Posted on 02/11/2009 6:06:39 PM PST by Kaslin
This is the 200th birthday of the first Republican to win a national election, Abraham Lincoln. It is good for Republicans today to remember Lincoln, not to be antiquarians, but to learn from his principled defense of the Constitution.
By becoming students of Lincoln, Republicans can win elections and would deserve to win by helping America recover its constitutional source of strength and vitality.
The greatest political crisis America faces today is neither the recession nor Islamic terrorism; it's not health care, education, immigration or abortion. It is that the United States Constitution has become largely irrelevant to our politics and policies.
All three branches of government routinely ignore or twist the meaning of the Constitution, while many of our problems today are symptoms of policies that have no constitutional foundation.
If we are to recover the authority of the Constitution and the many ways it restrains and channels government power, someone or some party must offer a principled defense of the cause of constitutional government.
They must understand not only the Constitution, but also the principles that informed its original purposes and aspirations, principles found in the Declaration of Independence among other places.
No one understood that better than Lincoln.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
I truly enjoy studying the history of the cause of the Civil War. My claim to fame on the subject is while I was in college, I rented an apartment in the home of the grand daughter of Governor Thomas Moore. His official portrait hung over her fireplace. I spent a lot of time sitting with her listening to her stories, which were quite fascinating. I wish I knew then what I know now as I would have taped her and captured all of her memories. I never knew her exact age but she was probably somewhere in her 90’s when she died. The home was beautiful, on Audubon Park in New Orleans, I hated leaving there but after she died her kids (who never came to see her) sold everything. They were in their 60’s and you could tell they were thrilled she was gone because they were finally able to inherit her money, which was quite a bit I might add.
The pertinent aspect to what happened back then is wether the Constitution was adhered to or not. I believe it was not and you believe it was. If the Federal government had prosecuted Jefferson Davis on the crimes he was charged with the issue would have been answered but he was not prosecuted. There are a number of sources who were intimately involved with the case back then that claim the government chose not to try him as there was a very strong possibility that they would lose the case. Just for academic sake, imagine that Davis was found not guilty of treason because it was not unconstitutional to secede.
I don’t think I have ever heard anyone refer to what occurred as regime change, no State tried to change the regime of the United States.
Prior to the firing on Ft. Sumter, the majority of Tennessee was against secession, afterward, it past by 108,339 votes for secession to 47,233 against secession. Eastern Tennessee was against it, the rest of the state was for it. Georgia voted for secession, there are claims there were voting irregularities in some counties. Keep in mind that the Constitution of the US was barely approved in many of the states, with only 5 having a super majority.
I am not for or against the north or the south in this conflict. I do however believe that these events started us down the path that we find ourselves on today where the Constitution is regularly disregarded and its’ meanings so twisted and perverted that no Founder, if brought back to life today would believe he was in the United States.
Thomas Jefferson thought differently when he wrote the Northwest Ordinance, and George Washington thought differently when he signed legislation enforcing the slavery ban in it. But what did they know, huh?
Well said!
Well said indeed! That is my position exactly!
It is enumerated under the legislative branch, not the executive, not the judiciary. The Supreme Court ruled that it could not be suspended without an act of Congress. The Supreme Court was ignored.
Congress did not approve it upon returning to session in 1861. It was not approved by Congress until 1863.
Tennessee might well have reversed itself in the post Sumter 2nd election. But the process was so irregular, I believe that we cannot know for sure. With an alien army, the CSA, already invited in and widespread voter intimidation in the more slavery-oriented regions, there is cause to doubt. But no matter how the people would have voted in a free election, it was not for Governor Isham Harris and his political henchmen to disregard the February vote, the last vote on record, and take it upon themselves to invite the Confederacy to overrun the state.
I think the general lack of super majority support for Secession came back to haunt the CSA late in the war. The hardcore true believers of the Confederacy had volunteered early and tended to be sent to the immediately critical Virginia theater. The reluctant warriors tended to be more in the West and that's where the Confederacy fell apart while the do or die boys were still fighting for a stalemate in the long battle for Richmond. And the presence of a large unenthusiastic segment created a critical base for erosion of the general support for the war when the going got tough.
I think the disregard of the Constitution that you rightly decried would be a danger no matter what path Lincoln took. The heirs of the Confederacy, the southern Democrats of the New Deal era, were generally as much for intrusive government as anybody when they thought it could further their states.
It's a pleasure debating differing POVs with somebody who appreciates the history.
The entire court has never taken the matter up, so they have never ruled one way or the other.
It is amazing to be able to go back in history and see when people actually believed in the Constitution and were willing to sacrifice everything for it regardless of what side of the issue they were on. Most people today do not care nor do they realize what they are giving up by allowing the government to incrementally remove their freedoms.
I meant to say the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. not sure how chief and justice got deleted ;)
True. The fact there were no provisions in place did not supersede the slave-holding State from voluntarily leaving a voluntary compact.
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It puts a whole Orwellian 'all states are equal but some states are more equal than others' spin on your arguement.
No, the Orwellian spin comes from thinking rights can cancel rights. Every State entering the compact did so with the full realization that some properties owned by the collective States would be located inside the sovereign boundaries of other States.
It's a risk they chose to take.
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And while I agree with you that Congress couldn't touch it in states that still chose to legalize it, there is no reason why Congress couldn't regulate it or outlaw it in the territories they directly controlled.
Your agreement is immaterial. Up until the change in government, Supreme Court decisions said otherwise.
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If true, then with the exception of the original 13 Congress created every state that was admitted post 1787. So they have the right to control them?
No. The general government OWNED nothing. Everything was held and operated under the delegated trust given by the authority of the States.
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Why not? Article IV says "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States."
Again, NO ability to exercise an authority concerning slavery as that was to be left to the respective States. The federal government is not a State, it is a municipal entity inside areas of enumerated jurisdiction and an administrative one in the other areas given to it by the Constitution.
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So you can be assured that had the rebellion not broken out, legal challenges to Scott v. Sanford would have been forthcoming from many directions.
No argument there, but we're not dealing in 'what ifs'.
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Lincoln could have raged against slaver and I can't see where he could have forced the South into an involuntary anything.
Lincoln, being a lawyer, knew exactly what he was doing....using an emotional concept concerning a moral issue to alter an established legal concept. I can't make it any plainer than that.
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Which you do so love to lay at Lincoln's feet
Oh, good grief. Lighten up, Nancy.
That statement was a look-how-far-we've-fallen statement, not an attempt to solely blame Lincoln.
There's plenty of 'blame' to go around.
I cannot imagine a Civil War debate on the Democratic Underground concerning itself too much about Constitutional issues. I isuspect the general tone would be: “all white Southerns were ignorant racists, all white Southerners are ignorant racists and all white Southerns will forever be ignorant racists unless they switch to the Democratic Party, the party of Lincoln and abolition”.
Yep. It's a concept called sovereignty of the States.
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You posit that slavery was essential to the south, and the south was justified to defend slavery, not just the principle of states' rights.
Right again.
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You are sick.
Whatever
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To suggest that the institution of slavery not only could have, but should have, continued indefinitely into the future reflects a depravity and lack of empathy that can only be characterized as evil.
To remain in the Constitutional confines, slavery should have existed until the States decided for themselves that it should not.
Do you believe the Constitution to be 'evil'?
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You disgust me.
Well, people who have so little emotional control that they cannot stop emoting long enough to look at the facts of the situation disgust me, so I guess we're even.
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It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle
LOL! You are right, only white southerns are racists. There has never been another race in the history of the world who felt they were genetically superior to another race. Must be something in the water. Don’t forget that it was the party of Dr. King too! ;)
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, NOTE B, Preliminary Remarks
St. George Tucker
Treason against the United States is treason against the sovereign States, NOT actions against the federal government.
Aren't there? The 10th Amendment says, "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." A clear reading of Article I, Section 10 and Article IV, Section 3 shows that the power to admit a state and to approve any change in its status once it was allowed to join are clearly powers reserved to the United States. By implication this would include the power to approve a state's leaving as well.
No, the Orwellian spin comes from thinking rights can cancel rights.
But that is exactly what you are saying. The rights of the seceding states overrule the rights of the remaining states. Only those states leaving have any protections. Only those leaving have any rights. Those remaining have none, so you are telling us that rights of the leaving states cancel the rights of the remaining states. When the spinning stops, the Orwellian arguement lies in your court.
Your agreement is immaterial. Up until the change in government, Supreme Court decisions said otherwise.
True, though it's arguable that the bulk of Chief Justice Taney's bizarre decision was actually made in dicta. And that is no doubt an arguement that would have been used to challenge the Scott decision in future legal cases. There can be no doubt that a Lincoln Attorney General would do everything possible to aid such challenges as well. So the Scott decision would have been under attack from day one. Something the South could not stomach. So they rebelled.
No. The general government OWNED nothing. Everything was held and operated under the delegated trust given by the authority of the States.
With the original 13, no, the government owned nothing that had not been deeded to them by the states themselves. But for those states created out of territory purchased or acquired by the government through other means then the federal government owned a great deal. And in many states they still do.
But my statement was in response to your remark "that which you create you have the right to control." Since that Congress has created 27 out of the 50 states through the powers given them by Article IV then does it control them as well?
Again, NO ability to exercise an authority concerning slavery as that was to be left to the respective States. The federal government is not a State, it is a municipal entity inside areas of enumerated jurisdiction and an administrative one in the other areas given to it by the Constitution.
And the territories were not states, either. They had no government, no representation in Congress. The Constitution gave Congress the power to make all needful rules and regulations for the territories in Article IV, Section 2. Now once Congress created a state out of any territory, then it also gave up the power to interfere in what that state chose to do, within the restrictions outlined in the Constitution. If the new state chose to legalize slavery then there wasn't anything Congress could do to prevent it. But before that, Congress had the full authority to ban slavery. Up until Taney's judicial activism, that is.
Lincoln, being a lawyer, knew exactly what he was doing....using an emotional concept concerning a moral issue to alter an established legal concept. I can't make it any plainer than that.
If Lincoln wanted to make a moral issue out of slavery then he was very late to the game. Slavery had been an emotional issue for decades prior to his election, and I'm at a loss to understand what he could possibly had said that hadn't been said before. There is nothing Lincoln could have done to interfere with slavery where it existed. I know that. You know that. Lincoln sure knew that. The South knew that. It was his threat to the expansion of slavery that caused their anger and which led to their decision to rebel.
There's plenty of 'blame' to go around.
Well, we agree on that at least.
Thanks for your candor. Let me ask you to expand on your thoughts:
1. If Lincoln had decided not to preserve the Union, and the Confederacy seceded without opposition to form a new nation, and slavery continued in that nation to the present day, how many times a day would be too many to beat your slaves?
2. Is there anything inherently wrong with slavery, even if a state makes it legal?
3. If blacks escape to the US from the confederacy, and the US doesn't return them, should Alabama be entitled to cross the border and seize US citizens as compensation?
4. Would you support a movement in the south to free the slaves? If so, should they be sent back to Africa, or given Southern citizenship? Should they be allowed to vote? Miscegenate? Live in your neighborhood?
5. If the Confederacy had conquered northern Mexico, and decided to make Mexicans into slaves, how much should they sell for compared to a black adult?
6. If the Confederacy had citizens who supported black freedom, how many years in jail should they receive as punishment? What if they refused to apologize?
I may have other questions, but I'll be pleased to hear your answers to these when you get a chance.
The Northwest Ordinance was adopted in 1787 under the Articles of Confederation, which contained no mention of slavery.
The Constitution only gives the Congressional authority to ban the importation of slaves after the year 1808.
Thus, there was no legitimate authority to ban slavery in either the States OR the territories, only their importation into the country.
With respect to what has taken place in the N. W. Territory, it may be observed, that the ordinance giving its distinctive character on the Subject of Slaveholding proceeded from the old Congress, acting, with the best intentions, but under a charter which contains no shadow of the authority exercised. And it remains to be decided how far the States formed within that Territory & admitted into the Union, are on a different footing from its other members, as to their legislative sovereignty.
James Madison to Robert Walsh 1819
Then again, what did Madison know, huh?
Well said!
Fine. Show me the word secession.
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A clear reading of Article I, Section 10 and Article IV, Section 3 shows that the power to admit a state and to approve any change in its status once it was allowed to join are clearly powers reserved to the United States.
T admit a State, yes. To create a State, no. The territory organized as a State, and Congress says we recognize your statehood, and admit you to the Union.
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By implication this would include the power to approve a state's leaving as well.
No, by insinuation it would, but we're not taking about implication, we're talking about the original intent of the Constitution.
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When the spinning stops, the Orwellian arguement lies in your court.
Believe as you wish.
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But for those states created out of territory purchased or acquired by the government through other means then the federal government owned a great deal. And in many states they still do.
That sort of thing happens when you have a consolidation of government's powers.
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It was his threat to the expansion of slavery that caused their anger and which led to their decision to rebel.
That's right...it's called exercise of an unconstitutional authority, and one Lincoln supported wholeheartedly.
Since the Constitution is not a suicide pact, the South decided to leave. Better a chance at survival than none at all.
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Well, we agree on that at least.
LOL! It's nice to find some common ground. I enjoy our discourses immensely.
Sorry that my candor in stating historical facts upsets your delicate sensibilities, but the attempt to browbeat me into refuting something I never said is both ludicrous and puerile.
Please show me one post where I did so much as intimate that slavery is a morally acceptable institution.
I'll be more than happy to discuss historical facts and constitutional law, but if you're just going to EMOTE, please do it somewhere else.
Thank you.
So your belief was that congress could only be as strict in its laws for the territories as the most lenient state?
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