Guess What Folks - Secession Wasn't Treason

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Copperhead Chronicle Al Benson, Jr. Articles

More and more of late I have been reading articles dealing with certain black racist groups that claim to have the best interests of average black folks at heart (they really don't). It seems these organizations can't take time to address the problems of black crime in the black community or of single-parent families in the black community in any meaningful way. It's much more lucrative for them (and it gets more press coverage) if they spend their time and resources attacking Confederate symbols. Ive come to the conclusion that they really don't give a rip for the welfare of black families. They only use that as a facade to mask their real agenda--the destruction of Southern, Christian culture.

Whenever they deal with questions pertaining to history they inevitably come down on that same old lame horse that the South was evil because they seceded from the Union--and hey--everybody knows that secession was treason anyway. Sorry folks, but that old line is nothing more than a gigantic pile of cow chips that smells real ripe in the hot August sun! And I suspect that many of them know that--they just don't want you to know it--all the better to manipulate you my dear!

It is interesting that those people never mention the fact that the New England states threatened secession three times--that's right three times--before 1860. In 1814 delegates from those New England states actually met in Hartford, Connecticut to consider seceding from the Union. Look up the Hartford Convention of 1814 on the Internet if you want a little background. Hardly anyone ever mentions the threatened secession of the New England states. Most "history" books I've seen never mention it. Secession is never discussed until 1860 when it suddenly became "treasonous" for the Southern states to do it. What about the treasonous intent of the New England states earlier? Well, you see, it's only treasonous if the South does it.

Columnist Joe Sobran, whom I enjoy, once wrote an article in which he stated that "...Jefferson was an explicit secessionist. For openers he wrote a famous secessionist document known to posterity as the Declaration of Independence." If these black racist groups are right, that must mean that Jefferson was guilty of treason, as were Washington and all these others that aided them in our secession from Great Britain. Maybe the black racists all wish they were still citizens of Great Britain. If that's the case, then as far as I know, the airlines are still booking trips to London, so nothing is stopping them.

After the War of Northern Aggression against the South was over (at least the shooting part) the abolitionist radicals in Washington decided they would try Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States as a co-conspirator in the Lincoln assassination (which would have been just great for Edwin M. Stanton) and as a traitor for leading the secessionist government in Richmond, though secession had hardly been original with Mr. Davis. However, trying Davis for treason as a secessionist was one trick the abolitionist radicals couldn't quite pull off.

Burke Davis, (no relation to Jeff Davis that I know of) in his book The Long Surrender on page 204, noted a quote by Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, telling Edwin Stanton that "If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion...His (Jeff Davis') capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason." Burke Davis then continued on page 214, noting that a congressiona committee proposed a special court for Davis' trial, headed by Judge Franz Lieber. Davis wrote: "After studying more than 270,000 Confederate documents, seeking evidence against Davis, the court discouraged the War Department: 'Davis will be found not guilty,' Lieber reported 'and we shall stand there completely beaten'." What the radical Yankees and their lawyers were admitting among themselves (but quite obviously not for the historical record) was that they and Lincoln had just fought a war of aggression agains the Southern states and their people, a war that had taken or maimed the lives of over 600,000 Americans, both North and South, and they had not one shread of constitutional justification for having done so, nor had they any constitutional right to have impeded the Southern states when they chose to withdraw from a Union for which they were paying 83% of all the expenses, while getting precious little back for it, save insults from the North.

Most of us detest big government or collectivism. Yet, since the advent of the Lincoln administration we have been getting ever increasing doses of it. Lincoln was, in one sense, the "great emancipator" in that he freed the federal government from any chains the constitution had previously bound it with, so it could now roam about unfettered "seeking to devous whoseover it could." And where the Founders sought to give us "free and independent states" is anyone naive enough anymore as to think the states are still free and independent? Those who honestly still think that are prime candidates for belief in the Easter Bunny, for he is every bit as real as is the "freedom" our states experience at this point in history. Our federal government today is even worse than what our forefathers went to war against Britain to prevent. And because we have been mostly educated in their government brain laundries (public schools) most still harbor the illusion that they are "free." Well, as they say, "the brainwashed never wonder." ___________________

Al Benson Jr.'s, [send him email] columns are to found on many online journals such as Fireeater.Org, The Sierra Times, and The Patriotist. Additionally, Mr. Benson is editor of the Copperhead Chronicle [more information] and author of the Homeschool History Series, [more information] a study of the War of Southern Independence. The Copperhead Chronicle is a quarterly newsletter written with a Christian, pro-Southern perspective.

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Copperhead Chronicle | Homeschool History Series | Al Benson, Jr. Articles

Wonderful research, but the basic beginning premise is wrong.

When I first read the Resolutions, I did not understand this subtle point (nor did I know that in 1798, Madison had tried to explain to Jefferson that this was wrong.)

Madison himself said the Constitution is a compact James Madison, Report on the Virginia Resolutions

it was constantly justified and recommended on the ground that the powers not given to the government were withheld from it; and that, if any doubt could have existed on this subject, under the original text of the Constitution, it is removed, as far as words could remove it, by the 12th amendment, now a part of the Constitution, which expressly declares, "that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

No where in the contract is the federal government given the ability to tell a State it must stay in the Union, and that the federal authority had no ability to sit in judgment of the States.

However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert forever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.

Please provide Madison's explanation to Jefferson that the idea the Constitution was a compact [treaty] was incorrect.

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The Constitution itself can be used to alliterate how limited federal power really is.

Article 4 section 4
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.

And on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive means the STATE governments, not the federal one.

At the same time it is properly provided, in order that such interference may not wantonly or arbitrarily take place; that it shall only be on the request of the state authorities:otherwise the self-government of the state might be encroached upon at the pleasure of the Union, and a small state might fear or feel the effects of a combination of larger states against it under colour of constitutional authority;
William Rawle

"The federal government, then, appears to be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign nations, and with each other. Their submission to its operation is voluntary: its councils, its sovereignty is an emanation from theirs, not a flame by which they have been consumed, nor a vortex in which they are swallowed up. Each is still a perfect state, still sovereign, still independent, and still capable, should the occasion require, to resume the exercise of its functions, as such, in the most unlimited extent.
St. George Tucker View of the Constitution of the United States – 1803 [paragraph 337]

Until the State asks for assistance, the federal government has no legitimate authority inside the State.

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Once there, the federal authority is subject to the authority of the State.

Article VI. - The United States
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

State Constitutions

THE TEXAS CONSTITUTION
Article 1 - BILL OF RIGHTS
Section 24 - MILITARY SUBORDINATE TO CIVIL AUTHORITY
The military shall at all times be subordinate to the civil authority

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CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF KANSAS
BILL OF RIGHTS
Sec. 4. The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security; but standing armies, in time of peace, are dangerous to liberty, and shall not be tolerated, and the military shall be in strict subordination to the civil power.

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CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS
PART THE FIRST A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Article XVII. The people have a right to keep and to bear arms for the common defence. And as, in time of peace, armies are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be maintained without the consent of the legislature; and the military power shall always be held in an exact subordination to the civil authority, and be governed by it.

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THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF NEVADA
ARTICLE. 1. Declaration of Rights
Sec. 11. Right to keep and bear arms; civil power supreme.
2. The military shall be subordinate to the civil power; No standing army shall be maintained by this State in time of peace, and in time of War, no appropriation for a standing army shall be for a longer time than two years.

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ALL the States have them. Look them up for yourself.

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Divided sovereignty is concurrent jurisdiction, and it doesn't magically make the federal government supreme. It is a residual sovereignty the States never gave away just because they signed the compact.

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The federal government is directly vested with sovereignty of the people of the United States.

According to the first legal treaties after Ratification of our current Constitution...the one APROVED for printing and distribution BY CONGRESS, has this to say on that subject:

In the United States of America the people have retained the sovereignty in their own hands: they have in each state distributed the government, or administrative authority of the state, into two distinct branches, internal, and external; the former of these, they have confided, with some few exceptions, to the state government; the latter to the federal government.

Since the union of the sovereignty with the government, constitutes a state of absolute power, or tyranny, over the people, every attempt to effect such an union is treason against the sovereignty, in the actors; and every extension of the administrative authority beyond its just constitutional limits, is absolutely an act of usurpation in the government, of that sovereignty, which the people have reserved to themselves.
View of the Constitution of the United States , Preliminary Remarks

How odd. Tucker said the federal power was strictly EXTERNAL and any attempt by the federal government to interfere with the Rights of the People in the States was treason.

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Guess is just goes to prove the saying about victors writing the history books.

MamaT, Non-Sequitor kinda stole my thunder with his post. I'd like to add that the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions were submitted to the other states for approval and rejected. But even then those other states from time to time threatened nullification or secession. In other words, ones position on these subjects often had a lot to do with the passions of the moment. Madision and Jefferson could be contradictory of themselves over time as could the states. You've cited Madison and pointed out that he is the farther of our constitution. I'd like to cite Washington, the father of our country in his farewell address. Of all the things he could have covered, he decided to mostly cover this very issue. Basically he spent most of the address talking about the importance and need for permanence of the Union and warning us about people who would try to wreck this union by appealing to local interests . Here are some of the pertinant passages:
The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.
The North, in an unrestrained intercourse with the South, protected by the equal laws of a common government, finds in the productions of the latter great additional resources of maritime and commercial enterprise and precious materials of manufacturing industry. The South, in the same intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the North, sees its agriculture grow and its commerce expand. Turning partly into its own channels the seamen of the North, it finds its particular navigation invigorated; and, while it contributes, in different ways, to nourish and increase the general mass of the national navigation, it looks forward to the protection of a maritime strength, to which itself is unequally adapted. The East, in a like intercourse with the West, already finds, and in the progressive improvement of interior communications by land and water, will more and more find a valuable vent for the commodities which it brings from abroad, or manufactures at home. The West derives from the East supplies requisite to its growth and comfort, and, what is perhaps of still greater consequence, it must of necessity owe the secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets for its own productions to the weight, influence, and the future maritime strength of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed by an indissoluble community of interest as one nation. Any other tenure by which the West can hold this essential advantage, whether derived from its own separate strength, or from an apostate and unnatural connection with any foreign power, must be intrinsically precarious.
While, then, every part of our country thus feels an immediate and particular interest in union, all the parts combined cannot fail to find in the united mass of means and efforts greater strength, greater resource, proportionably greater security from external danger, a less frequent interruption of their peace by foreign nations; and, what is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves, which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same governments, which their own rival ships alone would be sufficient to produce, but which opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and intrigues would stimulate and embitter. Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty. In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
These considerations speak a persuasive language to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the Union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a fair and full experiment. With such powerful and obvious motives to union, affecting all parts of our country, while experience shall not have demonstrated its impracticability, there will always be reason to distrust the patriotism of those who in any quarter may endeavor to weaken its bands.
In contemplating the causes which may disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations, Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western; whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You cannot shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection. The inhabitants of our Western country have lately had a useful lesson on this head; they have seen, in the negotiation by the Executive, and in the unanimous ratification by the Senate, of the treaty with Spain, and in the universal satisfaction at that event, throughout the United States, a decisive proof how unfounded were the suspicions propagated among them of a policy in the General Government and in the Atlantic States unfriendly to their interests in regard to the Mississippi; they have been witnesses to the formation of two treaties, that with Great Britain, and that with Spain, which secure to them everything they could desire, in respect to our foreign relations, towards confirming their prosperity. Will it not be their wisdom to rely for the preservation of these advantages on the Union by which they were procured ? Will they not henceforth be deaf to those advisers, if such there are, who would sever them from their brethren and connect them with aliens?
To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.

Like a lot of cons I am all about original intent. That letter was Madison’s very thinking at the very moment that the constitution was written.

Written, not Ratified.

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We are talking about the very two people you claim to use to support your argument.

No, you pinged me to a post that you had previously made on this thread where it stated:

nor did I know that in 1798, Madison had tried to explain to Jefferson that this was wrong. [my first post concerning Jefferson was in #1064]

You brought Jefferson in, I did not.

Speaking of Jefferson, though, here's his Resolutions Relative to the Alien and Sedition Acts

That they will concur with this commonwealth in considering the said acts as so palpably against the Constitution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these States, of all powers whatsoever: that they will view this as seizing the rights of the States, and consolidating them in the hands of the General Government, with a power assumed to bind the States, (not merely as the cases made federal, (casus foederis,) but in all cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with their consent, but by others against their consent: that this would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority; and that the co-States, recurring to their natural right in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these acts void, and of no force, and will each take measures of its own for providing that neither these acts, nor any others of the General Government not plainly and intentionally authorized by the Constitution, shall be exercised within their respective territories.

Sounds to me as if Madison and Jefferson agree on the issue that the federal government cannot authorize anything that is not IN the Constitution.

Now please point out the word permanent, perpetual, continual or any other synonym for eternity in the Constitution that shows that the ability of the federal government to prevent a State from leaving the Union at will is not one of the powers reserved to the States respectively, or to the people by the 10th Amendment.

If it is so obvious in its Original Intent, it shouldn't be hard to find.

“Written, not Ratified”.

Now now MamaT you are all about citations and such. Please make your argument if you can that Madisons intent/explaination/justification re states rights at the time he wrote the letter to Jefferson were not carried out in the ratified document.

“No, you pinged me to a post that you had previously made on this thread where it stated:

nor did I know that in 1798, Madison had tried to explain to Jefferson that this was wrong. [my first post concerning Jefferson was in #1064]”

No, you said you were still looking forward to Madison’s explaination to Jefferson and I provided it.

“You brought Jefferson in, I did not”.

You are right, I don’t know why I did that. It was a letter from Madison TO Jefferson and you wanted citations to back up the author’s assertion that Madison told Jefferson he was wrong so Jefferson doesn’t really enter into it. But I did find the correct ref which you are dodging because the constitution hadn’t been ratified yet.

“Speaking of Jefferson, though, here’s his Resolutions Relative to the Alien and Sedition Acts”

Yep, Jefferson would be pratically the last person I’d cite next to maybe Patrick Henry who hated the constitution. Jefferson was a revolutionary and a good guy to turn to if you want to start a revolution. Not so good when it comes to forming a nation. Notice he wasn’t included in authoring the consitution. He went on though to do the Louisiana Purchase, the biggest federal fiat of the time. Jefferson was all about political expediency and his influence runs through the democratic party to this day. Not my favorite founder.

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