice Taney followed the Constitution in his ruling, and, yet, Joey, always playing the role of the big-government progressive, misdirects by throwing an ad hominem at the judge, rather than condemning his tyrannical, big-government, white supremacist hero, Abraham Lincoln. That argument by Joey is the kind of craziness that no conservative can justify.
This is Sprague's historical narrative about Chief Justice Taney:
"The entire city of Baltimore started to buzz when it learned of the Merryman arrest. Although he had many friends who might have interceded with the authorities, Merryman decided to seek legal relief. A petition for a writ of habeas corpus was sent to the United States district court in Baltimore. As it happened, this court was in the circuit of Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Taney was eighty-four years old, having been appointed to the Supreme Court by Andrew Jackson a quarter of a century earlier as a reward for helping Jackson break up the national bank. A Marylander by birth, he had lived many years in Baltimore, and was a strong believer in States Rights. He had written the Dred Scott decision in 1857 which held it unconstitutional for Congress to outlaw slavery in the territories. He was, above all, not a man to be cowed by military authority.
"Taney issued the writ of habeas corpus, commanding General Cadwalader to appear before him at 11 o 'clock on May 27, bringing "the body of John Merryman... now in your custody." But Cadwalader refused, and said he had been authorized to suspend the writ of habeas corpus by the President of the United States. He added, "This is a high and delicate trust and it has been enjoined upon him that it should be executed with judgment and discretion.... He [Cadwalader] most respectfully submits for your consideration that those who should co-operate in the present trying and painful position in which our country is placed should not by reason of unnecessary want of confidence in each other increase our embarrassments. He therefore respectfully requests that you will postpone further action upon this case until he can receive instructions from the President of the United States when you shall hear further from him" At the same time, Cadwalader sent a message to Washington outlining his problem and asking for instructions. But Taney would countenance no delay. He immediately ordered the United States marshal to bring General Cadwalader to court "to answer for his contempt." The marshal was denied admission to Fort McHenry and returned to inform Taney that he could not execute the writ. The executive had defied the judiciary and Taney resolved to demand redress.
"In one of the supreme moments of drama in American judicial history. Justice Taney appeared in court on May 28, 1861, to hurl his defiance at President Lincoln. He was greatly admired in Baltimore and as he approached the crowded courthouse, leaning on the arm of his grandson, the citizens silently lifted their hats and opened a path for him. With great dignity, this veteran of innumerable legal battles took his seat on the bench and slowly began reading an opinion to be known ever afterward as Ex parte Merryman. As elaborated in greater detail shortly afterward, it was to serve as the basic source document for all who opposed the policy of repression throughout the war. The President, he said, had usurped the power to suspend the writ of habeas corpus from Congress, and he cited many precedents in support of this belief. He said that the Constitution had been drawn up after a war against the tyranny of the British sovereign and it did not give the President "more regal and absolute power over the liberty of the citizens than the people of England would have thought it safe to intrust to the Crown." And even if the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus was suspended by act of Congress, there would still be no authority to hold a man indefinitely without trial. The Constitution provides that "in all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,... and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense. ' The basic intent of the Constitution, according to Taney, was being subverted when President Lincoln authorized the arbitrary arrest of persons such as Merryman.
"But even more flagrant, in his opinion, was the manner in which the action was carried out. For the military authorities had gone far beyond the mere suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. This military force "has by force of arms thrust aside the judicial authorities and officers to whom the Constitution has confided the power and duty of interpreting and administering the laws and substituted a military government in its place to be administered and executed by military officers, for at the time these proceedings were held against John Merryman the district judge of Maryland —the commissioner appointed under the act of Congress — the district attorney and the marshal all reside in the city of Baltimore a few miles only from the home of the prisoner.... And yet under these circumstances a military officer stationed in Pennsylvania without giving any information to the district attorney and without any application to the judicial authorities assumes to himself the judicial power in the district of Maryland; undertakes to decide what constitutes the crime of treason or rebellion; what evidence (if indeed he required any) is sufficient to support the accusation and justify the commitment; and commits the party without having a hearing even before himself to close custody in a strongly-garrisoned fort to be there held it would seem during the pleasure of those who committed him."
"The President, he said, "does not faithfully execute the laws if he takes upon himself the legislative power by suspending the writ of habeas corpus — and the judicial power also by arresting and imprisoning a person without due process of law." He concluded that in such a case his duty was too plain to be mistaken. "I have exercised all the power which the Constitution and laws confer on me but that power has been resisted by a force too strong for me to overcome." He therefore ordered that his opinion be filed and a copy of it transmitted under seal to the President of the United States, where it would remain "with that officer in fulfillment of his constitutional obligation to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed.'"
[Ibid. pp. 39-43]
So, what happened next? Taney was threatened with arrest. Merriman languished in prison for a while, but was eventually released and never brought to trial.
"Taney said that he knew his own imprisonment had been under consideration by the Lincoln Administration. In this he was probably correct. The newspapers were filled with stories of the imminent arrest of Taney. Horace Greeley's New York Tribune reported that Taney might "suddenly find himself in the embraces of the strong arm of that same military power which he is so defiant of. It may be necessary to teach him... that a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States can be just as obnoxious to the laws against treason as John Merryman can be." But the danger passed and Taney was not arrested."
[Ibid. p. 43]
Greeley was just as annoyed with the limitations in the Constitution as Lincoln; and, yet, according to Joey, Taney was the bad guy for not sheepishly relinquishing his constitutionally-authorized position to a power-hungry mad-man.
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>>Joey wrote: "When Congress returned in July it took up the Habeas Corpus issue, debated at length and eventually authorized Lincoln to withhold it."
The Congress was packed with pro-crony-capitalism, pro-central-planning "republicans" who rubber-stamped any power Lincoln decided to add to his new Lincoln Constitution. I wonder if the remaining democrats were intimidated by Lincoln's thuggery? Just askin' . . .
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>>Joey wrote: "In the meantime, the Confederate Congress without much debate authorized Jefferson Davis to withhold Habeas Corpus, which he did, frequently."
That is a common lie spread by the Lincoln cultists. Davis relied on the Congress to authorize the suspension, which occurred only infrequently, and then for non-sweeping purposes. Lincoln, on the other hand, had Hitler-like power. He could do as he pleased, and he did.
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>>Joey wrote: "In September 1861, 1/3 of Maryland legislators, considered pro-Confederate, were arrested and held."
Now we are getting somewhere. Obviously those legislators, who had sworn an oath to the U.S. Constitution, were not aware it had been superseded by the new Lincoln Constitution, written by the devil himself.
Did Joey mention that U.S. Congressman Henry May was also arrested? How about the mayor of Baltimore? How about newspaper editors and publishers?
Wait until you hear about the progressive-style suppression of Maryland votes in the November 1861 election.
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>>Joey wrote: "That ratio of Marylanders supporting the Union roughly two to one is also confirmed by Maryland enlistments in the Union vs. Confederate armies."
Joey's numbers are always deceptive. Maryland supported the right of the secessionists; and if Maryland had been allowed to exercise their natural and Constitutional right to secede, rather than being oppressed by Lincoln's thuggery, those numbers would have been reversed, and moreso, providing Joey's numbers are accurate in the first place, which is always in doubt.
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>>Joey wrote: "In February 1862 Lincoln ordered such prisoners released, ending court challenges at the time. Sources: here, here, here, and here."
What a nice guy.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "Once it is understood that the entire constitution resides in Article I, Section 4, the interpretation becomes less cloudy.
I meant, Article I, Section 8.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "These are the clauses under which Lincoln committed treason:"
>>Joey wrote: "Here again, like any good Democrat, Kalamata simply imposes his own fantasies on Constitutional language which was never intened to support them."
Like all devout progressives, Joey treats the Constitution like a McDonald's Menu, when he is not using it for toilet paper.
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>>Kalamata wrote: "If a state believes the tax system is over-burdensome, or unequally distributed, it is within the power of that state, and is even their duty, to secede. Without that power, and the exercise of that power, there is no check on the power of the central government."
>>Joey wrote: "Here our Olive-boy bends & twists James Madison's words into meanings Madison himself never intended. How do we know that for sure? Because Madison tells us:
>>Joey quoting Madison: "...the compact being among individuals as imbodied into States, no State can at pleasure release itself therefrom, and set up for itself. The compact can only be dissolved by the consent of the other parties, or by usurpations or abuses of power justly having that effect. It will hardly be contended that there is anything in the terms or nature of the compact, authorizing a party to dissolve it at pleasure."
I previously stated that Joey treats the Constitution like a McDonald's Menu. Now we have front-and-center evidence that he also treats the letters of the Founding Fathers like a McDonald's Menu. In sentence 2, clause 2, Madison confirms my interpretation, when he states:
"The compact can only be dissolved by the consent of the other parties, or by usurpations or abuses of power justly having that effect."
Madison states that usurpations or abuses of power JUSTLY have the same effect as the consent of the other parties. Therefore, when Lincoln usurped powers from the states, he effectively gave consent to secession by those whose powers were being usurped.
More Madison:
"[T]his assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a national, but a federal act..."
"Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules have been adopted."
"Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a federal, and not a national constitution."
[James Madison, Federalist No. 39, in Bailey, Bill, "The Complete Federalist Papers." The New Federalist Papers Project, p.178]
So much for crazy-Lincoln's "Union of the whole people" deception.
Lincoln name-dropped the Declaration from time to time in order to trick people into believing he was sincere and patriotic; but he always ignored these key points:
"that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes"
A quarter-century of one-sided protective tariffs that transferred vast amounts of wealth from the South to the North, which was then used for corrupt, crony-capitalist infrastructure projects – IN THE NORTH – could not be considered by any sane person as a light and transient cause! So, what was the remedy?
"when a long train of abuses and usurpations... reduce(s) them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security
Like I said, it was not only the right of the states to secede, but their DUTY!
It is not rocket science, Joey, but a concept difficult to grasp by those wired to be bullies.
Mr. Kalamata