More to the point, the Constitution nowhere 'delegates...nor prohibits' secession, and all of your "bleating" will never erase the troublesome Tenth Amendment...
More to the point, the Constitution nowhere 'delegates...nor prohibits' secession, and all of your "bleating" will never erase the troublesome Tenth Amendment...
Ho hum.
By any reading of the tenth amendment whereby the states retain a right to secession (they don't, but just for argument), then the people retain the right to maintain the Union in perpetuity. And that is just what they have done.
One thing about all this secession crap. It ignores the rights of the people who wanted to remain loyal to the old flag. I mean the white people of course. The blacks were to be kept "where it is all dark forever."
One good thing we can all agree on about the civil war is that it started a long and painful journey towards civil rights for all, right?
Another thing with which I am sure you will agree is that Jefferson Davis bears exactly the same type of blame as President Lincoln. I mean the CSA constitution contains exactly the same '10th amendment' language, and yet Davis definitely maintained the right to coerce the states. To whit:
"Conscription dramatized a fundamental paradox in the Confederate war effort: the need for Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. Pure Jeffersonians could not accept this. The most outspoken of them, [Governor] Joseph Brown of Georgia, denounced the draft as a "dangerous usurpation by Congress of the reserved rights of the states...at war with all the principles for which Georgia entered into the revolution."
In reply Jefferson Davis donned the mantle of Hamilton. The Confederate Constitution, he pointed out to Brown, gave Congress the power "to raise and support armies" and to "provide for the common defense." It also contained another clause (likewise copied from the U.S. Constitution) empowering Congress to make all laws "necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Brown had denied the constitutionality of conscription because the Constitution did not specifically authorize it. This was good Jeffersonian doctrine, sanctified by generations of southern strict constructionists. But in Hamiltonian language, Davis insisted that the "necessary and proper" clause legitimized conscription. No one could doubt the necessity "when our very existence is threatened by armies vastly superior in numbers." Therefore "the true and only test is to enquire whether the law is intended and calculated to carry out the object...if the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional."
--Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson P.433
Notice that governor Brown calls all this "revolution". Revolutions, by definition are outside the law. But it is clear from Davis' own words that he thought he had the power to coerce the states in regard to conscript soldiers.
Now, was he wrong, or right?
Now, consider the words of Chief JusticeMarshall:
"Among the enumerated powers, we do not find that of establishing a bank or of creating a corporation. But there is no phrase in the instrument which, like the articles of confederation, excludes incidental or implied powers; and which requires that everything granted shall be expressly and minutely described. Even the 10th amendment, which was framed for the purpose of quieting the excessive jealousies which had been excited, omits the word "expressly," and declares that the powers "not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or to the people," thus leaving the question, whether the particular power which may become the subject of contest, has been delegated to the one government, or prohibited to the other, to depend on a fair reading of the whole instrument."
--Chief Justice John Marshall, majority opinion, McCullogh v. Maryland, 1819.
And that is exactly what Davis did 43 years later. He might have had 'McCullogh' in his back pocket. Guess he lost it after the war.
Where's that Rawle crap you ususally spout?
The concept of legal secession under our system was unknown to the framers. It was a construct by Calhoun and others made from whole cloth. And it won't stand the light of the whole record.
I'll give you credit for one thing; persistance. I hada couple of morons I used to rant and rave with over all this on AOL, and when I found this Davis quote from "Battle Cry of Freedom", they pretty much faded away. And if you won't condemn Davis with exactly the same language you use for Lincoln-them undertaking the same position and all, well, you'll just be showing your butt, won't you? Your next response to me needs to condemn Davis. But I bet it won't.
Walt