Posted on 11/28/2012 2:23:59 PM PST by Kaslin
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 petitions 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 States."
Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here's my no-brainer question: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, "Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty."
The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South's right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil -- evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content." The New York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."
There's more evidence seen at the time our Constitution was ratified. The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated, should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution would have never been ratified if states thought that they could not maintain their sovereignty.
The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, "It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense." Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives "to the cause of self-determination -- that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth." Mencken says: "It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves."
Well written...and well-taken....
It is disturbing that the topic of secession has become mainstream. The liberal sites are talking about it, too. One site has people saying they’d approve letting states go except for Texas because they want the money from Texas.
Little bit of trivia...Sickles killed the son of Francis Scott Key, when he found him having an affair with his wife. Sickles then became the first person in the United States to succesfully employ a defense of temporary insanity.
The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace...
Absolute nonsense. Mr. Williams needs to read some American history. Even Robert E. Lee saw secession as revolution, not as constitutional.
Good one.
Opus tease!
Is not state sovereignty guaranteed under the Tenth Amendment?
If a state freely joins the union, then cannot a state freely leave?
The Heritage Foundation: “Can individual states secede from the United States?”
Yes - to address an ambiguity in the Constitution.
Starve them of revenue and make politicians lives as miserable as possible. States need to start banding together and tell the Feds to shove it. No one needs to support the BS from the kooks on thr left. The time honored method of shunning needs to re-emerge.
States created the federal government in 1789, and states can abolish the federal government now if it choses to do so.
When I made a 600-mile, cross-state trip two months ago, here in my state of Texas, I was making a point to count how many Romney bumper-stickers I saw, in order to gauge how much enthusiasm there was for him. I counted seven Romney bumper-stickers in all. I also counted three “SECEDE” bumper-stickers. They’ve been around for a while, as a somewhat tongue-in-cheek message.
This was obviously before the election and the publicity of the petitions drive. I’m glad the whole topic has finally broken through. If blue-state America is bound and determined to follow Obama down his commie-statist rabbithole, and with the takers vs. makers threshold portending the country’s ignoble demise, the secession question is looking like a viable option. As it is, there is really becoming less and less of an America even worth preserving anymore.
And give Obama his fantasy come true of being Just-Like-Lincoln? No thanks. The Kenyan would make even Old Abe look merciful.
I intend to keep my head down, cultivate my garden, pray for the best, and prepare for the worst. If enough of us Go Gault, it may not be too long before this mess collapses and we can pick up the pieces and get on with our lives.
That said, my last shred of loyalty to the Yankee government is gone forever.
Bad news - Texas can't be "let" to do anything. If Texas decides to go, there is nothing anybody can do about it and I'm moving to Texas.
bttt
More trivia: Sickles received a General’s commission in the Union army because of his political connections, and commanded Third Corps at Gettysburg. Sickles disobeyed his orders to defend Little Round Top and projected his troops out into the Wheat Field, where they suffered serious casualties. Sickles was one of them, losing a leg. During Grant’s reorganization of the Army of the Potomac, Third Corps was eliminated, it’s components being distributed among other units.
Well, since there aren’t many elk in Oklahoma, and if we don’t hear “We did it a different way back home” whining out of you,, we may let you stay!
It would make much more sense to repeal the 17Th Amendment.
Easier, no bloodshed, no US troops...
It would put health care, control of the National Guard, local schools, local highway laws and gas tax, etc., all back under the control of the states, where it should have been all along.
Just look at what federal mandates have done to state fiscal problems.
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