Secession ball stirs controversy

CHARLESTON -- The shots are solely verbal -- and expected to remain that way -- but at least one Civil War Sesquicentennial event is triggering conflict.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans plan to hold a $100-per-person "Secession Ball" on Dec. 20 in Gaillard Municipal Auditorium. It will feature a play highlighting key moments from the signing of South Carolina's Ordinance of Secession 150 years ago, an act that severed the state's ties to the Union and put the nation on the path to the Civil War.

Jeff Antley, who is organizing the event, said the Secession Ball honors the men who stood up for their rights.

"To say that we are commemorating and celebrating the signers of the ordinance and the act of South Carolina going that route is an accurate statement," Antley said. "The secession movement in South Carolina was a demonstration of freedom."

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People plans to protest the event, said Charleston branch President Dot Scott. She deferred further comment to Lonnie Randolph, president of the state NAACP.

"It's amazing to me how history can be rewritten to be what you wanted it to be rather than what happened," Randolph said. "You couldn't pay the folks in Charleston to hold a Holocaust gala, could you? But you know, these are nothing but black people, so nobody pays them any attention."

When Southerners refer to states' rights, he said, "they are really talking about their idea of one right -- to buy and sell human beings."

"It has nothing to do with slavery as far as I'm concerned," he said. "What I'm doing is honoring the men from this state who stood up for their self-government and their rights under law -- the right to secede was understood."

Antley said, "Slavery is an abomination, but slavery is not just a Southern problem. It's an American problem. To lay the fault and the institution of slavery on the South is just ignorance of history."

Antley said about 500 people are expected to attend the ball, which begins with a 45-minute play and concludes with a dinner and dancing. S.C. Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, an ardent Civil War re-enactor, is among the actors in the play. The actual ordinance of secession document also will be on display.

Randolph said the state NAACP is consulting with its national office in Baltimore regarding the format of the protests, which also could extend to other 150th anniversary events. "There is not one event that's off the table," he said.

Asked whether there could be good Sesquicentennial events, Randolph said, "If there were a dialogue to sit down and discuss that event 150 years ago and how it still negatively impacts the lives of so many people in this state and around the country, that would be a good discussion, but not an event to sit down and tell lies about what happened and glamorize those people who thought America was so sorry and so bad that they wanted to blow it to hell. That's what they did -- that's what they attempted to do, and we want to make that honorable?"

Charleston is receiving increased national attention as the nation's plans for the Sesquicentennial move forward. This was where it began, with the state becoming the first to secede on Dec. 20, 1860, and firing the first shot on April 12, 1861.

Most of the Lowcountry's Sesquicentennial events have been announced with little controversy -- many involve lectures by respected historians and scholars.

In its vision statement for the observance, the National Park Service said it "will address the institution of slavery as the principal cause of the Civil War, as well as the transition from slavery to freedom -- after the war -- for the 4 million previously enslaved African Americans."

Michael Allen of the National Park Service said he is aware of plans for the Secession Ball but noted that most Sesquicentennial events have found common ground among those with differing viewpoints.

"Now some people might be upset with some pieces of the pie. I understand that," he said. "I think that's the growth of me, as a person of African decent, is to realize that people view this in different ways."

Allen said other Sesquicentennial commemorations being planned will mark events that have a strong black history component, such as Robert Smalls' theft of the Confederate ship Planter and the 54th Massachusetts' assault on Battery Wagener.

"At least what's being pulled together by various groups, be they black or white or whatever, will at least be more broad based and diverse than what was done in 1961," Allen said. "Hopefully, at the end of the day, all Carolinians can benefit from this four-year journey."

Tom O'Rourke, director of the Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission, said Sesquicentennial organizers were fooling themselves if they thought the Confederate side of the story was going to be buried in the observances.

"I think there will be controversy, I think there will be hurt feelings, and I think that as this anniversary passes, we will question what else we could have done to tell the whole story," he said. "But I am OK with all of that. ... I think all discussion is progress."

Read more: http://www.thesunnews.com/2010/12/03/1847335/secession-ball-stirs-controversy.html#ixzz1737LSVRv

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was proposed by the Thirty-Eighth United States Congress, on January 31, 1865. The amendment was adopted on December 6, 1865, when Georgia ratified the amendment. In a proclamation of Secretary of State William Henry Seward, dated December 18, 1865, it was declared to have been ratified by the legislatures of twenty-seven of the then thirty-six states. This begs the question of whether secession had actually occured?

In 1787 the Congress of the Confederation of the United States passed the Northwest Ordinance which established what is now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota as Northwest Territory and established the population required for statehood as 60,000 people. The ordinance was affirmed again by Congress under the current US Constitution in 1789. In 1802 the Enabling Act was passed telling Ohio how to become a state. A delegate would be elected for every 1,200 to go to a state convention which would determine whether or not they wanted to be a state and if so to decide how delegates would be chosen to write a constitution. The constitution must be “republican, and not repugnant to the ordinance of the thirteenth of July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven, between the original States and the people and States of the territory northwest of the river Ohio.” Congress would then vote on whether or not to accept the constitution and the statehood of Ohio.

Given that the rebel States never lost their pre-rebellion geographic boundaries, they being instrumental in ratifying the 13th Ammendment (abolishing slavery) prior to their ‘re-admission’, and Andrew Johnson - who maintained Lincoln’s lenient policy of reconciliation - issued a formal pardon for the entire South on 29 May 1865, it can be argued that The Reconstruction Acts of 1867 were merely instruments of political reconciliation.

To that end the Acts divided the Southern states (except Tennessee, which had been readmitted to the Union in 1866) into five military districts. Military provost marshals were appointed to administrate martial law over the peoples of the former Confederacy, whereby general civil order was enforced, i.e., citizen and property rights upheld through military tribunal and/or commissions so as to oversee the reorganization of State and local civil governments until such time that self-governance could be restored.

The Acts stipulated that civilian rule and full state rights would only be restored after the States had adopted constitutions based upon universal male suffrage and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment. By 1868 all but three states were readmitted under these conditions, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia finally acquiescing in 1870. The Fifteenth Amendment, ratified in March 1870, aimed to guarantee black suffrage in the South. The new state governments in the South were usually Republican and governed by blacks, carpetbaggers, and scalawags (white Southerners who supported the Union during the Civil War).

Special consideration and status was, however, conferred to those regions and areas which were deemed having been continuously loyal to the Union during the conflict and were named by county in the Emancipation Proclamation: “Louisiana, (except the Parishes of St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and Orleans, including the City of New Orleans)... and Virginia, (except the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued.” These are the Louisiana and Virginia counties exempted from the Proclamation because even though they practiced slavery, were still regarded as loyal to the Union.

As each of the Southern states were ‘redeemed’ one-by-one by conservative political groups and influence of the Republican Party dwindled below the Mason–Dixon Line - corruption and incompetence certainly being a significant aspect of this period - the end of Reconstruction marked the end of contemporary attempts towards giving all citizens social equality. The end of Reconstruction was official with the withdrawal of Federal troops from the formerly States-in-Rebellion by President Rutherford B Hayes in 1877.

That notwithstanding, however, many states continued to practice discrimination and segregation; Jim Crow laws ubequetious to every Southern state disenfranchised all black citizens (stripping them of the legal right to challenge or contest the very laws and codes that oppressed them); white supremacist groups such as the KKK ran amok (virtually unchallenged by regional and local authority for nearly 1/2 century). The lack of an independent economic base, moreover, meant that blacks in the South were not able to advance socio-economically in any significant manner for many decades after Reconstruction ended.

From #115:

No man, no association of men, no state or set of states has a right to withdraw itself from this Union, of its own accord. The same power which knit us together, can only unknit. The same formality, which forged the links of the Union, is necessary to dissolve it. The majority of States which form the Union must consent to the withdrawal of any one branch of it. Until that consent has been obtained, any attempt to dissolve the Union, or obstruct the efficacy of its constitutional laws, is Treason--Treason to all intents and purposes.

From The Federal Pillars series published in Massachusetts Centinel it could be argued that the individual States have a vested interest in preservation of their Union amongst themselves. Suppose only 9 states would have ratified? What fate would befall those states not ratifying? Would they have been forced at gunpoint into the Union?

After the Revolutionary War, economic difficulties in Massachusetts resulted in many farms that were heavily in debt being seized by their creditors and often sold for a fraction of their value. The farmers and working men of Massachusetts who were unable to pay their debts were sent to debtor prisons and would not be released until their debts were paid. The state legislature of Massachusetts responded to this economic crisis in a very inadequate manner such as increasing court costs and raising taxes.

As a result, mobs of farmers and workers took matters into their own hands in August 1786 and barred access to the courts of several towns such as Pittsfield and Northampton. Among the important leaders of this rebellion was Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary War veteran from Pelham, and the rebellion came to be known as Shays Rebellion. The rebellion pointed out the weakness of the Articles of Confederation for governing the United States. In order to prevent such anarchy in the future and to strengthen the central government, the Philadelphia Convention convened to draft the Constitution in the spring of 1787, just a short time after the end of Shays Rebellion.

After seceding, the rebel-States demanded the surrender of federal forts within their geographical boundaries; President Buchanan refused; southern state troops subsequently seized them through force. At Fort Sumter, South Carolina troops repulsed a supply ship trying to reach federal forces based there. The ship was forced to return to New York, its supplies undelivered. President Lincoln alerted South Carolina - in an attempt to avoid hostilities - that he intended to deliver supplies to Fort Sumpter. South Carolina, however, feared a trick; the commander of the fort was asked to surrender immediately. Ft. Sumpter's commnander, Anderson, said he'd surrender after supplies were exhausted. That stipulation was rejected and on April 12 shots were fired on the fort. I believe that such action falls squarely under the purvue of Arcticles I, Sec. 8.15 & IV Sec. 3.2, 4.2 of the Constitution.

After several additional declarations of secession, an outraged Northern public clamored for a march against the newly declared Confederate capital at Richmond, VA, with the naive view that an early end to the conflict could be had. General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, yielding to the public's clamor for action, sent inadequately trained and untried troops into harms way. The results of that debacle left no doubt that a very long slugfest was to ensue before the matter would be settled decisively.

The fact of the matter is that the States individual self-interests lie with the strength or weakness of their Union collectively as a whole. If the States collectively decide that its in their self-interest to discharge a member from their Union, so be it. However, unless the several sovereign and united States recognize the secession, then the seccession is merely insurrection or rebellion and must be put down (with extreme predjudice if need be).

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