Posted on 04/15/2012 5:31:13 AM PDT by mek1959
This Friday, April 13th is the birth day of Thomas Jefferson. In recognition of his birthday I thought we’d revisit the meaning of the Declaration of Independence. On the surface the meaning of the Declaration may be self-evident, but the true meaning of many of the sentences and phrases escapes most people.
The Declaration of Independence stated to the world that the thirteen colonies were separating from Great Britain. In other words the colonies were seceding from Britain. The first paragraph says “When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
(Excerpt) Read more at foundersrevolution.net ...
So in 1834 Jack v. Martin overturned federal law at the request of the slave power, and thus states wrote state procedural protections for the process, then in 1842 Priggs v Pennsylvania overturned state procedural protections at the request of the slave power were overturned, so the state wrote procedures to require state noninterference. Then the slave power complained about that.
See the problem was the slave owners wanted to run not just their states, but also the other states. Eventually that didn’t work because the free states were more numerous, and the slave economy was limited by its demand that slaves be kept ignorant. When the slave power realized their fecklessness, they resorted to the unconstitutional remedy of unilateral secession, and then started a war, which they lost.
Read it again.
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See the problem was the slave owners wanted to run not just their states, but also the other states. Eventually that didn’t work because the free states were more numerous, and the slave economy was limited by its demand that slaves be kept ignorant. When the slave power realized their fecklessness, they resorted to the unconstitutional remedy of unilateral secession, and then started a war, which they lost.
Emote, emote, emote, emote, emote, emote, emote, emote, emote, emote.
I didn’t mention feelings. Why did you? No logic or ethics to support slavery?
I asked what your position was, and you answered.
I don’t see why you see fit to use the word ‘emote’ several times.
Except that you are embarrassed by your own position. If you are, then you have it in your capability to change it, and then come up with any justification you want.
I submit the onset of arbitrary federal power lands before 1860. One can place it with George Washington as he put down the Whiskey rebellion, with the Louisiana Purchase, or with the Second Bank of the United States.
When you point to one event over 150 years ago for your decision to feel oppressed today, it tells us about you, not about reality.
It’s a debating tactic - and not a very clever one.
The irony is between the imputations, the fallacies, the non sequiturs, and their own emoting I’m amused by the glad-handing they’re doing. I’m also amused by the notion that these two arrogate unto themselves the singular clarity that no one else on the planet grasps. The rest of us have apparently been hornswoggled, brainwashed, or are just too much the dullard to get it.
mek1959 suggests that we are “theorists” - let’s put it to the test.
[Noun] Theory
1. A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena
No, that can’t be us since we can’t substantiate (at least to their satisfaction) our understanding of the Constitution.
2. A tentative insight into the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena
Now that may be closer to their liking since “tentative” implies a temporal quality that they feeeeel exists in our POV.
3. A belief that can guide behavior
There’s one that I’m sure they can hang their collective hats on! After all, doesn’t “belief” fall into the same soft~n~squishy category as faith, trust, and hope?
The problem with absolutists are that they are so....absolute. They’re invariably rigid and compartmentalized in their thinking and incapable of viewing the same thing from a different perspective.
mek1959 - I would suggest that it is you who is the theorist and I the pragmatist. You see the world in terms of how you believe it was meant to be and therefore how events should have progressed and I see it, in all of its foibles and failings how it has developed.
Your answers to the loaded got-ya questions regarding both the “right” to secession and the power to “preserve the Union” have been answered. Neither are clearly enumerated in the Constitution. So what? As MamaTexan so ably put it, “Do you seriously think the Founders threw down less than 5000 words and expected them to restrain the government?” It is simply ludicrous to suggest that any government would preclude the ability to defend or preserve itself.
Lincoln did what he had to to preserve the union and his actions were affirmed by our courts. The confederates attempted to test their theory on secession and discovered that it contained a few flaws.
Attempting to assign blame for everything you dislike to one side of the dispute without acknowledging the contributions of both parties is simplistic and foolish.
This looks like a good place for mama’s helpful approbation, “blah, blah, blah!”
Why don't you just come clean here and admit you're a living constitutionalist. It's ok, we won't shoot you for your beliefs unlike a certain president who shot 400,000 people for a inaccurate, anti-constitutional, anti-rule of law, anti-inalienable right, anti-authority, set of beliefs. Hmmm...now who was that who did that. Wait, wait, it's coming to me.
No, your vaunted and cherished "fluidity" has led to a national (NOT federal) government that:
1. Has wracked up $16 or so trillion in current debt
2. Is working on $105 or so trillion in unfunded liabilities
3. And making grandmothers in wheelchairs take of their undergarments in order to board a plane.
Yes, these federalism crushing THEORIES based on "Universal Law" have worked out just great. But then again, as you're a living constitutionalist, and a pragmatist, I would suspect you're quite ok with the outcome.
So I'll end with the "gotcha" question for others who have yet to answer (except you, I'll get to that in a sec) on this thread. Here it is:
Please point to that section of Article II of the United States Constitution where the good people of the SEPARATE and SOVEREIGN States DELEGATED a power that they alone possessed as the repositories of Inalienable Rights to the Executive Branch of Article II to "Preserve the Union????"
Chirping crickets sounds in the background. You can stop looking...there is none.
You however rockr, you are the man because you answered CORRECTLY and HONESTLY..."Neither are clearly enumerated in the Constitution. So what?" FINALLY...a big government, pro-arbitrary power "conservative" comes clean. So what? I'm truly impressed, rarely do conservative living constitutionalists admit such. Seriously, I'm impressed.
Indeed, my question is a "gotcha" question to smoke out conservative living constitutionalists. I run into them all the time. Some actually see the error of their ways (like me and Dr. Walter Williams) recant our former big-government (just our kind of big government) ideas and reorient ourselves back to the Rule of Law. It doesn't sound like you're one of them...but I could be wrong.
Anyway, this is a "gotcha" question...and it works like a charm. So now that you've answered it honestly, take pride in your arbitrary power supporting living Constitution ideas. That's ok, we pro-inalienable rights people won't shoot you. Though we're pretty sure you'll shoot us if Texas or Oklahoma, or Idaho, or Montana decides they want to withdraw from the Union. You'll probably weave together something like this as you oil your guns:
"I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.
Oh, wait...somebody already used this.
Great, now I'm dead because of some "Universal Law" that holds Unions together in perpetuity that nobody taught me about. Stupid me, I thought that our ratified Constitution was the Law...not some Universal Law. Crap! Can somebody call an ambulance? I've been shot by the Lincolnian living constitutionalists because people of our State, like me, thought we had Inalienable Rights and tried to withdraw from the Compact.
That is simply not true.
In fact, "the South" made no serious efforts -- zero, zip, nada -- to seek redress of grievances through normal constitutional methods such as congressional legislation, Supreme Court rulings or Executive Branch enforcement actions.
All of these options were readily available to the Slave Power, because until 1861 the slaveocracy strongly influenced, where it did not outright control, every branch of Federal government in Washington.
And the reason why "the South" did not appeal through normal channels is simple and obvious: Deep-South states like South Carolina had no standing in court, because they could not cite examples where their own slaves had escaped and not been returned as required by Federal law.
Furthermore, Northern Fugitive Slave laws were nothing new -- they had been around for many years without causing South Carolina a problem -- and nothing changed in November 1860.
And South Carolina had itself famously championed a "right of nullification", so it is here totally hypocritical to claim that same "right" when used by Northern states was suddenly a justification for secession.
In short, South Carolina's whole argument in it's Causes of Secession document regarding Northern Fugitive Slave laws is bogus to the max, simply a flimsy excuse intended to provide a patina of constitutional legality over what otherwise fell into Madison's category of secession "at pleasure."
*************
Now, I do intend to respond to each of your arguments in post #135, plus others following it, but am being called away too frequently to devote enough time now.
This could take a while....
;-)
That would be "president" Davis.
Maybe you should read the entire thread before making that determination.
Take you time, I appreciate your responses.
Of course you're taking Madison's words out of context.
The full context clearly shows that Madison is not talking about the veracity or wisdom of his words, but instead about his ability, at his age, to perform adequately in the rough and tumble of public debate:
All he's trying to say is that the cause needs a younger spokesman.
MamaTexan: "§ 202. The violation of one article in a treaty may cancel the whole." ...Law of Nations , Book II, Chap. XIII
No Founder considered the new US Constitution as nothing more than a mere treaty.
Instead they called it a "compact" and a "union", intended to be even more "perfect" than the "perpetual union" of the old Articles of Confederation.
That's why their new Constitution provided numerous structures and methods for resolving conflicts amongst states, without the extreme necessity of dissolving the union.
Indeed, that was a major reason for a new Constitution.
When the Founders addressed the question of "disunion", which they seldom did directly, it was always in contexts similar to those of their own "disunion" from the British Empire -- only under extreme circumstances causing real "injury or oppression", only after all other lawful measures had been exhausted, and really, only after war itself had already been launched by oppressors against their citizens.
The Founders did not accept that disunion "at pleasure" was authorized by their Constitution.
But none of the necessary conditions applied in November 1860, nor did South Carolina secessionists even pretend they did.
Instead, secessionists cited only two reasons for secession: a phony reason, Northern Fugitive Slave laws, and the real reason: the Constitutional election of Abraham Lincoln's anti-slavery Republicans.
So secession under those conditions was neither "necessary" nor caused by "injury or oppression."
Instead, it was secession "at pleasure" and was therefore not in accord with the Founders' Original Intent.
MamaTexan quoting from View of the Constitution of the United States by George Tucker.
We have covered this ground in previous threads:
"On January 18, 1813, Tucker was nominated by President James Madison to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Virginia vacated by John Tyler, Sr.
Tucker was confirmed by the United States Senate on January 19, 1813, and received commission the same day.
On February 4, 1819, he was reassigned by operation of law to the newly subdivided United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, serving until his resignation on June 30, 1825."
So you concede my point, that South Carolina's secession had nothing to do with "Big Government" causing a constitutionally valid "injury or oppression" to a state.
Now, if you'll just concede my other points, we can wrap this conversation up in short order... ;-)
MamaTexan, referring to Lincoln's election: "Because his opinions and purposes were are hostile to slavery, just as they stated."
There is no Constitutional requirement that every American must support all slavery, in each its aspects.
Indeed, obvious opposition to slavery can be found in the Constitution itself -- i.e., allowing for laws abolishing the imports of new slaves.
Nor did Lincoln propose abolishing all slavery, instead he was opposed to slavery's expansion out of the South into western and northern territories.
So there was nothing in the least unconstitutional about Lincoln's election, or his proposals to restrict slavery's expansion.
That makes the actions of South Carolina's Slave Power secession "at pleasure", which was and is not constitutional.
MamaTexan: "Madison’s words concerned the actions taken by South Carolina over federal tariffs, and had nothing to do with the respective States failing to uphold Constitutional provisions."
MamaTexan, referring to the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion: "And gives Constitutional procedures for same. Please see post#90."
Your post #90 to Sherman Logan:
Our Founders intended that obvious rebellion was to be met and defeated with military force, lead by the President.
After an insurrection is defeated, the insurrectionists should be treated with as much lieniency as possible.
MamaTexan, referring to South Carolina secessionists attitude toward nullification: "Since they were concerning TWO SEPARATE AUTHORITIES, it’s not ludicrous at all."
The simple fact is that secessionists asserted their own right to nullify laws they didn't like, but denied other states could nullify laws the secessionists did like.
But more to the point, South Carolina secessionists took no serious constitutional actions to redress their grievances before declaring secession.
MamaTexan, referring to the Slave Power's domination of Federal Washington, including the administration of President Buchanan:
"Wikapedia is a great starting point, but I have trouble trusting a ‘source’ that can be altered by anyone with a computer.
Political protestations aside, Dred Scott was a Constitutionally sound decision, so what was your point?"
My point is just that: the Slave Power ruled Washington almost continuously from the Founding of the Republic until secession in 1861.
It did so through the agency of willing Northern Democrat allies -- aka "Dough Faces" -- amongst whom President Buchanan and his Southern dominated cabinet were typical examples.
Further, the Supreme Court, as demonstrated in its 1857 Dred Scott decision, was also under slaveocracy control.
Plus, both houses of Congress -- thanks to the Constitution's 3/5 of slaves rule -- were dominated by Southerners and their Dough Face Northern allies.
Yes, the Slave Power did fade somewhat by 1860, but even as late as 1861, it could have blocked the new Merrill tariff in the Senate, had they been there to do so.
MamaTexan, referring to the Constitution's provisions for war: "Please see post #122."
In your post #122 you declare an unearned victory over Sherman Logan.
I call that "spiking the football in your own end-zone", and it's not uncommon on these threads... ;-)
I'm certain more will be said on this subject in a later post...
MamaTexan, referring to the minority Slave Power's dominant influence over Federal Washington:
"Ensuring equality of both the majority as well as the minority IS one of the primary purposes of a Republican form of government."
Careful selections of words are extraordinarily important in discussions like these.
For example, "ensuring equality" is not even one purpose of a "Republican form of government."
Protecting minority rights certainly is.
More importantly, we don't have just a "Republican form of government" since that word "republican" can be stretched to mean almost anything, including various "Peoples' Republics", which certainly do claim to "ensure equality."
What we have instead -- rather, what we were intended to have -- is a constitutionally limited Federal government.
Our government was intended to protect the rights of all its citizens, majorities and minorities.
But it also allows for the free-play of political alliances, parties, movements etc., and in this regard the Southern Slave Power was extraordinarily successful in the 72 years from the Founding of the Republic until secession in 1861.
Through strong alliances with Northern "Dough Face" Democrats, the minority slaveocracy was successful in advancing its interests for many decades.
Indeed, the Slave Power only fully lost power in Washington when it capriciously and unnecessarily seceded and walked away.
MamaTexan: "After the Declaration of Secession, the ownership of Ft Sumter did revert to the State, in accordance with the Law of Nations. [I'd also like to note this also covers the causes for a justified war]"
That's a ludicrous suggestion, which I've addressed elsewhere and will resume later...
MamaTexan: "Had the federal government actually followed the Law of Nations, the Constitution and the precepts of a Republican government that they were ALL sworn to uphold, it would not have been necessary to declare war.
A war, I might add, whose foundation was both reasonable and proper."
Sorry, but at this point you begin to abandon whatever claim to sanity you previously maintained.
First of all, the Law of Nations is not the Constitution, and does not supersede it.
Second, "domestic violence", insurrection, rebellion and war were started and waged against the United States by secessionists beginning in November 1860, of which their assault on Fort Sumter in April 1861 was only the most egregious example.
But as the secessionists crimes increased, the United States continued to make no military response -- and no Confederate Soldiers were killed by any Union force -- until after the Confederacy's declaration of war on May 6, 1861.
At that point, there was no possibility of any long-term outcome except the Confederacy's Unconditional Surrender.
MamaTexan: "Odd how they were questioning what he was doing prior to that, though. Specifically, on Monday, February 11, 1861"
Careful, careful -- you know perfectly well that in February 1861, President Buchanan was still in office, and while disagreeing that secession "at pleasure" was constitutional, was determined to do nothing militarily to oppose it.
And obviously, once the Slave Power abandoned Congress in early 1861, then Congress lost all enthusiasm for protecting the slaveocracy's interests.
MamaTexan: "Lincoln was amassing troops prior to the Declaration of War. In fact that’s WHY war was declared."
First, nations often amass troops an no war results, the 1790s "Quazi-War" against France, to cite one example.
Second, secessionists began amassing their own troops before they even seceded.
For example, in November 1860, at a time when the entire US Army had about 17,000 soldiers, South Carolina before seceding, amassed 10,000 soldiers.
These were used to seize Federal properties, most notably Fort Sumter.
Then in early March 1861, while the US Army is still only 17,000 strong, the Confederacy raised 100,000 troops and Jefferson Davis ordered preparations for the assault on Fort Sumter.
And still the United States took no military actions to suppress the rebellion.
So, if South Carolina's raising 10,000 troops in November 1860 was not an act of war, and the Confederacy's raising 100,000 troops in March 1861 was not an act of war, and if seizures of Federal property, firing on Federal forces and the Battle of Fort Sumter were all not acts of war -- how then does President Lincoln's call for a mere 75,000 troops suddenly become an "act of war"?
MamaTexan, referring to an alleged necessity for Congress to declare war: "For the use of the militia, it is not only appropriate, but required"
In historical fact, neither Founders nor later Congresses ever issued a formal Declaration of War in cases of insurrection, rebellion or "domestic violence." So your claim that those are somehow constitutionally necessary is counter-factual.
MamaTexan, referring to Upper South states joining the Confederacy after the Battle of Fort Sumter:
"Did it occur to you they had no desire to have their own people become part of Lincoln's *75,000 troops*?"
Of course -- if I remember correctly, Kentucky declared its "neutrality", declined to either send troops or join the Confederacy.
But those Upper South states which did join the Confederacy did so with full knowledge that they were going to war against the United States, a war first started and then formally declared by the Confederacy.
They chose war, and they got it.
Well, no it wasn't.
It was historically inaccurate, since among other errors it claimed that blacks had never been part of the "people of the Unites States" that ratified the Constitution. In actual fact free blacks were full voting citizens in a number of states (disremember exact count), including North Carolina(!).
Some of these states later removed voting rights for free blacks, but that couldn't change their status when the Constitution was ratified.
Please see the dissents for real Constitutional analysis of the case.
It was also widely rumored that improper political pressure was brought to bear on some Justices to induce them to vote in favor of the majority decision.
The irony, of course, is that the decision was intended to bring an end to the slavery expansion debate, much as Roe v Wade was intended to bring an end to the debate on abortion.
All the South really succeeded in doing by "winning" the Dred Scott case was in destroying its longstanding alliance with the Northwest against the Northeast and in blowing up the national Whig and Democratic Parties. In fact, prior to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott case, there had not been a "North" in the sense of a of a consciously united region.
In fact, the South, by its aggressive promotion of what it saw as its own interested, created "the North."
Sherman Logan:"Well, no it wasn't."
Thanks for pointing that out, and for making the cogent case.
I had overlooked it in my rush to make another obvious point: Dred-Scott fully demonstrates how supreme the Southern Slave Power actually was in the 1857 Federal government.
So there can be no legitimate claim that the South was not adequately represented, or that its interests weren't fully addressed in Washington.
Any talk about "Big Government" in Washington causing "injury or oppression" amongst sovereign slave-states is just nonsense.
Nice 'interpretation'. On the other hand, I took his words in a more literal sense: I'm old, I'm tired, and I'm not sure my memory is what it once was, and other people shouldn't trust it either.
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Instead they called it a "compact" and a "union", intended to be even more "perfect" than the "perpetual union" of the old Articles of Confederation.
The names are different, but the concept is the same....they are all agreements between parties.
Please show me the part of the Law of Nations that governs "unions' or 'compacts'.
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But none of the necessary conditions applied in November 1860, nor did South Carolina secessionists even pretend they did.
The facts in post #172 & 173 show that the northern states passed legislation contrary to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. When challenged, the City of New York, the State of New York, the US Supreme Court and the Appeals Court for the US Supreme Court ALL said the Article and the Act were constitutional....and the northern states proceeded to continue to legislate on it anyway.
Until the decision in Priggs came along a mere 7 years later, and POOF! all of a sudden the already settled law had the ability to be legislated on again by the federal government.
If the fact of unconstitutional actions at both the State and federal level is NOT 'injury or oppression', what IS?
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So his opinions are just that -- opinions, not Original Intent
While not, a 'Founder', he served in the Virginia militia and cavalry in the American Revolutionary War, rising to the rank of Colonel.
There are over 100 returns when Searching for his name in the 1774-1875 U.S. Congressional Documents and Debates at the Library of Congress.
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query
He was communicated with quite regularly, so he must have had SOME insight into Original Intent, wouldn't you think?
You continue to identify Tucker as a Supreme Court Justice
I thought I had previously apologized for and corrected that in a later post. He was a Virginia District Court Judge appointed by Madison.
If I have not apologized for the error, then I apologize now.
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So you concede my point, that South Carolina's secession had nothing to do with "Big Government" causing a constitutionally valid "injury or oppression" to a state.
No I was questioning the fact you were saying I asserted something I never did.
As far as acts of federal oppression, please see earlier posts concerning Prigg.
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States failing to uphold Constitutional provisions
Again, 1834 Jack v. Martin and 1842 Prigg v. Penn
The southern states had no quibble with the Constitutionally SETTLED law, so there was nothing for them to 'contest'.
The northern states had the issue, thus the burden was THEIRS to have it changed.
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Our Founders intended that obvious rebellion
Show me:
1) Where the Founders showed ANY justification for armed conflict between the States, and
2) Just where Lincoln adhered to the Constitutional procedures concerning rebellions or insurrections.
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South Carolina secessionists took no serious constitutional actions to redress their grievances before declaring secession.
Show me where such an action is required.
Show me where a simple Declaration of Intent is not sufficient.
Show me the word 'succession' in the Constitution....AT ALL!.
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My point is just that: the Slave Power ruled Washington almost continuously from the Founding of the Republic until secession in 1861.
The POINT is we are a nation of Laws, or we are not.
Yes the right to own slaves was IN THE CONSTITUION.....this right can't be undone except by CONSTITUTIONAL MEANS.
There is NOTHING in the Constitution that says it can be negated because someone doesn't want to 'perform the promise' that they'd made.
If the Northern states knew they could not deal with the idea of slavery, the should have just made the compact among them selves.
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For example, "ensuring equality" is not even one purpose of a "Republican form of government."
That's right. While the word 'ensuring' may have been poorly chosen, I did give a Founders illustration of the concept.
Protecting minority rights certainly is.
That's right....and the slave-owners were the minority.
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First of all, the Law of Nations is not the Constitution, and does not supersede it.
I never said it 'superseded it' I SHOWED where it was the blueprint for Constitutional construction and thus provided the rules for the compact.
With all due respect, you continue to make assertions without evidence. Nothing from the Library of Congress, no historical books or writings....nothing.
Just illustrating what happened, telling me I'm wrong, lecturing on history, and explaining your point of view.
Words
are
NOT
evidence!
I don't want it explained, I want it PROVEN by historical documentation that anyone prior to 1850 said secession was unconstitutional.
I've shown it was perfectly acceptable means of withdrawing from the Compact in a previous post where Tucker spoke about the States seceding from the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.
Not one person on this board has offered a single shred of evidence to prove this was not the case with the exception of 'laws' passed well after the issue was 'settled' by force.
You would think if it was so commonly known that the northern states were so constitutionally correct, and the southern states were so horribly WRONG, that the web would be positively FLOODED with more information supporting that point of view than the mere trickle I've been able to find asserting the contrary one, wouldn't you?
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I have offered evidence bot for my asserted points as well as in rebuttal. When others offer me that same courtesy, I will respond.
Until that time comes, good day.
Thanks.
One of the odd things about the antebellum political and cultural confrontation is that both sides sincerely believed they were on the defensive against attacks by the other side.
And they were both right.
Southerners, accurately, had a nagging sensation they were “on the wrong side of history.” Anybody following world events had to be aware that slavery was losing ground around the world, and that abolition was likely to come to America sometime. In self-defense they felt obliged to fortify their position.
Northerners, accurately, felt that the southern efforts to do so violated decades-old compromises, that southerners repeatedly used threats of secession to get their own way. Then when they couldn’t get what they wanted by means of fair political methods, they resorted to the underhanded and really quite unprecedented Dred Scott decision to force their views on the majority.
While various laws had been held unconstitutional before, I’m unaware of any major political issue based on settled law decades old that the Court insisted on forcing on a resistant majority of the country. It was widely believed at the time and since that the Court was fully prepared to use the 5th Amendment to declare state laws abolishing slavery to be unconstitutional.
Wouldn’t have worked, of course. But the decades of southern dominance in DC and the repeated caving in of northerners convinced many southerners that they could pull it off. That the despised Yankees would never develop the backbone to resist.
_______________________
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. -- Andrew Jackson, Proclamation to the People of South Carolina, 1832
___________________
See Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution, John Quincy Adams's "Oration on the 4th of July, 1831," Daniel Webster's "Reply to Calhoun," Feb. 16, 1833.
Mere words, of course, can't restrain anything.
So the first question is whether the Law of Nations regarding the abrogation of simple treaties was intended by the Founders to fully apply to their new "compact", "union" and Constitution?
I see no proof they did so intend, and primary evidence includes those mechanisms provided in the Constitution itself to resolve conflicts among various states and Federal powers.
But no mechanisms were provided for secession, and no specific discussions on the subject are recorded, and so we must conclude that secession was not considered to be ever necessary, except under the most extreme circumstances.
In short, our Founders did everything possible to make secession both unnecessary and difficult, regardless of how the Law of Nations treats the subject.
But second, even if we grant the Law of Nations "authority" over the Constitution (which I don't), even the LON does not authorize breaking treaties "at pleasure"!
Even the Law of Nations requires there must first be a material breach of contract on one side before the other can abrogate the whole thing.
But in November 1860 there was no serious breech of contract, and no new breech of any degree -- serious or minor.
Nor had South Carolina officials made any serious attempt to constitutionally resolve their concerns.
Indeed, of the several famous late 1850s fugitive slave cases. not one involved a slave escaped from South Carolina.
So South Carolina secessionists had no legal standing to even complain about some Northern states Fugitive Slave Laws.
That's why the whole question of Northern states' Fugitive Slave Laws is bogus.
Secessionists obviously real reason for secession was the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln's Republicans -- a fact they didn't try to hide or deny.
But the election of Lincoln's Republicans in no possible way constituted a material breach of contract, and so in fact, South Carolina declared its secession "at pleasure", and that is not authorized by either the Constitution or the Law of Nations.
____________________
"No man, no association of men, no State nor 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 efficiency of its constitutional laws, is treason-treason to all intents and purposes. Any other doctrine, such as that which has been lately held forth by the Federal Republican, that any one State may withdraw itself from the Union, is an abominable heresy -- which strips its author of every possible pretension to the name or character of a Federalist. -- Richmond Enquirer, November 1, 1814.
By 1861 a paper of the same name supported Virginia's secession, but in 1814 the paper clearly believed unilateral secession to be wrong.
____________________
See James Madison's letter to Nicholas P. Trist of December 23, 1832, also his letter to Daniel Webster of March, 15, 1833 and his letter to Alexander Rives, also from 1833.
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