Abe, you don't look a day over a hundred and fifty!
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.
They petitioned because slaves were being encouraged and helped to escape.
If I failed to make that clear, I apologize.
Huh? Honoring the Great Emancipator and the man who saved the Union isn't "rehashing" anything.
This thread has drifted pretty far afield from the main point I had in mind when I posted the announcement. Lincoln was arguably our greatest president. Honoring him is tantamount to honoring our country, because he saved it from dissolution. Nobody can argue with that, it's just a statement of fact.
It's simply a statement of fact to say that Lincoln prevented the dissolution of the United States. If you value your country, you should value Lincoln, because it wouldn't exist if he hadn't fought to keep the Union together.
I so exicted, not!
In trying to have a say so in whether or not the People owned slaves (Which is why I said th Missouri Compromise started the fracture, BTW)
Property is an absolute right, and not within the purview of government.
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and it would seem logical that the President of the Constitutional Convention (who BTW had to deal with talk of secession and open rebellion during his own administration) would know a thing or two about original intent.
So it would seem. As I've said before however, in trying to untangle the legalities of the war, pinpointing historical events requires they be accurately sourced.
huh?
Winning is not an "inherent good" of revolution --- see Cuba, Russia, China, Cambodia, Iran etc., etc., Winning can, and often is, bad. "Good" is simply one possible outcome of winning.
The "Right to Revolution" as expressed in 18th century enlightenment philosophy had three elements.
1. When faced with "intolerable" oppression, and
2. When petitions detailing that oppression and asking for relief are rejected, and
3. Calm consideration of the outcome of Revolution, be it successful or unsuccessful, are reviewed to assure that it is wise to undertake.
Only when all three elements are met, is revolution justified under Natural Law.
On the contrary. Article IV, Section 3: "...no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress." Article I, Section 10: No state shall, without the consent of Congress...enter into any agreement or compact with another state..." Also in Article I, Section 10: "No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation..." So given those restrictions states cannot split, combine, add to their territory by acquiring land form foreign countries, or shift their borders a fraction of an inch without consent of Congress.
Now, shall we discuss all the other controls Article I, Section 10 and Article IV place on the states?
I've already posted Rawle, who specifically says a state could leave.
Great, and I've posted Madison, who specifically says a state may not leave unilaterally.
But speaking of Rawle, he writes: "The secession of a state from the Union depends on the will of the people of such state. The people alone as we have already seen, bold the power to alter their constitution. The Constitution of the United States is to a certain extent, incorporated into the constitutions or the several states by the act of the people. The state legislatures have only to perform certain organical operations in respect to it. To withdraw from the Union comes not within the general scope of their delegated authority. There must be an express provision to that effect inserted in the state constitutions. This is not at present the case with any of them, and it would perhaps be impolitic to confide it to them. A matter so momentous, ought not to be entrusted to those who would have it in their power to exercise it lightly and precipitately upon sudden dissatisfaction, or causeless jealousy, perhaps against the interests and the wishes of a majority of their constituents." So Rawle seems to be saying that none of the states in 1829 had the authority to secede as part of their Constitutions. So what changed? What clause was added that suddenly granted the state legislatures the power Rawle himself said that they lacked?
Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution
Wonderful. Now show me Joseph Story, majority opinion in a Supreme Court decision that says the same thing.
Tell me NS, if an acquaintance should come to your house and you invite him in, and after a while he decides to leave, do you have the legal authority to make him stay against his will?
As analogies go this one is pretty thin. How about my earlier analogy? If you enter into agreement with another party, does that party automatically have the right to walk away from the partnership, repudiate a share of the debt, and take whatever joint property he might get his hands on without any compensation to you?
Marshall was speaking about whether or not a national bank was constitutional. Of course it was. The federal government was instituted with the monies from the several states, they had to have some way to deal with it.
But where does the Consitution explicitly state that such a bank was legal?
We admit, as all must admit, that the powers of the government are limited, and that its limits are not to be transcended.
Something I completely agree with.
He says to stay within the Constitution. The same thing I've been saying all along.
Where does Chief Justice Marshall state that actions are outside the Constitution because you say they are?
Abe, you don't look a day over a hundred and fifty!
Fine, have it your way.
With all due respect, as MamaTexan has shown a whole lot of people do argue with that simple fact. They feel the need to demonize Lincoln in order to excuse their defeat during the War of Southern Rebellion.
The effect of the civil war was to stop the dissolution of the American union. That's simply a fact. If the Confederacy had won, by definition the union would have been dissolved. If you're glad the US exists as a union of 50 states today, then it's hard to be mad at Lincoln.
Believe what you want to believe.
Nice try on the 'If you disrespect Lincoln you disrespect the country' ploy.
Although you do have my profound apologies for pulling your thread off topic. My intent is not to disrupt.
I just can't believe to obey at any cost people who have no clue to the birthright that was left by the Founders.
IMHO, Lincoln shredded that birthright by using coercive force on the States. Since then, the democracy that replaced it is midway down the slide into socialism....what we today call the Nanny State.
I'm sorry if that offends you, but it is the truth as research shows it.
Again, for cluttering your thread, my apologies.
Yes. Then it is well within your rights to return a petition to him stating you wish to be compensated for the loss you incurred.
If he gives you no satisfaction to the petition, then you either ask for a summary judgment or he has to meet you in court.
Its the way the law works.
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Now please answer my question:
if an acquaintance should come to your house and you invite him in, and after a while he decides to leave, do you have the legal authority to make him stay against his will?
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So given those restrictions states cannot split, combine, add to their territory by acquiring land form foreign countries, or shift their borders a fraction of an inch without consent of Congress.
That's right. Because to do so would affect another State, and therefore falls under the authority of the general government.
What does that have to do with telling a State what it can or cannot do within its own borders or whether it can voluntarily leave a contract that it had voluntarily entered provided it followed the laws of notification?
I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession." But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy. Its double aspect, nevertheless, with the countenance recd from certain quarters, is giving it a popular currency here which may influence the approaching elections both for Congress & for the State Legislature. It has gained some advantage also, by mixing itself with the question whether the Constitution of the U.S. was formed by the people or by the States, now under a theoretic discussion by animated partizans.
I'm not sure what your references to militias have to do with my point, but you also wrote in another post:
If secession WAS illegal, there would be a multitude of writings prior to the mid 1800's on the subject....but there's not.
First of all, there wouldn't have been much need to address the topic except when secession was seriously proposed. People tend to let sleeping dogs lie.
But here's part of Andrew Jackson's 1832 proclamation on nullification:
The Constitution of the United States, then, forms a government, not a league, and whether it be formed by compact between the States, or in any other manner, its character is the same. It is a government in which ale the people are represented, which operates directly on the people individually, not upon the States; they retained all the power they did not grant. But each State having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute jointly with the other States a single nation, cannot from that period possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation, and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would result from the contravention of a compact, but it is an offense against the whole Union. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offense. 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, and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent upon a failure.
Because the Union was formed by compact, it is said the parties to that compact may, when they feel themselves aggrieved, depart from it; but it is precisely because it is a compact that they cannot. A compact is an agreement or binding obligation. It may by its terms have a sanction or penalty for its breach, or it may not. If it contains no sanction, it may be broken with no other consequence than moral guilt; if it have a sanction, then the breach incurs the designated or implied penalty. A league between independent nations, generally, has no sanction other than a moral one; or if it should contain a penalty, as there is no common superior, it cannot be enforced. A government, on the contrary, always has a sanction, express or implied; and, in our case, it is both necessarily implied and expressly given. An attempt by force of arms to destroy a government is an offense, by whatever means the constitutional compact may have been formed; and such government has the right, by the law of self-defense, to pass acts for punishing the offender, unless that right is modified, restrained, or resumed by the constitutional act. In our system, although it is modified in the case of treason, yet authority is expressly given to pass all laws necessary to carry its powers into effect, and under this grant provision has been made for punishing acts which obstruct the due administration of the laws.
This is from an speech by Daniel Webster on the Compromise of 1850:
Mr. President, I should much prefer to have heard from every member on this floor declarations of opinion that this Union could never be dissolved, than the declaration of opinion by anybody, that in any case, under the pressure of any circumstances, such a dissolution was possible. I hear with distress and anguish the word “secession,” especially when it falls from the lips of those who are patriotic, and known to the country, and known all over the world for their political services. Secession! Peaceable secession! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle. The dismemberment of this vast country without convulsion! The breaking up of the fountains of the great deep without ruffling the surface! Who is so foolish—I beg everybody’s pardon—as to expect to see any such thing?
Sir, he who sees these States now revolving in harmony around a common center, and expects to see them quit their places and fly off without convulsion, may look the next hour to see the heavenly bodies rush from their spheres, and jostle against each other in the realms of space, without causing the crush of the universe. There can be no such thing as a peaceable secession. Peaceable secession is an utter impossibility. Is the great Constitution under which we live, covering this whole country, is it to be thawed and melted away by secession, as the snows on the mountain melt under the influence of a vernal sun, disappear almost unobserved, and run off? No, sir! No, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption of the Union; but, sir, I see, as plainly as I see the sun in heaven, what the disruption itself must produce; I see that it must produce war, and such a war as I will not describe, in its twofold character.
Peaceable secession!—peaceable secession! The concurrent agreement of all the members of this great Republic to separate! A voluntary separation, with alimony on one side and on the other. Why, what would be the result? Where is the line to be drawn? What States are to secede? What is to remain American? What am I to be? An American no longer? Am I to become a sectional man, a local man, a separatist, with no country in common with the gentlemen who sit around me here, or who fill the other House of Congress? Heaven forbid! Where is the flag of the Republic to remain? Where is the eagle still to tower?—or is he to cower, and shrink, and fall to the ground?
Why, sir, our ancestors—our fathers and our grandfathers, those of them that are yet living among us, with prolonged lives—would rebuke and reproach us; and our children and our grandchildren would cry out shame upon us, if we, of this generation, should dishonor these ensigns of the power of the government and the harmony of that Union, which is every day felt among us with so much joy and gratitude. What is to become of the army? What is to become of the navy? What is to become of the public lands? How is any one of the thirty States to defend itself?
Sir, we could not sit down here to-day, and draw a line of separation that would satisfy any five men in the country. There are natural causes that would keep and tie us together; and there are social and domestic relations which we could not break if we would, and which we should not if we could.
Here's Henry Clay speaking in the same year:
But, I must take the occasion to say that, in my opinion, there is no right on the part of one or more of the States to secede from the Union. War and the dissolution of the Union are identical and inseparable. There can be no dissolution of the Union, except by consent or by war. No one can expect, in the existing state of things, that that consent would be given, and war is the only alternative by which a dissolution could be accomplished. And, Mr. President, if consent were given-if possibly we were to separate by mutual agreement and by a given line, in less than sixty days after such an agreement had been executed, war would break out between the free and slaveholding portions of this Union-between the two independent portions into which it would be erected in virtue of the act of separation. Yes, sir, sixty days-in less than sixty days, I believe, our slaves from Kentucky would be fleeing over in numbers to the other side of the river, would be pursued by their owners, and the excitable and ardent spirits who would engage in the pursuit would be restrained by no sense of the rights which appertain to the independence of the other side of the river, supposing it, then, to be the line of separation. They would pursue their slaves; they would be repelled, and war would break out. In less than sixty days war would be blazing forth in every part of this now happy and peaceable land.
...
Mr. President, I have said what I solemnly believe-that the dissolution of the Union and war are identical and inseparable; that they are convertible terms.
Such a war, too, as that would be, following the dissolution of the Union! Sir, we may search the pages of history, and none so furious, so bloody, so implacable, so exterminating, from the wars of Greece down, including those of the Commonwealth of England, and the Revolution of France-none, none of them raged with such violence, or was ever conducted with such bloodshed and enormities, as will that war which shall follow that disastrous event-if that event ever happens-of dissolution.
And what would be its termination? Standing armies and navies, to an extent draining the revenues of each portion of the dissevered empire, would be created; exterminating wars would follow-not a war of two nor three years, but of interminable duration-an exterminating war would follow, until some Philip or Alexander, some Caesar or Napoleon, would rise to cut the Gordian knot, and solve the problem of the capacity of man for self-government, and crush the liberties of both the dissevered portions of this Union. Can you doubt it? Look at history-consult the pages of all history, ancient or modern; look it human nature-look at the character of the contest in which you would be engaged in the supposition of a war following the dissolution of the Union, such as I have suggested-and I ask you if it is possible for you to doubt that he final but perhaps distant termination of the whole will be some despot treading down the liberties of the people?-that the final result will be the extinction of this last and glorious light, which is leading all mankind, who ire gazing upon it, to cherish hope and anxious expectation that the liberty which prevails here will sooner or later be advanced throughout the civilized world? Can you, Mr. President, lightly contemplate the consequences? Can you yield yourself to a torrent of passion, amidst dangers which I have depicted in colors far short of what would be the reality, if the event should ever happen? I conjure gentlemen-whether from the South or the North, by all they hold dear in this world-by all their love ofliberty-by all their veneration for their ancestors-by all their regard for posterity-by all their gratitude to him who has bestowed upon them such unnumbered blessings-by all the duties which they owe to mankind, and all the duties they owe to themselves-by all these considerations I implore them to pause-solemnly to pause-at the edge of the precipice before the fearful and disastrous leap is taken in the yawning abyss below, which will inevitably lead to certain and irretrievable destruction.
And, finally, Mr. President, I implore, as the best blessing which heaven can bestow upon me on earth, that if the direful and sad event of the dissolution of the Union shall happen, I may not survive to behold the sad and heart-rending spectacle.
To be sure, Clay's argument here isn't a constitutional one, but a practical and emotional one based on the consequences of secession, but it's clear that secession at will wasn't simply accepted as Constitution before 1860.
OK. So it had nothing to do with a Cotton Tariff. Fine.
Now, to my knowledge, the Federal Government never once encouraged or helped slaves to escape their chains. Nor to my knowledge, did any Northern state governments encourage or help slaves to escape. If you have heard of some official Federal or State policy on encouraging runaway slaves, please do tell.
To be sure, private individuals, from both the North and the South, did encourage and help slaves reach freedom. And for sure, before 1850, Northern state governments differed in how they treated escaped slaves in their jurisdictions with Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois enthusiastically capturing and returning the "property" while Pennsylvania was somewhat less cooperative depending on County and Massachusetts completely lax on the requirement to return escapees to slavery.
But after 1850, it it did not matter what State Laws and enforcement practices were since the capturing and returning of slaves (or most any black person a corrupt official could get his hands on) was handled by a newly created Federal department with dedicated marshals and it's own separate and independent judiciary unanswerable to any higher court, all created under the Fugitive Slave Act.
Now since the Federal Government was doing everything that had been asked of them concerning escaped slaves (even to sending armed troops and US warships to return slaves from the North) and had been doing that for a decade when South Carolina seceded, what exactly was the "petition" about? I can't imagine what else they wanted the government to do. It sure seems the Feds bent over backwards to accommodate the slave catchers, even to the point of becoming slave catchers themselves.
Do you have a date or the name of the petition?
True, but the Constituion isn't a moral or emotional contract, but a legal one.
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but it's clear that secession at will wasn't simply accepted as Constitution before 1860.
Yes it was. By some of the most brilliant legal minds of the era.
St George Tucker, (1803), James Kent (1826-1830), William Rawle (1829) and Joseph Story (1833) all considered secession a viable option. I've posted many of them for your consideration.
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