Posted on 11/28/2012 9:42:40 AM PST by Perseverando
For decades, it has been obvious that there are irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone. Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat liberty-minded people into submission, or simply parting company? In a marriage, where vows are ignored and broken, divorce is the most peaceful solution. Similarly, our constitutional and human rights have been increasingly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.
Since Barack Obama’s re-election, hundreds of thousands of petitioners for secession have reached the White House. Some people have argued that secession is unconstitutional, but there’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it. What stops secession is the prospect of brute force by a mighty federal government, as witnessed by the costly War of 1861. Let’s look at the secession issue.
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, rejected it, saying: “A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”
On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that said, “No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
“pretty good job”? You mean by sending wave after wave of Union soldiers to their deaths in a war of attrition worthy of Stalin in WWII (much worse than LBJ or Nixon), and by waging war on women and children to the tune of 850,000 dead, 2 million refugees, and the thorough physical destruction of 2/3 of the geographical U.S. while also ravaging the Constitution. I’d say it was a Pyrrhic victory at best.
There's a Utah state legislator who is going back to the State compacts to pry the Federal Government's claws off the land in the states. He says that the state compacts required the Federal Government to turn the land back to the states. That would be a good start, get back to the Free Soil movement. How would Illinois like to split Chicago off as a separate State? Let the liberals have their Communes in Detroit, New York, Chicago, etc. See how that works for them.
Who wanted the war? The southern hothead that fired the first cannon at Ft Sumter, Gen Beauregard who commanded the rebellious forces around Ft. Sumter. The deal was, once a war started, Virginia would come in on the side of the Slave power.
And it did, not to their advantage.
Much too simple. The war was “started” long before that.
Per the federal constitution, you can not break apart a state without the permission of the government of that state. it has happened twice at least: Maine was created from part of Mass. and W.Virginia was created from part of Virginia (Virginia reverting to territorial status because of its attempt at insurrection).
Texas was admitted by federal statute, and claimed land that eventually became parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Wyoming. Those boundaries were set by federal government, and that may not meet the terms of the annexation statute, which said that Texas had the right to break up into as many as 5 states. I figure at least 4 of the new Texican states would be in the (R) column.
First, the Union had to both defend against invasion, and invade, and occupy as long as the insurrection continued, a big job. Like the dog that walked on his hind legs, the wonder is not that it did it ill, but that it did it at all.
Second, there was no war on women and children, except that which the rebels made by occupation of various cities, making the cities an object of battle. While the pretended Army of Northern Virginia fought outside cities, the US Army was content to kill them there. Once the outmatched southern forces retreated to cities like Vicksburg, Atlanta, Richmond, the war followed.
Actually, no, I never read that series. I read one counter-factual ‘guns of the south’ which postulated time traveling South African racists with AK-47s. I didn’t care for it.
Agreements have their methods of resolving disagreements. Unions have them too. Rather than have the King of England resolve local disputes (that didn’t work out well for Scotland) a federal court system was instituted.
The rebels sought to resolve issues on the battlefield rather than in court. They lost.
Not so much, a good ranch hand could make 5 or 10 of them in only a month. :)
Actually, that was about the only problem the South didn't have.
The South performed prodigies of instant industrialization and never ran out of ammunition, though the artillery ammo wasn't always terribly reliable or accurate.
The effort was led by Josiah Gorgas, born in PA, one of the most interesting men of the war. Had the rest of the CSA's war effort been as well organized, it would have won its war.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josiah_Gorgas
There’s always the initiative path. Put it to the voters.
Exactly. But you can lose big in court as well. Ultimately what the court says is irrelevant if the people wanting to secede are to have any self-determination. This issue is about whether a state even wants to recognize the authority of a federal court. Asking a federal court to make that decision is absurd.
But throwing down the gauntlet on this is stupid. It is an emotional outburst that is more likely to doom your cause than bring it to realization.
Uh, that would make that $1 worth quite a lot, indeed, then. It was the same during the 1930's depression; a nickel was hard to come by, but if you had one, it would buy a loaf of bread. There are different ways to measure the value of money, but is said that George Washington's salary of $25,000 would be about $619,000 today. This $2.50 would be $61.90 Cut that in half for 1860, when $1 = $18 in relative terms, but the real question is how much would a dollar buy? Would $1 then buy more than $18 today? If you look at the price of goods, the purchasing power of that dollar was really more like $1 then = $30 today, and so the answer has to be yes, without a doubt. As I said, $1 was worth something back then.
More specifically artillery fuses were not as good in the south, and probably was a major reason for the ANV's defeat at Gettysburg.
Part of your premise is also in error. Average daily wage rates for the lowest level workers (barpenters, blacksmiths, etc.) was closer to $2.50 to $3. Thus, $50 to $60 per month, not $5 to $10.
Sic Semper Tyrranus. One might also want to re-read John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, in which he asserts the right of the people to rebel.
Invasion? Are you serious? Uh, I believe almost all of the War of Northern Agression was fought in Southern soil.
there was no war on women and children
Such was General Sherman's stated aim! As a resident of the state of Georgia, I can assure you that there was, indeed, a very harsh war waged on women and children, and have read hundreds of letters of the era detailing the devastation wrought on farms and families, of Union soldiers picking clean the fields and barns and livestock everywhere they went like a plague of locusts, of the women who hid loaves of bead in baby carriages just to survive, or to attemot to survive. As for cities, the South was a largely rural society, but of course the cities were defended. People lived there! Homes burned down in cities are still homes. Other than Savannah, most cities were simply torched. Shall I bring up the slave women of Columbia whom the Union soldiers infamously raped? And the economic devastation on the entire population of the South, yes, women and children included, was to last for generations. Lincoln's war on his own people is one of the greeat travesties in the history of mankind.
The language you quoted from the U.S. Constitution says nothing at all about the Union being perpetual, or about whether and how secession could occur.
Donmaeker has drank the reconstructed history(fairy tale) kool-aid of the US Civil War.
Of course you would. And enthusiastically at that.
Y'all gave us Jimmah. The rest of us didn't want him.
Hope you're proud.
Well, I remember one episode of "Litle House on the Prarie" where the Civil War was still a huge controversy in the 1880's, now it is 2012 and it still is.
On the Internet and in the dying media, sure.
In the real America, not so much.
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