Posted on 12/24/2003 10:30:18 AM PST by Grand Old Partisan
You would have felt better about it if they had waited for the swearing-in ceremony?
the rebels were the ones trashing the Constitution
How so? Shelby Foote has said that if the states had thought that they were locking themselves into the union by becoming states, they never would have signed on. I don't see any provision in the constitution that allows one state to coerce another into the union, or allow the federal govt the right to force any state into the union.
You keep saying this but you offer no evidence to support it. But I think they did the honorable thing in that if they did not agree with the constitution as it was then being interpreted, they opted out of the union. I mean, if you don't like the rules of the game, take your toys and leave the sandbox. Makes sense to me.
Simply not true. President Lincoln preserved the government bequeathed us by the Framers.
Consider this letter from Madison to Washington:
From Letters and Other Writings of James Madison,. New York: R. Worthington, 1884. 287-290.
To General Washington
New York, April 16th, 1787
Dear Sir,--I have been honored with your letter of the 31 March, and find, with much pleasure, that your views of the reform which ought to be pursued by the Convention give a sanction to those I entertained. Temporizing applications will dishonor the councils which propose them, and may foment the internal malignity of the disease, at the same time that they produce an ostensible palliation of it. Radical attempts, although unsuccessful, will at least justify the authors of them.
Having been lately led to revolve the subject which is to undergo the discussion of the Convention, and formed some outlines of a new system, I take the liberty of submitting them without apology to your eye.
Conceiving that an individual independence of the States is utterly irreconcilable with their aggregate sovereignty, and that a consolidation of the whole into one simple republic would be as inexpedient as it is unattainable, I have sought for middle ground, which may at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and not exclude the local authorities wherever they can be subordinately useful.
I would propose as the groundwork, that a change be made in the principle of representation. According to the present form of the Union, in which the intervention of the States is in all great cases necessary to effectuate the measures of Congress, an equality of suffrage does not destroy the inequality of importance in the several members. No one will deny that Virginia and Massachusetts have more weight and influence, both within and without Congress, than Delaware or Rhode Island. Under a system which would operate in many essential points without the intervention of the State legislatures, the case would be materially altered. A vote in the national Councils from Delaware would then have the same effect and value as one from the largest State in the Union. I am ready to believe that such a change would not be attended with much difficulty. A majority of the States, and those of greatest influence, will regard it as favorable to them. To the northern States it will be recommended by their present populousness; to the Southern, by their expected advantage in this respect. The lesser States must in every event yield to the predominant will. But the consideration which particularly urges a change in the representation is, that it will obviate the principal objections of the larger States to the necessary concessions of power.
I would propose next, that in addition to the present federal powers, the national Government should be armed with positive and complete authority in all cases which require uniformity; such as the regulation of trade, including the right of taxing both exports and imports, the fixing the terms and forms of naturalization, &c., &c.
Over and above this positive power, a negative in all cases whatsoever on the Legislative acts of the States, as heretofore exercised by the Kingly prerogative, appears to me to be absolutely necessary, and to be the least possible encroachment on the State jurisdictions. Without this defensive power, every positive power that can be given on paper will be evaded or defeated. The States will continue to invade the National jurisdiction, to violate treaties, and the law of nations, and to harass each other with rival and spiteful measures dictated by mistaken views of interest. . . .
The national supremacy ought also to be extended, as I conceive, to the Judiciary departments. If those who are to expound and apply the laws are connected by their interests and their oaths with the particular States wholly, and not with the Union, the participation of the Union in the making of the laws may be possibly rendered unavailing. It seems at least necessary that the oaths of the Judges should include a fidelity to the general as well as local Constitution, and that an appeal should lie to some National tribunal in all cases to which foreigners or inhabitants or other States may be parties. The admiralty jurisdiction seems to fall entirely within the purview of the National Government.
The National supremacy in the Executive departments is liable to some difficulty, unless the officers administering them could be made appointable by the Supreme Government. The Militia ought certainly to be placed, in some form or other, under the authority which is entrusted with the general protection and defense.
A Government composed of such extensive powers should be well organized and balanced. The legislative department might be divided into two branches; one of them chosen every. . .years, by the people at large, or by the Legislatures; the other to consist of fewer members, to hold their places for a longer term, and to go out in such rotation as always to leave in office a large majority of old members. Perhaps the negative on the laws might be most conveniently exercised by this branch. As a further check, a Council of revision, including the great ministerial officers, might be superadded.
A National Executive must also be provided. I have scarcely ventured, as yet, to form my own opinion either of the manner in which it ought to be constituted, or of the authorities with which it ought to be clothed. An article should be inserted expressly guaranteeing the tranquility of the States against internal as well as external dangers.
In like manner the right of coercion should be expressly declared. With the resources of commerce in hand, the National administration might always find means of exerting it either by sea or land. But the difficulty and awkwardness of operating by force on the collective will of a State render it particularly desirable that the necessity of it might be precluded. Perhaps the negative on the laws might create such a mutuality of dependence between the general and particular authorities as to answer this purpose. Or, perhaps, some defined objects of taxation might be submitted, along with commerce, to the general authority.
To give a new system its proper validity and energy, a ratification must be obtained from the people, and not merely from the ordination of the Legislatures. This will be the more essential, as inroads on the existing Constitutions of the States will be unavoidable."
Walt
Traitors need to be provoked.
Walt
Because it denies the supremacy of federal law as expressed in the Supremacy Clause.
Walt
I would prefer to be thought child-like rather than a tyrant drunk on power and bent on subjecting the unwilling to my desires.
Your interpretaion of that clause is definitey counter to several other clauses in that same Constitution.
Clauses I.2.3, I.9.1, IV.1, IV.3.2
And of course Article VII The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.
Note it says between the states. One would think that 9 states would also have the right to abbrogate that Constitution between them.
So what?
It takes power to throw down the lawful government and establish a new nation. The rebels were just a dissatisfied minority.
Eric Rudolf was on the run longer than SC claimed independence.
But I was talking about power.
Bruce Catton calls the south "almost helpless".
"To buy at home or abroad the the goods the army needed was one thing; to move them to the places where the army wanted them was quite another. Lacking a financial and industrial system equal to the demands of a large war, the South lacked also a proper transportation system. It had many railroads but no real railroad network, because hardly any of its railroads had been built with through traffic in mind.
Most of them had been conceived of as feeder lines, to move cotton to the wharves at river towns or at seaports...this handicap, to be sure, existed also in the north, but there it was not so serious. It had been recognized earlier, and it was being removed; and the significant point was that in the North it -could- be removed, and in the South, it could not.
The South was almost helpless in this respect. Nearly all its locomotives, spikes, car wheels, car bodies annd other items of equipment had come from the north...
As the nation's need for an adequate transportation increased, the system wuld grow weaker and weaker, and there was no earthly help for it....these problems , indeed, were so grave and pointed so surely towards final defeat that one is faced to wonder how the founding fathers of the Confederacy could possibly have overlooked them. The answer perhaps is that the problems were not so much unseen as uncomprehended. At bottom they were Yankee problems; concerns of the broker, the money changer, the trader, the mechanic, the grasping man of business; they were matters that such people would think of, not matters that would command the attention of aristocrats who who were familiar with valor, the classics and heroric atttitudes. Secession itself had involved a flight from reality rather than an approach to it....Essentially, this was the reliance of a group that knew little of the modern world but which did not know nearly enough and could never understand that it did not know enough. It ran exactly parallel to Mr. Davis's magnificent statement that the duration of the war could be left up to the enemy--the war would go on until the enemy gave up, and it did not matter how far off that day might be.
The trouble was it did matter. It mattered enormously."
--The Coming Fury, p. 438-439, by Bruce Catton
"Alone in the south, Baltimore had the capital, expertise, and tooling to remake the southern rails as fast as they wore out (or were blown up). So too, alone in the South, Baltimore had the resources to create ironclad vessels up to Yankee standards. Instead, this pivotal slave-holding city boosted the Union's powerful advantage....In contrast, under the crushing Civil War tasks of moving gigantic quantities of food, troops and military equipment, Confederate railroads succumed faster than Confederate troops. By midwar, an aid to he Confederacy's western commander lamented that, "locomotives had not been repaired for six months, and many of them lay disabled." The colonel knew "not one place in the South where a driving-wheel can be made, and not one where a whole locomotive can be constructed."
--The South vs. The South, p. 63-64 by William W. Freehling
Oh well, at least the South Carolinians were not reduced to rooting around in garbage dumps like Rudolf was.
Walt
DECLARATION OF THE CAUSES WHICH JUSTIFY THE SECESSION OF SOUTH CAROLINA FROM THE FEDERAL UNION.
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