Posted on 12/15/2001 10:52:58 AM PST by shuckmaster
A statue of Abraham Lincoln in Carle Park in Urbana, Illinois, was hit with an act of vandalism which, while not particularly damaging to the materials of the sculpture, did nothing for the image of dignity associated with our 16th president.
The vandals painted Lincoln's face white, then daubed the eyes with black paint. Local officials described the effect as looking as if Lincoln was auditioning to join the rock band KISS.
The bronze statue was installed in the park in 1927 and is green in color from the patina bronze acquires when exposed to the elements. It was created by famed sculptor Lorado Taft and depicts Lincoln as he looked as a young circuit-riding lawyer.
The statue has been a frequent target of misguided mischief in the past, according to Urbana Park District Superintendent of Operations Joseph Potts. It is located directly west of Urbana High School as well as being fairly close to the main campus of the University of Illinois.
"We've had people put a Santa hat on it or hang plastic breasts on it," he said. "It's more funny than it is destructive sometimes."
Potts said that the current attack involved only water-based paint, which was easily removed with soap and water. He added that occasional inscriptions of vulgarities with markers are considerably more difficult to remove.
The park district and city officials have had off-and-on discussions for several months over relocating the statue from Carle Park to another site, possibly downtown or to a historic site associated with Lincoln's activities in Champaign-Urbana. School officials have said they favor the move since the statue attracts students and others who gather there to smoke, forcing school janitors to clean up discarded filters on a regular basis.
A committee is being formed to look into ways to improve Carle Park, including possibly better protecting the statue, according to Renee Pollock, a member of the Urbana Park District advisory committee. Park District Executive Director Robin Hall said the neighborhood committee might want to add lighting for the statue, which he said could help deter vandalism.
Courtesy of: Civil War Interactive: The Daily Newspaper of the Civil War www.civilwarinteractive.com
Like George Washington?
"In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existance. This important consideration, seriously and deeply impressed on our minds [at the constitutional convention] led each State in the convention to be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude
...the constitution, which we now present, is the result of of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculularity of our political situation rendered indispensible."
George Washington to the Continental Congress September 17, 1787
Or maybe James Madison:
"The nullifiers it appears, endeavor to shelter themselves under a distinction between a delegation and a surrender of powers. But if the powers be attributes of sovereignty & nationality & the grant of them be perpetual, as is necessarily implied, where not otherwise expressed, sovereignty & nationality are effectually transferred by it, and the dispute about the name, is but a battle of words. The practical result is not indeed left to argument or inference. The words of the Constitution are explicit that the Constitution & laws of the U. S. shall be supreme over the Constitution and laws of the several States; supreme in their exposition and execution as well as in their authority. Without a supremacy in those respects it would be like a scabbard in the hands of a soldier without a sword in it. The imagination itself is startled at the idea of twenty four independent expounders of a rule that cannot exist, but in a meaning and operation, the same for all.
"The conduct of S. Carolina has called forth not only the question of nullification; but the more formidable one of secession. It is asked whether a State by resuming the sovereign form in which it entered the Union, may not of right withdrasw from it at will. As this is a simple question whether a State, more than an individual, has a right to violate its engagements, it would seem that it might be safely left to answer itself. But the countenance given to the claim shows that it cannot be so lightly dismissed. The natural feelings which laudably attach the people composing a state, to its authority and importance, are at present too much excited by the unnatural feelings, with which they have been inspired agst. (sic) their bretheren of other States, not to expose them, to the dangers of being misled into erroneous views of the nature of the Union and the interest they have in it. One thing at least seems to be too clear to be questioned; that whilst a State remains within the Union it cannot withdraw its citizens from the operation of the Constitution & laws of the Union. In the event of an actual secession without the Consent of the Co-States, the course to be pursued by these involves questions painful in the discussion of them. God grant that the menacing appearances, which obtrude it may not be followed by positive occurrences requiring the more painful task of deciding them!"
You keep hollering, "Founders, founders, founders!"
Well, which founders?
Yopu seem unable to provide any support from the record.
Walt
Well, which founders?
I KNOW what you are thinking.
But I'm sorry; John C. Calhoun is not a founder.
But James Wilson was a signer of the D of I and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention:
"As to the purposes of the Union, therefore, Georgia is not a sovereign state...
in almost every nation, which has been denominated free, the state has assumed a supercilious preeminence above the people who have formed it: Hence, the haughty notions of state independence, state sovereignty and state supremacy...Who were these people? They were the citizens of thirteen states, each of which had a separate constitution and government, and all of which were connected by articles of confederation. To the purposes of public strength and felicity the confederacy was totally inadequate. A requistion on the several states terminated its legislative authority; executive or judicial authority, it had none. In order, therefore, to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for common defense and to secure the blessings of liberty, those people, among whom were the people of Georgia, ordained and established the present constitution. By that constitution, legislative power is vested, executive power is vested, judicial power is vested...
We may then infer, that the people of the United States intended to bind the several states, by the legislative power of the national government...Whoever considers, in a combined and comprehensive view, the general texture of the constitution, will be satisfied that the people of the United States intended to form themselves into a nation for national purposes. They instituted, for such purposes, a national government complete in all its parts, with powers legislative, executive and judiiciary, ad in all those powers extending over the whole nation."
--James Wilson, 1793
Which founders?
Walt
I am still waiting for some quotes from all those books on his website.
Walt
Because Lincoln's clearly stated policy was to maintain federal property without causing friction. The fort had -been- stocked before; restocking it was not an act of war. Firing on Old Glory was and is.
Walt
Now, you've gone from quoting dead people out of context while ignoring contrary quotes from the same people to outright making up lies!
I'd be glad for you to show I have quoted anyone (dead or alive)out of context or that I have ignored any pertinent quotes, or that I have told any lies. Go for it.
Walt
139 posted on 12/17/01 4:13 PM Pacific by WhiskeyPapa
Still waiting.
Walt
Because in the end it boils down to which of the two different viewpoints you hold to. You claim that South Carolina had a right to secede and to sieze federal property within it's borders. Lincoln, on the other hand, said that South Carolina's actions were illegal and that federal property was federal property and would remain so. I agree with that position and so did the Supreme Court in 1869.
So what were South Carolina's motives? Surely none of this came as a surprise to them. On his way to Washington for his inaguration Lincoln had, in speeches in Indanapolis and New Jersey and Philadelphia, made it clear that he intended to hold on to federal property in the south and resupply it if necessary. This was no secret. In private correspondence to Seward and Chase and Winfield Scott and Major Anderson he repeated his intention to hold Sumter if at all possible. The Davis administration had been appointed a month before Lincoln was inagurated so they would have known this. They would also have known that the idea of military force to put prevent secession was not popular with the majority of the Northern press and much of the political leadership. So the south really had the opportunity to wait out Lincoln if they really were interested in a peaceful solution to the crisis. But instead they chose not to. Why not? Again I'll point out that the troops in Sumter were in no position to threaten the confederacy or to harm Charleston much. Shutting the port at Charleston wouldn't have harmned the confederate economy. Indeed, had the troops in Sumter shut down the port that would have placed the onus for the first hostilities on the North and would have weakened Lincoln's political support even further. So the south really had nothing to lose and everything to gain by waiting out Lincoln - if they had really been interested in a peaceful soulution. But many of their actions to date pointed to just the opposite. One of the first acts of the confederate congress had been to vote an army of 100,000 men. An army over 5 times the size of the U.S. Army. An army approved in spite of the fact that not a single hostile act had been committed by the federal government to date. Why the need for such a large army if not to use it? Could it be that the southern leadership felt that a nation born out of the fire of battle would be better equipped to survive? A victorious war with the North would leave ill feelings between the two countries - the North would be the resentful vanquished and the south would be the proud victor. The chances of their ever being a reconciliation between the two countries after that would have been nil. Likewise, the chance of any confederate state deciding that secession had been a mistake and attempting to rejoin the North would also have been nil. The confedate states would have guaranteed northern non-interference as they set about building their nation and, perhaps, expanding it south and west.
So the idea that the south was tricked into war is ludicrous. They got the war that they wanted from the beginning. It just didn't turn out the way that they expected.
Ah, but they were. By the end of March the confederate government had decided to cut off all supplies being sent to Sumter from Charleston. The order reached Beauregard on April 2.
And where the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or the people.
Our system of government rests on one overriding principle: all power stems from the consent of the people. To phrase the principle in this way, however, is to be imprecise about something important to the notion of "reserved" powers. The ultimate source of the Constitution's authority is the consent of the people of each individual State, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole.
Well, as this is a dissenting opinion, and not even a majority opinion, I guess we can suppose that the majority agreed with Chief Justice John Jay writing in 1793:
"Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the state governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform. Every State Constitution is a compact made by and between the citizens of a state to govern themeselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is liekwise a compact made by the people of the United States to govern themselves as to general objects, in a certain manner. By this great compact however, many prerogatives were transferred to the national Government, such as those of making war and peace, contracting alliances, coining money, etc."
Back to the drawing board.
Walt
Yopu seem unable to provide any support from the record.
I can, and I have. I'll add a few comment to help you out.
"[T]he several states composing the United States of America [did you catch that Walt - the states form the Union, not the other way around] are not united on the principle of unlimited submission [do you have a clue as to what Jefferson meant?] to their general government; but that, by compact [an agreement, like the AoC], under the style and title of the Constitution of the United States, and of certain amendments thereto [can't forget those amendments], they constituted a general government for general purposes [only that which involves all states, not an individual state], delegated to that government certain powers [the states formed the Union, and only gave it certain powers], reserving [meaning they keep what they didn't give the national government], each state to itself [notice that the states are still sovereign, separate entities], the residuary mass of right to their own self-government [reiteration of their sovereignity]; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers [those that the states did not give up, those that are not enumerated in the Constitution], its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no effect.[if the federal government - any branch - employs a power not delegated, the states (and people) can ignore it, it's illegal]"
Thomas Jefferson, Kentucy Resolution of 1798
Jefferson also opined in his 1801 inaugural address,
"If there be any among us [any state] who wish to dissolve the Union [notice that means Jefferson didn't think it was permanent] or to change its republican form [again, notice the lack of permanence], let them stand undisturbed [don't send in the military to force them to stay], as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion [the states would have their differences] may be tolerated [the federal government may not like it, but the states are free to go] where reason is left free to combat it [and at a later time the differences may be resolved peacefully]."
I'll also add these by Madison,
"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few [limited] and defined [enumerated or listed]. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous [many] and indefinite [those not listed]. "
James Madison, Federalist No. 45"[T]hose who endeavor to lull asleep our apprehensions of discord and hostility between the States, in the event of disunion ... [recognition that it can happen]
James Madison, Federalist No. 6"This ... places in a strong light the disadvantages with which the collection of duties in this country would be encumbered, if by disunion [recognition that it can happen] the States should be placed in a situation ..."
James Madison, Federalist No. 12"If we attend carefully to geographical and commercial considerations, in conjunction with the habits and prejudices of the different States, we shall be led to conclude that in case of disunion [recognition that it can happen] they will most naturally league themselves under two governments."
James Madison, Federalist No. 13"ASSUMING it therefore as an established truth that the several States, in case of disunion [anybody see a pattern here] ... "
James Madison, Federalist No. 8"In a review of these transactions we may trace some of the causes which would be likely to embroil the States with each other, if it should be their unpropitious destiny to become disunited [nope, no pattern here]."
James Madison, Federalist No. 7
But James Wilson was a signer of the D of I and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention:
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
Declaration of Independence, 1776, signed by:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
John Hancock
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
Matthew Thornton
I can't find a single founder that thought secession was legal or justified - I found 56 on one document.
The historical record in no way supports it.
I think you are wrong
That's precisely the trouble; you seem to think that's a GOOD thing.
They were talking revolution, not secession. Which is fine with me since that is what I've been calling the southern actions all along. It was a war of rebellion and if you want to say that we have a God-given right to rebellion then fine. So be it. But don't try to cloak it in an aura of legality that it does not enjoy and that does not exist.
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole ... we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
Daily Chicago Times, 10 Dec 1860
That either revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad ... If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripeThat's why Lincoln rushed to restock. And so much for Llan's assertion that the South leached off the North - It was the other way around.
New York Evening Post, 12 Mar 1861
Unity was assumed since all but the most idiotic realized that no state would be able to stand alone in a world filled with scheming European powers on three sides of the country. This is why no method for secession was even comptemplated at the convention. The Founders realized that seperation meant death and felt no need to discuss means of suicide. Thus, the word secession was never even mentioned in the convention if Madison, Hamilton or Yates are to be believed.
Read Jackson's attack on the Nullifiers he lays out the argument which devastates the argument for a right to secession.
His statement is a masterful display of simple logic and true history really though I realize that neither have no meaning to any who hope to rehabilitate the actions of the Slaveocracy.
You mean we are arguing simply over a definition of terms?
If so, you can show in British law where the colonies acted legally in breaking their ties with England.
Walt
Not when we assign common meanings to common words.
In fact, an 1836 act by the SC legislature transferred Fort Sumter to the federal government and gave full title to same. It was SC that began the war. If you can't even admit the most basic facts, anything you DID have to say of merit is going to be drowned out by the nonsense.
Walt
I wouldn't call it a rush rather than carrying out something he had pledged to do for some time. During several public addresses in Indiana and New Jersey and Pennsylvania Lincoln had made it clear that he saw it as his duty to retain government property still in government hands and, if possible, restore those facilities that had already been appropriated to government control. Sending supplies to Sumter was in line with those positions. What is surprising is that the south knew this and apparently didn't believe that actually Lincoln planned on doing it.
Would the Union have self-destructed if the South had been allowed to leave? No. Would the South have ever returned to the Union? Possibly. Would the South have been a enemy of the North? I doubt it.
Now that is just flat out crazy. What possible motivation would the south ever have had to rejoin the North? Either the south would have to change their positions or the North would have to change theirs, and I can't imagine what would cause that to happen. No, secession would have been forever. The two nations would have quickly become business rivals and competitors. And if the original separation had come as a result of the south winning the war then you would have had an armed border, huge armies, and military confrontations for decades afterwards.
That brings up an interesting point that never seems to get much play from southern apologists.
Where is the long train of abuses prior to 1860 of the type these worthies signed off on in the D of I?
You say breaking with England (the word 'secession' never appears, so you have no call to use that word) was justified. And so it was, by the removing of trials, quartering of troops, and all the other injustices Jefferson lays out in the D of I.
But what about such grievances the secessionists had with the feds?
Put up of shut up. Where is the justification for secession in 1860-61--even if it were perfectly legal?
I'll help you:
"It [the South Carolina secession convention] could of course, quote no direct warrant from the Constitution for secession, but sought to deduce one, by implication, from the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Xth amendment. It reasserts the absurd paradox of State supremacy-persistantly miscaled "State Rights" --which reverses the natural order of governmental existance ; considers a State superior to the Union; makes a part greater than the whole; turns the pyramid of authority upon its apex; plants the tree of liberty with its branches in the ground and its roots in the air. The fallacy has been has been a hundred times analysed, exposed, and refuted; but the cheap dogmatism of demagougues and the automatic machinery of faction perpetually conjures it up anew to astonish the sucklings and terrify the dotards of politiics. The notable point in the Declaration of Causes is, that its complaint over grievances past and present is against certain states, and for these remedy was of course logically barred by its own theory of state supremacy. On the other hand, all its allegations against the Union are concerning dangers to come, before which admission the moral justification of disunion falls to the ground. In rejecting the remedy of future elections for future wrongs, the conspiracy discarded the entire theory of republican government.
One might have thought that this might have exhausted their counterfeit philosophy--but not yet. Greatly as they groaned at unfriendly state laws--seriously as they pretended to fear damage or spoilation under future federal statutes, the burden of their anger rose at the sentient and belief of the North. "All hope of remedy," says the manifesto, "is rendered vain by the fact that the public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief." This is language one might expect from the Pope of Rome; but that an American convention should denounce the liberty of opinion, is not merely to recede from Jefferson, to Louis XIV; it is flying from the town-meeting to the Inquisition."
"With all their affectation of legality, formality, and present justification, some f the members were honest enough to acknowledge the true character of the event as the culmination of a chronic conspiracy, not a spontaneous revolution. "The secession of South Carolina," said one of the chief actors, "is not an event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. It is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years." This with many similar avowals, crowns and completes the otherwise abundant proof that the revolt was not only aganist right, but that it was without cause."
--John G. Nicolay, 1881
Now, as I have indicated in the past, I don't post this data from the record for your benefit. I know you are pretty set in your ways. But the lurkers who come across this thread -will- take this to heart, and they will reject your whole position.
Walt
I can, and I have. I'll add a few comment to help you out.
"[T]he several states composing the United States of America [did you catch that Walt - the states form the Union, not the other way around] are not united on the principle of unlimited submission [do you have a clue as to what Jefferson meant?] to their general government; but that, by compact [an agreement, like the AoC], under the style and title of the Constitution of the United States, and of certain amendments thereto [can't forget those amendments], they constituted a general government for general purposes [only that which involves all states, not an individual state], delegated to that government certain powers [the states formed the Union, and only gave it certain powers], reserving [meaning they keep what they didn't give the national government], each state to itself [notice that the states are still sovereign, separate entities], the residuary mass of right to their own self-government [reiteration of their sovereignity]; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers [those that the states did not give up, those that are not enumerated in the Constitution], its acts are unauthoritative, void and of no effect.[if the federal government - any branch - employs a power not delegated, the states (and people) can ignore it, it's illegal]" Thomas Jefferson, Kentucy Resolution of 1798
No one is saying that the states have to give unlimited submission to the federal government. On the other hand, they clearly have surrendered SOME of their sovereignty. I guess we can all thank God that Jefferson was out of the country during the Constitutional Convention. He was not one of the framers, in case you missed it.
Jefferson is just one voice. In short, I'll see your Jefferson and raise you a Washington, Madison, Jay, Wilson, Marshall, Jackson and Lincoln.
So I stand corrected. You have provided some data from the record. It's just not very compelling.
Walt
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.