Posted on 08/19/2013 9:27:39 AM PDT by don-o
The Obama administration announced last month via blog post that the president was unilaterally suspending ObamaCare's employer mandate—notwithstanding the clear command of the law. President Obama's comments about it on Aug. 9—claiming that "the normal thing [he] would prefer to do" is seek a "change to the law"—then added insult to constitutional injury. It also offers a sharp contrast with a different president who also suspended the law.
On April 27, 1861, President Lincoln unilaterally authorized his commanding general to suspend the writ of habeas corpus so that he could detain dangerous rebels in the early days of the Civil War. Lincoln's order was constitutionally questionable. The Constitution provides that "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
A rebellion was in progress, so suspension was permissible. But the Constitution doesn't specify who can suspend the writ in such circumstances. Since the Suspension Clause appears in Article I of the Constitution, which is predominantly about the powers of Congress, there is a strong argument that only Congress can suspend the habeas writ.
Lincoln's order was legally dubious, but what he did next showed remarkable constitutional rectitude. On July 4, 1861, he delivered a solemn message to Congress, in which he did everything possible to square his action with the Constitution. In this message, he set forth the best possible constitutional arguments that he had unilateral power to suspend the writ. These arguments may have been wrong, but they were serious, and they were presented seriously, in good faith.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Davis didn't have anything to do with the war that came?
It didn't just come, it was engineered by people who wanted to take the Government into receivership, using a ruse thought up by John Quincy Adams after the Nullification Crisis showed that Southern agricultural interests were finally breaking with the Northeastern trading interest. All during the Federal period, the Tidewater planters had voted with the New England merchants, but Nullification presented a systemic crisis. The merchants had alienated the planter aristocracy by overreaching for their money. The old alignments were breaking up.
Soooo .... other means of securing the South's cooperation and meek payment of the Yankee ransom-tariff needed to be found. Quincy Adams came through and delivered the top-line intellectual justification, or "theory", for a new Union founded squarely on Northeastern self-interest only.
Jefferson Davis was no statesman. The papers told him Lincoln's speech meant war, and Davis made sure that it did, apparently because he didn't have much imagination or artfulness or real desire for peace.
Soooo .... other means of securing the South's cooperation and meek payment of the Yankee ransom-tariff needed to be found. Quincy Adams came through and delivered the top-line intellectual justification, or "theory", for a new Union founded squarely on Northeastern self-interest only.
Marxist much?
You've read Robt. Toombs's speeches about Southern complaints about Yankee domination of business and use of the federal government for self-dealing at the expense of other sections of the country. Was Toombs a Marxist?
You talking about Lincoln, or Quincy Adams, or both?
The Framers thought it anathema that the federal government should, pro bono some faction or other, seek to coerce a State or States. They made it clear in the Federalist. Quincy Adams's contribution was to think about doing just that, successfully, letting prospective success perfume the exercise after the fact.
Fact is, he ginned up a theory to "permit" the government of a federal Union to occupy and reduce to marches, several States of the Union, and deprive them utterly -- indeed, by extension of the logic, all the States -- of sovereignty, by the magic of "reorganizing" their governments. Ipso facto the States become creatures, inferiors, pawns and playthings of the new Sovereign -- you. Because if you own the Government, you want it to be an omnipotent Government and you need brook no impediments like a mere constitution. Right?
I'm sure he had his shortcomings as a war leader, or any kind of leader. He was quite competent as a cabinet officer and senator, but I think historians have made the case that he wasn't capable of standing up to Lincoln. Too bad. We lost -- we all did -- and liberal-arts-college and Ivy League snots won.
I'm talking about Davis not having enough sense to avoid war -- if that was what he wanted.
It could be that he was:
The great conflict between labor and capital, under free competition, has ever been how the earnings of labor shall be divided between them. In new and sparsely settled countries, where land is cheap, and food is easily produced, and education and intelligence approximate equality, labor can successfully struggle in this warfare with capital. But this is an exceptional and temporary condition of society. In the Old World this state of things has long since passed away and the conflict with the lower grades of labor has long since ceased. There the competition of unskilled labor which first succumbs to capital, is reduced to a point, scarcely adequate to the continuance of the race. The rate of increase is scarcely one per cent. per annum, and even at that rate, population, until recently, was considered a curse; in short, capital has become master of labor with all the benefits, without the natural burdens of the relation. Source
He was also pretty clearly a racist by today's standards. Even by the standards of his own day, he was quite extreme.
Too bad. We lost -- we all did -- and liberal-arts-college and Ivy League snots won.
As opposed to the Chapel Hill, Washington and Lee, and Sewanee snots?
Ah, still avoiding the question.
"SLAVE slave SLAVE slave SLAVE slave SLAVE slave SLAVE slave SLAVE slave SLAVE slave"
Are you taking medication for your problem? And anti-God and Bible I see, and prone to projecting as evidenced by your writing. Yeppers, sign of a true Democrat. Until you can answer my question, Good by, and good luck!
Sadly the slave catcher could testify that an alleged slave was a slave, but the accused slave could not testify that he wasn’t a slave.
The only defense was for the accused slave to accuse the slave catcher first, then the slave catcher’s testimony would not be permitted, and the slave’s testimony that the slave catcher was a slave would have to be accepted.
Oh, that is right, the black man was guilty because he was black. Nevermind.
So you are admitting that ivy league professors like Chamberlain kicked the insurrection general’s hindquarters?
Southern valor, as recorded by history, consisted in part of their care to falsify the casualty records.
On March 5, 1861, Winfield Scott told Lincoln that the truce at Pickens had been established by Buchanan and "seceders. See: Link. Here are the March 5 words written by Scott to Buchanan on a letter written by Holt:
Next, after considering many plans of relief, the President, two Secretaries, Capt. Ward2 & myself settled upon the employment, under the captain (who was eager for the expedition--) of the four, or more, small steamers, belonging to the Coast Survey.-- Three, or four weeks ago I have no doubt the captain would have succeeded; but he was kept back by some thing like a truce established between the President & a number of principal seceders -- here, in So Carolina, Florida &c -- which truce or informal understanding included Ft. Pickens. [Hence a company, intended for the latter is still in the sloop of war, the Brooklyn, lying off the fort, at sea, with orders not to land till an attack shall be made by the Secessionists.]
The fact that a truce existed had been published in a number of papers, but the papers I have found that mention it (the New York Times, The Brooklyn Eagle, the National Republican [Washington], the Evening Star [Washington], and others) did not mention that Buchanan and two of his cabinet secretaries had been involved in setting up the truce. So, Welles probably was aware of the truce, just not all the details. (Holt certainly was aware; he and Toucey were the two cabinet secretaries who had received the Southern communications and communicated the terms of the truce to Union forces waiting offshore in Pensacola Bay.)
Lincoln bypassed Welles concerning Lincoln's Pickens expedition. He kept Welles out of the loop. Great management style.
Analysis? That's rhetoric from a lunatic in love with the sound of his own voice. Since you found the quote, leap forward a few pages to see Foster's response. That Wigfall claimed not to be a citizen but still spoke as a senator raised not a few eyebrows.
I mentioned Wigfall's situation in my post 99 to you. Wigfall was indeed one of a kind. His analysis was pretty much how the South saw things.
I'm not going to try to sort out just who knew what and when and who told what to whom.
Nice to know what kind of poster I'm dealing with.
And if we entered into negotiations, it was certainly a good idea not to let the other side take all your bargaining chips before even getting to the table.
Exactly what negotiations did Lincoln have with the Confederates over Fort Pickens or Fort Sumter? Confederates offered to negotiate. Oh, yeah, Lincoln can't "recognize" the Confederacy or even see their commissioners on the other side of the street. As I remember, Lincoln didn't "negotiate" with Governor Pickens or the Florida governor either, but he could have. Lincoln didn't even worry about the shape of the negotiation table, let alone negotiate.
Lincoln did offer to send troops to Sam Houston in Texas, but Houston threw Lincoln's letter that made that offer into the fireplace. Lincoln did try to stop Virginia's secession by meeting with a Virginia unionist, but by then his fleet was already on the way to Sumter.
Sorry, history was not written only by the victors in this case. The insurrection generals had many who survived, and wrote. Even Jeff Davis wrote a two volume fiction about the war.
So the assertion that history of the civil war was written by the victors is a lie, except in so far as the confederati were embarrassed by the reasons for which they started the war and the churlish way in which they prosecuted it, so what they wrote was in many cases fiction, not history.
He graduated from the United States Military Academy (West Point) in 1825 and received a commission as a second lieutenant in the 2nd Regiment of Artillery. He served in the Black Hawk War of 1832 as a colonel of Illinois volunteers, where he had the distinction of twice mustering Abraham Lincoln in and out of army service. Returning to the Army as a first lieutenant in 1833, he served in the Second Seminole War as an assistant adjutant general on the staff of Winfield Scott, and was promoted to captain in October 1841. In the Mexican-American War, he was severely wounded at Molino del Rey, for which he received a brevet promotion to major. He eventually received a permanent promotion to major of the 1st Regiment of Artillery in the Regular Army on October 5, 1857. He was the author of Instruction for Field Artillery, Horse and Foot in 1839.
Doesn’t sound like a blowhard to me, because I imagine he would be vastly different from you.
The confederates offered to have their insurrection representatives meet with US government representatives, but never made any offer, nor even made any offer to make an offer.
No, they did not offer to negotiate, rather they offered to give Lincoln a chance to join their heinous insurrection. Thank goodness Lincoln didn’t agree.
See Post 22
Insurrectionists is a correct term for persons conducting an insurrection as occurred between 1860 and 1865.
I guess the accuracy makes you uncomfortable.
“as opposed to the ...Washington and Lee ... snots”
Don’t forget the Arlington Slave Breeder.
Typo. It was late.
“Here are the March 5 words written by Scott to Buchanan on a letter written by Holt:”
Should read more correctly
“Here are the March 5 words written by Scott to Lincoln on a letter written to Lincoln by Holt”
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