Posted on 02/17/2006 5:47:19 PM PST by Mobile Vulgus
I don't know how many of you get the Federalist Patriot report via email, but it is a great source of conservative news and opinion that all of you should get.
You can find their site at:
http://patriotpost.us/
Anyway, even though I support them, they sent out an email today that bashed Abe Lincoln fiercely. I was so moved to annoyance by their biased and ill thought out email that I had to write them and say how disappointed I was.
You can go to their site and see the anti-Lincoln screed that they put out to know exactly what I am replying to if you desire to do so.
Now, I know some of you freepers are primo confederate apologists so I thought this would stir debate on freerepublic!!
Now, let the fur fly as we KNOW it must...
No mention of "seniority clause". The Articles of Confederation were replaced by the Constitution, no?
You can argue that the "prepetual union" clause of the Articles became meaningless with the adoption of the Constitution, or you can argue that the states admitted to the union after the adoption of the constitution have no duty to abide by a clause that were not party to, but you can not logically argue both at the same time.
Pick one.
The Presidential Oath references the Constitution, not the Articles of Confederation.
I'm not sure where the "seniority" clause or all the other questions are coming from. We should easily agree that the Constition is the document for discussion, not the Articles of Confederation. To claim states like Florida, Alabama, etc do not adhere to the Articles of Confederation is disingenuous.
Dr. Jaffa observes that there can be no constitutional process that presents a state majority to lawfully nullify the acts of the federal Union within the boundaries of its delegated powers. There can be, in other words, no right to destroy the Constitution. So how could Stephens make the claim that the right of secession had been widely accepted before 1860? Only by conflating the natural right of revolution with the supposed constitutional right of secession.
For instance, Stephens invokes none other than Abraham Lincoln to support his thesis regarding the right of secession. He cites Lincoln's assertion in a speech of January 12, 1848, that any people, any where, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing Government, and form a new one that suits them better…Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. But Stephens is being disingenuous. Lincoln is not invoking a constitutional right to destroy the Union but the natural right of revolution, an inalienable right clearly expressed in the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln never denied this right. As he said in his First Inaugural of 1861. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." But the people's right to revolution is in tension with the president's constitutional "duty…to administer the present government, as it came into his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor."
Again, Lincoln was merely reiterating the commonly accepted political opinions of his predecessors. In the aforementioned "Proclamation to the People of South Carolina," Jackson said, "secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right is confounding the meaning of terms…." (emphasis added). But despite claiming to be the true heirs of the American Founding, the seceding states never invoked the right of revolution that Jackson, Webster, Lincoln, and others acknowledged. Why not?
The main reason was that while the Founders understood the right of revolution to be an inalienable natural right of individuals antecedent to political society, Calhoun, the architect of the theory of State sovereignty used to justify secession expressly repudiated the idea of individual inalienable natural rights. Calhoun dismissed the fundamental idea of the American Founding — that "all men are created equal" — as the "most false and dangerous of all political errors." Given the large slave population of the South, this denial of the inalienable natural rights of individuals, including the right of revolution, was no doubt prudent.
Secession constitutes a repudiation of republican government as understood by the Founders. For Calhoun, sovereignty was not a characteristic of individuals, but of collective political bodies. Individual rights, such as they were, were prescriptive, not natural. If Calhoun was right, then the Founders were wrong.
For the Founders, the purpose of government was to protect the equal natural rights of all. They understood these rights to be antecedent to the creation of political society and government. The just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed who possess the equal natural rights that republican government is supposed to protect. While the people never relinquish their right to revolution, in practice, this natural right is replaced by free elections, the outcome of which are determined by majority rule.
When the States ratified the Constitution of 1787, they pledged that they would accept the results of elections conducted according to its rules. In violation of this pledge, the Southern States seceded because they did not like the outcome of the election of 1860. Thus secession is the interruption of the constitutional operation of republican government, substituting the rule of the minority for that of the majority.
In his July 4 address to Congress, Lincoln observed that the American "experiment" in popular government had passed two of three tests — the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One test remained. Could popular government in America maintain itself against a "formidable internal attempt to overthrow it." It had yet to be proved, said Lincoln, that ballots were "the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets" and that "when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets."
As William Freehling has argued, the supposed right to break up the government when the minority does not get its way is really nothing but blackmail. The attempted dissolution of the Union in 1860 and 1861 was the final act in a drama that had been under way since the 1830s, only this time the blackmailers' bluff was called.
In 1833, the minority threatened secession over the tariff. The majority gave in. In 1835, it threatened secession if Congress did not prohibit discussions of slavery during its own proceedings. The majority gave in and passed a "Gag Rule." In 1850, the minority threatened secession unless Congress forced the return of fugitive slaves without a prior jury trial. The majority agreed to pass a Fugitive Slave Act. In 1854 the minority threatened secession unless the Missouri Compromise was repealed, opening Kansas to slavery. Again, the majority acquiesced rather than see the Union smashed.
But the majority could only go so far in permitting minority blackmail to override the constitutional will of the majority. At the Democratic Convention in Charleston, held in April 1860, the majority finally refused the blackmailers' demand — for a federal guarantee of slave property in all US territories. The delegates from the deep South walked out, splitting the Democratic Party and ensuring that Lincoln would be elected by a plurality.
There are two ironies here. The first is that the real "secession" was that of the South from the Democratic Party. The resulting split in the Democratic Party was instrumental in bringing about the election of Lincoln, which the South then used as the excuse for smashing the Union. The second is that the South's demand at Charleston, far from having anything to do with States' rights, was instead a call for an unprecedented expansion of federal power.
Lincoln had the political theory of the Founders behind him when he refused to permit the South to destroy the Union. But he had a number of practical concerns as well, which today's defenders of secession gloss over, if they recognize them at all, when they claim that secession could have been "peaceful."
To begin with, the dissolution of the Union would have created something the authors of The Federalist were extremely concerned about: at least two, and over time probably more, small, weak confederacies, "a prey to discord, jealous, and mutual injuries,…formidable only to each other." Publius feared that such confederacies, lying in close geographical proximity to each other, would fall to squabbling among themselves, leading to a militarization of the American continent along the lines of Europe, with shifting alignments and alliances, standing armies, and never-ending competition for dominion. Additionally, these confederacies would have been vulnerable to penetration and subversion by European powers wishing to reestablish their influence in North America.
Given their close geographic proximity, it is likely that the Southern Confederacy and the remaining United States would have gone to war over any number of issues: anti-slavery agitation and the refusal of the US to return fugitive slaves; the refusal of the Confederacy to permit Americans in the upper Mississippi River Valley to use the port of New Orleans; the attempt to entice other states out of the Union; and competition over western territories.
For instance, despite proclaiming that the Confederacy sought "no conquest, no aggrandizement," the Confederacy envisioned an empire stretching north to the Mason-Dixon Line and the Ohio River and west to the Colorado. This empire would have contained all 15 slave states, including those that had not seceded, and two existing US territories, New Mexico and the Indian Territory south of Kansas.
In keeping with this grand vision, the Confederacy admitted Missouri and Kentucky to statehood, despite the lack of a secessionist majority in either state. The Confederate congress initiated treaties with the Indian tribes and dispatched an expedition to conquer the New Mexico Territory for the Confederacy. In January 1862, it organized a separate Arizona Territory.
There is evidence that the Confederacy envisioned an even more expansive empire. In his famous "Cornerstone" speech given at Savannah on March 21, 1861, Stephens, the newly installed vice-president of the Confederacy, claimed that "we are now the nucleus of a growing power, which, if we are true to ourselves, our own destiny, and our high mission, will become the controlling power on the continent." Stephens made it clear that he expected the Confederacy to grow by the accession of more states from the old Union (seven had by then seceded), including not only the other slave states but also "the great states of the North-West." These free states could be accommodated, he said, when "they are ready to assimilate with us in principle."
This was far from an impossible outcome. Even during the war, there was talk of a "Western Confederacy," the states of the Northwest that might be inclined toward the South because of historic commercial connection centered on the Mississippi River. In any event, had secession been permitted to stand, the breakup of the Union would have continued. Where that dynamic would have led is suggested by the fact that in January 1861, Fernando Wood, the Democratic mayor of New York City, recommended that the city secede from the state of New York and establish itself as a "free city."
There was no such thing as a constitutional right to secede and for whatever reason, the South never invoked the right of revolution. Even if it had, it would be hard to justify such a claim today. When the Americans invoked their right of revolution in 1776, they sought to establish a form of government that would protect their equal natural rights. The South would have been forced to justify revolution on the basis of a supposed "right" to extend slavery into the western Territories.
Destroying a nation and simply walking away from it are two different things. The south did not threaten to destroy the North. They simply were exercising their right to leave. We call ourselves the Untied States(Plural) of America in that we recognize that we are a union of sovereign states. These states can leave if they so will.It was never the intention of the Constitution to abrogate home rule.Slavery was morally wrong but the war to eliminate it was a greater wrong. I believe in States Rights.
According to Madison, they did.
"It was generally agreed that the objects of the Union could not be secured by any system founded on the principle of a confederation of Sovereign States." -- Madison Explains the Constitution to Jefferson
Their sovereignty was transferred to the people, to be expressed via the popular vote, which elected Congress, and in turn elected the President.
The Constitution was an agreed upon mode of government which gave equal representation to all States in the decision-making process of the central (Federal) government, and laid out a prescribed method of arriving at decisions as a result of the majority will of a Constitutional body, so then, to secede as a result of a disagreement on the decisions arrived at in a Constitutional method by the majority of that Constitutional body, is not to adhere to the State's rights under the Constitution, but a unilateral rejection of the Constitution as a form of government, as well as the Nation it created. A Constitution and government that in the words and minds of they who both wrote it and by signature agreed to have it ordained, were created for the sake of securing "the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."
A perpetual Union.
Secession was not, IS NOT, a Constitutional right, secession was a unilateral rejection of the Constitution, and the principles their own antecedents died for.
They prove that the Union was intended to be perpetual, something that did not change in the Union under the Constitution.
Obviously the author of this article is a subscriber to that belief.
The most important of those concepts being the perpetuity of the Union.
"...for ourselves and our Posterity..."
Good point. These posts are growing more fanatical as the thread continues. The Islamic terrorist and Confederate soldier analogy was over the top.
To rationally study the illustration, we should move to source documentation (posted on FR): A Confederate Soldier in Egypt (Long Read)
No...only a liberal would prescribe to your line of thinking.
Put into proper perspective, you argue that a father leaving the home does not destroy the family...and THAT'S liberal thinking.
It was I believe Muslim extremist, but reading comprehension isn't your strong suit.
A Muslim extremist would argue in favor of secession in order to impose their own (Sharia) form of government as a Constitutional right of a State under the Tenth Amendments to the Constitution.
And it was the exit of the Southern States from the Democratic Party that facilitated Lincoln's election.
Now, do you favor the idea that States can leave the Union if they don't agree with the outcome of a Constitutional process?
If the South "just wanted to be left alone", why did they ratify the Constitution and join the Union?
12 states ratified the Constitution, Rhode Island held out until 1790. RI was not in the perpetual union during this time.
Adams on the right to secede: "Their right to secede was not contested. No unfriendly step to injure was taken;...the door was left open for them to return whenever the proud and wayward spirit of state sovereignty should give way to the attractions of clearer sighted self-interest and kindred sympathies."
Besides Confederate Soldiers were American.
Don't follow you there, but you seem determined to make the comparison.
A union is a vountary coming together. Show me in the Constitution where its says that states may not leave that union. When you marry someone you create a union. Unions can be desolved. Where in the constitution does it say that said union is permanent and cannot be changed. It says only that we come together to form a more perfect union.A Perfect marriage can result in divorce. Can it not? Why not the Union of States.
free dixie,sw
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