Posted on 12/21/2004 7:01:52 AM PST by cougar_mccxxi
Parting Company Is An Option
by Walter E. Williams
My last essay in Ideas On Liberty, "How Did We Get Here?", provided clear evidence that Congress, the White House, as well as the Courts, had vastly exceeded powers delegated to them by our Constitution. To have an appreciation for the magnitude of the usurpation, one need only read Federalist Paper 45, where James Madison the acknowledged father of our Constitution explained, "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State Governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."
Short of some kind of cataclysmic event liberties lost are seldom regained but there is an outside chance to regain them if enough liberty-minded Americans were to pursue Free State Project's proposal to set up New Hampshire as a free state. Free State Project (www.freestateproject.org) intends to get 20,000 or so Americans to become residents of New Hampshire. Through a peaceful political process they hope to assume leadership in the state's legislature and executive offices and reduce burdensome taxation and regulation, reform state and local law, end federal mandates that violate the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and restore constitutional federalism as envisioned by the nation's Founders.
Since there is only a remote possibility of successful negotiation with Congress, the Courts and White House to obey the U.S. Constitution, it is my guess that liberty could only realized by a unilateral declaration of independence - namely, part company - in a word secede. While our Constitution is silent about secession, there is clear evidence that our Founders saw it as an option.
On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, Senator James R. Doolittle (WI) proposed a constitutional amendment that said, "No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States." Several months earlier Representatives Daniel E. Sickles (NY), Thomas B. Florence (PA) and Otis S. Ferry (CT) proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. One is immediately faced with the question: would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional? There's more evidence. The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers.
There's more evidence. At the 1787 constitutional convention a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it saying, "A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."
Professor Thomas DiLorenzo, in his revised The Real Lincoln, provides abundant evidence in the forms of quotations from our Founders and numerous newspaper accounts that prove that Americans always took the right of secession for granted. Plus, secession was not an idea that had its origins in the South. Infuriated by Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, the first secessionist movement started in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and other New England states.
The preponderance of evidence shows that states have a right to secede. The Constitution probably would have never been ratified if the states, sovereign nations as per the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the war of independence with Great Britain, did not believe they had a right to secede. The only barrier to secession is the brute force of the federal government as witnessed by the costly War of 1861 that produced only one decent result - the elimination of slavery. Since the issue of secession was brutally settled, it left a devastating legacy for future generations of Americans. The federal government is free to run roughshod over the restrictions and safeguards the Framers imposed on the federal government.
Self-determination is a human right we all should respect. If some people want socialism that is their right but it is not their right to use force to make others who wish to be left alone be part of it. By the same token, liberty-minded Americans have no right to impose their will on socialist-minded Americans. A far more peaceful method is for each to simply part company.
One wonders whether the brutality witnessed in 1861 would be repeated if New Hampshire seceded - massive troops along with today's deadly modern military equipment and Americans killing Americans.
Walter E. Williams Ideas on Liberty #25 February 26, 2004
Based on what rule of law?
Ah Colt .45. Clueless as ever.
Please explain to me how a US Fortification on Southern soil in 1861, with no treaty recognizing it by the Confederate Government AS AN AUTHORIZED FOREIGN MILITARY FORTIFICATION was legally exempted from being fired upon?
I guess it isn't, if you are out to start a war. Which is what the Davis regime did.
No, it was Lincoln's attempts to re-supply and reinforce the fort which were the cause of it. Being fired upon was only the effect. But then the Yankees always played by two sets of rules. One for themselves, and a completely different set for everyone else. Now days we call this type the liberal left.
The confederate forces had been firing at anything flying the U.S. flag long before Lincoln's resupply effort. On at least two prior occasions they had tried to initiate hosilities by firing on unarmed ships. In the end, they came to the conclusion that the only way to get their war was to bombard the fort itself.
Concurring bump.
BTTT.
Notice that author Williams is at George Mason University. Mason was one of the greatest of the Antifederalists, as were Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry. Also, for a long time, John Hancock of Massachusetts, although the Federalists finally won him over (having made winning him over a major project).
Overcharacterization for polemical effect -- how well you do it.
The Southerners were concerned only with the possibility -- the probability (about which they guessed aright) that Lincoln had been lying to them and would attempt to reinforce the garrison with more troops. He did.
In the end, they came to the conclusion that the only way to get their war was to bombard the fort itself.
Oh, I'm sorry, but "getting their war" was Lincoln's purpose -- and will you insist I quote Lincoln's personal secretary, John Nicolay, to you to prove it?
Starting a war was Lincoln's idea. I think he wanted a war all along --ever since 1856, when he finally concluded that there was no constitutional way to abolish slavery. (So, he decided on an unconstitutional one -- a civil war.)
Thank you for your support! Non-Sequential will always try to attempt to re-establish some moral high ground where there is none.
Yeah we do. Now try telling that to all the Bush suckups and Big Stupid Government Excusers here on FR.
I'm sick of this BS government.
To keep the equities of the American Civil War straight, it's only necessary to remember a) there was no rebellion, b) there was no insurrection, c) the People, not their servant officeholders, are Sovereign and answer only to the ineffable Who Am, and d) who invaded whom.
Everything else is excuses and eyewash -- excuses for killing 620,000 men in the field, and almost a million people overall, over politics.
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence. "
Art4 Sec4 U.S. Constitution
I think you have a point.
Brewing up a pot of Columbian and can't wait to dive into dessert for breakfast!
God Bless Walter Williams and Merry Christmas BTTT
They had fired on the Star of the West and the Rhoda Shannon.
The Southerners were concerned only with the possibility -- the probability (about which they guessed aright) that Lincoln had been lying to them and would attempt to reinforce the garrison with more troops. He did.
It didn't have to happen. Lincoln's intentions to reinforce only if the resupply effort was opposed was made cleart to Governor Pickens and Major Anderson.
Starting a war was Lincoln's idea. I think he wanted a war all along --ever since 1856, when he finally concluded that there was no constitutional way to abolish slavery. (So, he decided on an unconstitutional one -- a civil war.)
Overcharacterization for polemical effect -- you do it well yourself. Ending slavery was never an overriding goal of the Union. Preserving it was an overriding goal of the confederacy.
Moral high ground? Are you claiming the moral high ground for the Davis regime? Once again we see where Colt .22 insists on laying blame everywhere except where it is due.
The southron myth machine at work yet again. Yes, there was a rebellion. Yes there was an insurrection. Whatever the hell 'c' means. You don't invade your own country so nobody invaded anyone.
When you don't have a Constitutional government in America, you have, in essence, a shadow of a government.
Watch the shadows...
One of those things FReepers never seem to get sick of.
But defense of the institution of slavery was by far the single most important reason why the south began the War of Southern Rebellion in the first place.
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