This discussion is not about the morality of slavery, or how evil the south was/is because of it.
This is about the historical / legal causes of Secession, and whether or not the south was actually rebelling, or trying to do their duty to uphold the letter and the law of the Constitution, okay?
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What unconstitutional action caused Georgia and Florida to leave the Union?
Don't know. My reply was in response to another FReeper.
Slavery was an accepted, legal institution when the Declaration of Independence was written, the Revolution was fought and the Constitution was signed.
As far as Texas goes, here's the Declaration of the Causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union
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The part of the Constitution in question (from the Declaration of the Causes ) reads:
Section 2 - State citizens, Extradition
1) The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.
2) A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.
3) No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.
Basically, some states were taking from citizens of another state without any established legal right to do so. The federal government did not fulfill its legal obligation and enforce the contract.
Slavery, while morally reprehensible was also LEGAL according to the Constitution. Article 4 Section 2 Clause 3 was put there because of slavery. The Founders knew it was a MORAL issue for the people and their respective civil governments to decide.... NOT an issue for the limited federal government to decide.
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Lincoln set the precedent for federal expansion of power by changing the intended limited federal government into a wholly national one. He failed in upholding the letter and the law of the Constitution, violated his oath, then used force to keep the unwilling states in the union.
It was the seed for the out-of-control government we live under today, yet many will never see it.
I see it.
It is not an easy task to point out the one-time legality in this nation of such a brutal and immoral institution as slavery. You must expect to be accused of being a racist or a "slaver" wannabe or a confederate sympathizer or a Klan member, or whatever. You must expect to be accused of "defending slavery"; but not by me.
What you wrote in your post is historical fact. It is uncomfortable historical fact, but that does not diminish its truth.
Thank you.
Some individual citizens, i.e. white mostly from the north but some southern, were helping slaves escape bondage. Neither the northern states nor the Federal government helped them and most northern states had no desire to see more blacks enter their states.
But it is false to say that the Federal government did not fulfill its obligation to return those escaped slaves to the south. First, I would remind you that in the years before 1861, the Federal government was firmly in the hands of either Southern politicians or Northerners like Buchanan who were sympathetic with the south. The Supreme Court was firmly in southern hands. The Fugitive Slave Act (FSA) was was being enforced in the North at a very heavy expense by the Federal government. (Getting just one slave out of the City of Boston and on to a ship back to his "owner" cost the US treasury over a $100,000.)
Aside from the fact that the FSA went far beyond what any of the founders envisioned in the constitutional requirement that states respect the "property rights" of other states, the FSA also required individual citizens even against their will and under penalty of law, to participate in posies at the direction of Federal Marshals or deputized "slave catchers." It was without question at that point in time the most egregious violation of civil liberty in history. Add to that, the FSA virtually encouraged kidnapping of free blacks. It's rules on who could testify in the special courts that administered the law (blacks could not testify) the slave hunters (people that the south even considered to be among the lowest form of human character,) regularly abducted free blacks who had never been slaves and sell them into slavery in the south. Yet the Federal government including most Northern politicians went along with the FSA in an attempt to appease the South. Even Lincoln promised to continue to enforce the FSA once he took office.
The "property" argument used in the south was quite simply a subterfuge. The total escaped "property" that actually made it across the Mason Dixon line was a financially insignificant amount. Especially the slaves who could make it from the deep south where the fake wailing about escaped slaves was the loudest.
Westward expansion of slavery was the crux of the problem and the North, with the election of Lincoln finally drew a line in the sand that slavery would not expand beyond where it then existed. That is what drove secession.
For some interesting comments on this, see the Toombs/Stephens 'secession debate' before the Georgia state legislature.