I have provided a source for my standpoint, please be kind enough to provide one for yours.
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What I’m saying regarding the states’ ratification of the 14th Amendment was that ratifying it amounted to a concession that the process by which it had passed to that point was correct.
So your saying that [irregardless of the circumstances], that because the south passed the 14th, it was defacto acknowledgment that the federal government had the right to do what it did? Talk about twisted logic.
No, it was blackmail, pure and simple. Forcing any State to agree to what they know to be an unconstitutional exercise of power by the federal government is tyranny, pure and simple.
When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
Thomas Jefferson to Charles Hammond, 1821
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BTW, I'd like to that you for your responses. I've enjoyed the discussion immensely. :-)
I’ve made a mistake in attributing the 14th Amendment to the 40th Congress, which ran from 1867 to 1869. It, along with the 13th and 15th Amendments, was passed out of Congress in 1866 among the acts of the 39th Congress from which nearly all former Confederate states’ representatives were yet excluded:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/39th_United_States_Congress
As you have stated, former Confederate states began rejecting the Amendment in 1866, prompting the Reconstruction Acts to pressure them to ratify. Saying the federal government was exerting pressure on certain states no more amounts to compulsion, though, than the withholding of federal highway funds to states which didn’t raise their drinking ages or lower their speed limits. The Confederate states didn’t like the state of military occupation which had resulted from their acts of war against the federal government and so were forced to swallow bitter pills, but they did in fact choose to swallow them.
It’s no use going back now and saying that their ratifications weren’t binding because they had their fingers crossed.
This has indeed been an informative exchange; thanks very much.