Posted on 12/24/2003 10:30:18 AM PST by Grand Old Partisan
Abraham Lincoln, with his son Tad in tow, walked around Richmond, Virginia, one day 138 years ago, and if you try to retrace their steps today you won't see much that they saw, which shouldn't be a surprise, of course. The street grid is the same, though, and if you're in the right mood and know what to look for, the lineaments of the earlier city begin to surface, like the outline of a scuttled old scow rising through the shallows of a pond. Among the tangle of freeway interchanges and office buildings you'll come across an overgrown park or a line of red-brick townhouses, an unlikely old belltower or a few churches scattered from block to block, dating to the decades before the Civil War and still giving off vibrations from long ago.
THE WAR IS OVER!
REPEAT!
THE WAR IS OVER!
Get a grip!
Let's get the dates and see the timeline. April 12 Sumter is attacked. April 19th the troops marching through Baltimore are attacked by Southern sympathizers. Do you think those Federal troops were just going to sit in Washington D.C.? The people in Baltimore that attacked them seemed to be better at putting two and two together than you...
What country would he treat with. Neither the Lincoln administration or the Buchanan administration, nor any other country on the planet recognized an entity called the Confederate States of America.
Again, following Madison, unilateral secession is nothing but revolution. Under our founding principles, revolution is morally justified only when faced with oppression. Not even the most radical fire-eaters claimed the federal government was oppressing any southern state. They simply claimed a fictious right to secede for whatever damn reason they felt like. You don't negotiate treaties with non-governments, and you don't give the freaking time of day to rebels.
If the south felt it so damn necessary to secede, they should have taken it up with Congress and the Courts. They would have likely had success. Instead they took to their guns, and they lost all.
Was that actually an answer to my question? Can you provide me the Article, Section, and Clause which you assert the President would violate for acknowledging the soveriegnty of a State?
So, Taiwan doesn't have a government because some other government says so? Elections, the establishment of laws, these don't matter. It's approval from foreign entitites? If tomorrow the world withdrew diplomatic recognition from the United States, would we cease to have a country? Interesting corner you're painting yourself into with this line of reasoning.
"His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states"
What about free, sovereign and or independent do you not get?
Under our founding principles, revolution is morally justified only when faced with oppression.
"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 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."
Hmmm, don't see the part where it says they need the permission of an external Congress representing other people.
They simply claimed a fictious right to secede for whatever damn reason they felt like.
Fictious? The Declaration of Independence makes interesting 'fiction.'
I outlined their reasons earlier, but what the hell:
"The Southern States now stand exactly in the same position towards the Northern States that the Colonies did towards Great Britain. The Northern States, having the majority in Congress, claim the same power of omnipotence in legislation as the British Parliament. "The General Welfare," is the only limit to the legislation of either; and the majority in Congress, as in the British Parliament, are the sole judges of the expediency of the legislation this "General Welfare" requires. Thus, the Government of the United States has become a consolidated Government; and the people of the Southern States are compelled to meet the very despotism their fathers threw off in the Revolution of 1776."
"The consolidation of the Government of Great Britain over the Colonies, was attempted to be carried out by the taxes. The British Parliament undertook to tax the Colonies, to promote British interests. Our fathers resisted this pretension. They claimed the right of self-taxation through their Colonial Legislatures. They were not represented in the British Parliament, and, therefore, could not rightly be taxed by its Legislation. The British Government, however, offered them a representation in Parliament; but it was not sufficient to enable them to protect themselves from the majority, and they refused it. Between taxation without any representation, and taxation without a representation adequate to protection, there was no difference. In neither case would the Colonies tax themselves. Hence, they refused to pay the taxes laid by the British Parliament."
"And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British Parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States, have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North."
Omigod (or should it be Ohmygawd?) a spelling flame? You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel now.
"Sovereignty in government is that public authority which directs or orders what is to be done by each member associated in relation to the end of the association. It is the supreme power by which any citizen is governed and is the person or body of persons in the state to whom there is politically no superior. The necessary existence of the state and that right and power which necessarily follow is "sovereignty." By "sovereignty" in its largest sense is meant supreme, absolute, uncontrollable power, the absolute right to govern. The word which by itself comes nearest to being the definition of "sovereignty" is will or volition as applied to political affairs."
Now, I ask ugin, can you provide me the Article, Section, and Clause which you assert the President would violate for acknowledging the sovereignty of a State?
It's not mine, it's Black's, but notwithstanding that, is your assertion that the Supremacy Clause precludes the President from recognizing secession and independence? The Supremacy clause simply said federal law (and the Constitution) hold precedence to State law in the event of conflict between them. So tell me, what part of the Constitution (or federal law) did secession violate?
An office seeker came to see Lincoln after he had become president, saying: "I'd like you to appoint me Consul General to Paris."
"I'm sorry.", said Lincoln, "That position is already taken."
"Well then, I'd like to be appointed Ambassador to Great Britain."
"Unfortunately that job has been filled as well."
"Well then, I'd like to be made Chief Customs Inspector for the Port of New Orleans".
"That job has also been filled".
"In that case", said the man, "Can you please lend me a used pair of pants".
(I have reproduced this story from memory as I can't find it online.)
In our eyes, probably not. But if we wanted to negotiate a treaty with anyone then who would we deal with? Ourselves?
The members of the Maryland legislature were arrested in September 1861, months after the Maryland legislature had originally voted against secession and months after the southern states had launched their rebellion and started the war. In other words, they wanted to join the forces currently fighting the government. And you are surprised that they were arrested?
How did he decide he could eliminate habeus corpus and start dismantling State governments?
The Constitution allows habeas corpus to be suspended in times of rebellion or invasion. And the Maryland state government was not dismantled, but continued its work without the threat of rebellion from members of the legislature.
President Lincoln fought the war initiated by the Davis regime when they fired on the federal facility at Sumter.
If they hadn't fired on the fort in Charleston harbor then the south may have succeeded. There was no support in Congress or in the population as a whole for using force to keep the south from leaving. But all that changed when the Davis regime resorted to war to gain their point. Since the regime chose war then as near as I can tell your whole problem is that your side lose. Maybe they should have tried harder?
You mean the victor gets to write the history and the loser gets to write the myths. And there is no greater myth-making machine than the 'lost cause' fanatics.
Did he comment on how those editorials changed once the south resorted to shooting their way out of the Union?
The author of that document later said:
"The right of the people of a single State to absolve themselves at will, and without the consent of the other States, from their most solemn obligations, and hazard the liberties and happiness of the millions composing this Union, cannot be acknowledged. Such authority is believed to be utterly repugnant, both to the principles upon which the General Government is constituted, and to the objects which it was expressly formed to attain." - Thomas Jefferson"
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