Posted on 11/13/2006 9:25:11 PM PST by freedomdefender
The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission was created by Congress to inform the public about the impact Abraham Lincoln had on the development of our nation, and to find the best possible ways to honor his accomplishments. The President, the Senate and the House of Representatives appointed a fifteen-member commission to commemorate the 200th birthday of Abraham Lincoln and to emphasize the contribution of his thoughts and ideals to America and the world.
The official public Bicentennial Commemoration launches February 2008 and closes February 2010, with the climax of the Commemoration taking place on February 12, 2009, the 200th anniversary of Lincoln’s birth.
Across the country communities, organizations and individuals have already begun to plan parades, museum exhibitions, performances, art installations and much more.
Ahem-
Reports of the violence in western Pennsylvania had already reached the federal government in Philadelphia, where it was also rumored that the rebels were asking representatives of Great Britain and Spain for aid in a frontier-wide separatist movement. Fearing the secession of western territories – and an even greater threat to the nation’s western borders – President Washington ordered Governor Mifflin to send the Pennsylvania militia to enforce the law. But Mifflin declined, asserting that a president in peacetime and in the absence of any local request for help had no authority to direct a state governor to use a state militia for any purpose. In the process, he established a precedent that is still honored today.
Chapter 4: The Whiskey Rebellion
Washington followed both the Militia Act of 1792 (it shall be lawful for the President of the United States, on application of the legislature of such state) as well as Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution
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.
Application of the STATE legislature, not an application of the federal legislature or an arbitrary Presidential decision.
Governor Mifflin set a precedent that still stands today.
No federal authority can lawfully enter a State without the permission OF THE STATE.
That IS the law, and Lincoln ignored it.
1) White versus Texas was the Supreme Court nailing shut the barn door just in case any other state or group of states called foul on the Federal Government and decided to follow the South's example. It's purpose was not to carry back as much as it was to carry forward. Because our courts are not political. No not them.
I know you put great stock in this court decision. It is one of the main linchpin of your argument of the illegality of the South's action, but it slippery because it only proves the North won the war and not that the South was wrong. (Well, yeah, now in 1869 we can absolutely declare the illegality of the South because we won the war and we can can get away with it. Pass those laws, close down the escape clauses, do what has to be done to make sure our victory is complete and forever!)
2. Do you honestly think (heaven forbid) that in the aftermath of the Union victory the Supreme Court would have voted any other way. I don't think they would have voted for a "do over." Get back out of the battle field boys, seems the South had the right to revolt. (Which they did anyway whether Lincoln liked it or not)
3. White Versus Texas was nothing more than the Federal Government exerting its power on a prostrate South and over the rest of the states. It's called the spoils of war and it happens all the time. No, I am not impressed because the Supreme Court from time to time likes to bully its citizens.
After careful review, the penalty stands. Loss of down.
Yes it is... (but you will never get some to admit it)
But he called in militia from other states and did enter Pennsylvania with them. Your source continues:
Rebuffed by Pennsylvania’s governor, Washington drafted a proclamation requesting that the states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia place a force of 12,950 men into federal service. At the time, Washington was angry with Pennsylvania’s western farmers for a variety of reasons. Back in the 1780s, some Covenanter squatters had contested his land ownership in land in Washington County. Having provoked wars with the Indians and ignored treaties respecting their lands, these western Pennsylvanians now seemed unwilling to pay a tax largely enacted on their behalf to rid the Ohio Valley of their enemies, even as the government was negotiating with the Spanish and the British to make sure the Ohio region could be settled and its products shipped down the Mississippi. While Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and some Federalists were eager to use the ruckus to demonstrate the power of the new nation to raise armies and suppress insurrections, Washington simply wanted western Pennsylvanians to make some contribution toward the government that was spending so much of its energy and money to secure their interests.On October 4, 1794, Washington joined the troops – contemptuously dubbed the “Watermelon Army” by the rebels – near Carlisle, and marched them out to Bedford County. It was there, during his stay at Espy House that Washington was informed that his army had scared off the “Whiskey Boys,” who would now comply with the tax. Turning over command of the troops to Governor Henry Lee of Virginia, the president then returned to Philadelphia.
On November 13, federal troops arrested 150 rebels, then sent twenty of the ringleaders to Philadelphia to stand trial, including Reverend John Corbley, a noted Baptist minister and vocal opponent of the whiskey tax. The Federal District Court of Philadelphia found most of the rebels not guilty, but in July, 1795 sentenced two of the men to death for treason.
Isn't that what the whole Katrina deal was about. FEMA could not go in until Louisiana asked and the governor didn't ask. Finally the President said, "you have got to ask for my help." To which the governor replied, "give me 24 hours to think about it." This was after the flooding of New Orleans and all the Bush is a racist stories appeared in the media.
Then source them, please
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So long as it is done with the approval of at least a majority of the impacted parties, as demonstrated through a vote in Congress.
Your opinion. Please source any substantiation you may have.
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This is not a case where the action was legal when committed, and then later made illegal.
Joseph Story was explicit in his Commentaries. Something that is legally a non issue cannot be made 'illegal' after the fact.
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And something is not unconstitutional merely because you claim it is.
Nor do your claims that it is Constitutional make it so.
I've sourced almost every contention, and your opinions have been substantiated by (crickets)
You continue to say something isn't so when I've posted multiple legal authorities that say differently.
Enjoy your delusions, sir, and when the constantly-expanding federal authority manages to infringe on your rights yet again, thank Lincoln.
And this whole damn thing is a shell game anyway. Everyone knew that secession would result in war and had know it for years before hand.
I still want you to tell me about those horrible tarriffs on cotton that you used as a justification for secession eariler. Please tell us about them.
Dude, that is the way it works. The Supreme Court does not consider hypothetical situations. It is only allowed to rule once an action has occurred and and a case is brought before it.
You can argue with their decision if you like, but you can't dismiss their opinion.
See, this is the problem. You dismiss the whole post and just exerpt a small part in hopes of appearing that you are the only clever one here.
Of course that's the way it works. But that is missing my point altogether. Yes, you can decide in 1869 that the actions in 1860 were illegal. So what? Ten years from now the Supreme court will decide that some right we enjoy today was not ours to enjoy. But, how does that impact me now. It doesn't. When the ruling comes down, I will stop enjoying that right, but you can't erase the past. What if the Supreme Court decides that Roe V. Wade is wrong. You going to arrest all the women who had abortions in the past? You going put all the babies back in the womb? No. So, I can declare in some future ruling that anyone who had an abortion in 1989 was in violation of the law, but those babies are dead and you can't do anything about it. The ruling carries forward not back. That is what I am saying.
Any one can go in after the fact and declare anything about it they want. That's not brilliant.
White versus Texas declared the South illegal. Whoop de doo! The war is over, who cares? Except for idiots like us on an internet forums who talk circles around each other because we refuse to see that maybe both sides in their understandings could have had valid points to make.
And what am I supposed to put my stock into? Claims from people like MamaTexan and you that decisions like Texas v. White are not valid merely because they disagree with them? No bias in that choice, is there? Nothing political at all in your decisions. Thanks, but I'll pass. I'm sorry if you believe that only decisions you agree with are valid but it just doesn't work that way. Nothing anywhere says that you or I have to agree with the Supreme Court's ruling.
Do you honestly think (heaven forbid) that in the aftermath of the Union victory the Supreme Court would have voted any other way. I don't think they would have voted for a "do over." Get back out of the battle field boys, seems the South had the right to revolt. (Which they did anyway whether Lincoln liked it or not)
In all honesty I don't see how the court could have ruled any other way. I find the Southron concept that states can walk out at any time for any reason and in the process repudiating any responsibility for any obligations built up by the country as a whole while they were a part to be absolutely insane. In believing that you are saying that only the seceding states have any Constitutional protections at all. That they can do anything, take anything, repudiate anything they want to, and the remaining states have no recourse. It makes no more sense to me to believe that a state can walk away at will, consequences be damned, than it does to believe that a state can be expelled against its will. Yet Southron supportes believe that one is possible while the other is not, yet they cannot provide any evidence to support that.
It's called the spoils of war and it happens all the time.
It's called a 5 to 3 decision by the United States Supreme Court, and it is valid and it is binding. So like it or not, unilateral secession as practiced by the Southern states is not legal. It has never been legal, and will never be legal unless the Constituiton is amended or a future court overturns the Texas v. White decision.
I know he did, I'm not contending what happened after the fact.
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See, everyone seems to think I'm on some kind of Southern Rebellion of my own, or that I have some kind of familial dog in this fight, and that is just not the case.
What I'm interested in is the law. Constitutional law, specifically. That's why I constantly request sources.
In being a legal document, the Constitution can only do what it says it can do in the manner in which it says it can do it....period.
You can enumerate a penumbra past the point of plausible deniability (or logic and reason as the Founders called it) before it becomes a laughable lie.
Anyway, the point being I firmly believe the war was THE sticking point. The point where the Constitution began being ignored for the general welfare (gag) of the nation, and now we're subject to whatever the federal government squirts out its pie-hole.
Back to the issue at hand.
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Both the Militia Acts and the Constitution both state-
On the application of the legislature
NS seems to think this means the federal legislature, I've repeated (and shown) it meant the STATE legislature and have given Governor Mifflin's precedent of making Washington ask permission to enter the State to prove it.
If that IS the case, it proves that South Carolina was unlawfully invaded, since that legislative body never made such a request and its intent had been stated (and recorded) to the federal legislature to leave the Union.
What say you?
Governor Mifflin set a precedent that still stands today.
As did Washington. He called up the militia of several states and sent them to suppress insurrection without waiting for the governor to request it.
That IS the law, and Lincoln ignored it.
Well, no, it is not. And he did not.
Louisiana wasn't in rebellion, it was being nailed by a hurricane.
Does the intent of the Framers that can be discerned from other sources have any part in deciding what is Constitutional, or does only explicit text in the document matter?
But even Washington, as great and honorable man that he was, could not trump the Constitution.
The States were sovereign in their own borders. Read it again.
And I believe the The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 applied which limited the use of the Army on US soil. No such restriction existed in the 1860s.
The U.S. Constitution.
Your opinion. Please source any substantiation you may have.
"When, therefore, Texas became one of the United States, she entered into an indissoluble relation. All the obligations of perpetual union, and all the guaranties of republican government in the Union, attached at once to the State. The act which consummated her admission into the Union was something more than a compact; it was the incorporation of a new member into the political body. And it was final. The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States." -- Chief Justice Chase, Texas v. White, 1869
Joseph Story was explicit in his Commentaries. Something that is legally a non issue cannot be made 'illegal' after the fact.
Something is not 'legally a non-issue' just because you say it is. Produce a court decision prior to 1869 that said unilateral secession was constitutional and you win your case. Otherwise it was certainly a legal issue for the court to decide in 1869. And their decision went against you.
Nor do your claims that it is Constitutional make it so.
Quite true. Which is why I believe that unilateral secession was illegal because the Supreme Court said it was, not because I say it was. They have jurisdiction in such matters, not you and not I.
You continue to say something isn't so when I've posted multiple legal authorities that say differently.
Post a court decision where they said unilateral secession was a right reserved to the states by the Constituiton then you win the arguement. Until then all the opinions in the world do not override the opinions of the 5 justices that said unilateral secession was not.
Enjoy your delusions, sir, and when the constantly-expanding federal authority manages to infringe on your rights yet again, thank Lincoln.
I'm enjoying your delusions too much to do that.
Yes. Original intent is about all that matters. Many people today, however, don't seem to notice the way they used words. You can find similar words in the same sentence (like national & federal, citizen & person) but they don't mean the same thing.
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The problem is that the cracking of the Republic began earlier. IMHO, with the Missouri Compromise.
In all honesty I don't see how the court could have ruled any other way. I find the Southern concept that states can walk out at any time for any reason and in the process repudiating any responsibility for any obligations built up by the country as a whole while they were a part to be absolutely insane.
That is your thesis. I can respect that. Your conclusion is well thought out, vigorously argued, and substantiated with strong arguments. Now, can't I in good conscience reject it, which I do. Why? Because returning to Lee's quote. The Union could be dissolved by 1) consent or 2) revolution.
Yet Southern supporters believe that one is possible while the other is not, yet they cannot provide any evidence to support that.
That is not true. Many Southern supporters have offered up ample proof. And I have noticed that it is your habit to ignore that proof and slip slide around it in order to raise a red flag or herring in hopes that people will chase after it. I have also noticed that many just stop engaging you altogether because they tire of beating their head against a stone wall.
Heck, you even show up on a thread that listed the top songs of the south in order to pick a fight. Who has the time or energy to do that all the time. It's late in the evening here, and I have to get some other things finished. So, I will be saying good night.
Have a great day. I will agree to disagree with you. What you do is up to you.
I wish you the best. Maybe we will meet on another thread when I have more time to devote to debate.
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