Bump for Dixie!
Posted on 12/24/2001 4:25:26 AM PST by WhiskeyPapa
Why don't you find the opposite.
"In the case now to be determined, the defendant, a sovereign state, denies the obligation of a law enacted by the legislature of the Union...In discussing this question, the counsel for the state of Maryland deemed it of some importance, in the construction of the Constitution, to consider that instrument as not emanating from the people, but as the act of sovereign and independent states. The powers of the general government, it has been said, are delegated by the states, who alone are truly sovereign; and must be exercised in subordination to the states, who alone possess supreme dominion. It would be difficult to sustain this proposition. "
And:
"To the formation of a league, such as was the confederation, the State sovereignties were certainly competent. But when "in order to form a more perfect union," it was deemed necessary to change the alliance into an effective government, possessing great and sovereign powers, and acting directly on the people, the necessity of deriving its powers from them, was felt and acknowledged by all... "
And:
If any one proposition could command the universal assent of mankind, we might expect that it would be this -- that the government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action. This would seem to result, necessarily, from its nature. It is the government of all; its powers are delegated by all; it represents all; and acts for all. Though any one state may be willing to control its operations, no state is willing to allow others to control them. The nation, on those subjects on which it can act, must necessarily bind its component parts. But this question is not left to mere reason; the people have, in express terms, have decided it, by saying, "this constitution, and the laws made in pursuance thereof,: shall be the supreme law of the land," and by requiring that the members of the state legislatures, and the officers of the executive and judicial departments of the states, shall take an oath of fidelity to it. The government of the United States, then, though limited in its powers, is supreme; and its laws, when made in pursuance of the constitution, form the supreme law of the land, "anything in the constitution or laws of any state, to the contrary notwithstanding."
And:
"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 instument...
It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires, that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objectives designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects,, be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. That is the idea entertained by the framers of the American constitution, is not only to be inferred from the nature of the instrument, but from its language. Why else were some of the limitations, found in the 9th section of the 1st article, introduced? ....
The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of the nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done, by confining the choice of means to such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of congress to adopt any which might be appropriate, and which were conclusive to the end. "
--John Marshall, Chief Justice, writing in McCullough v. Maryland, 1819
Also consider:
"As in his opinions, Marshall's essays completely rejected the compact theory upon which the position of state's rights advocates such as Roane was based. "Our Constitution," Marshall affirmed in his essays, "is not a compact. It is the act of a single party. It is the act of the people of the United States, assembling in their respective states, and adopting a government for the whole nation."
--from "A History of the Supreme Court, p.55, by Bernard Schwartz.
And what about Chief Justice John Jay?
"...the people, in their collective and national capacity, established the present Constitution. It is remarkable that in establishing it, the people exercised their own rights and their own proper sovereignty, and conscious of the plenitude of it, they declared with becoming dignity, "We the people of the United States," 'do ordain and establish this Constitution."
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."
--From Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793.
That's another big ouch for confederate apologists. Legal secession under our system is a fraud.
Walt
"Hey, guys, I feel pretty confident that we have the North wrapped up. What say we turn south and split the colonies and finish this thing once and for all.
BTW, anyone have any fresh fish and chips?
Signed, Lord Cornwallis, etc. etc.
P.S. Do you think that 'Lord' thing sounds too stuffy?"
WhiskeyPapa, before you take offense, its Christmas Eve and I'm trying to have fun while manning the admin. desk here at work. But think about it, why else would Cornwallis have turned his back on the northern colonies. He certainly wasn't desperate, and Hylton Head Island wasn't what it is today.
The powers of the general government, it has been said, are delegated by the states, who alone are truly sovereign; and must be exercised in subordination to the states, who alone possess supreme dominion. This does nothing to support your argument, but rather only serves to erode it.
As far as your question about why I don't find the opposite, I assume you are asking why I can't find positive statements to support my arguement. Again, you are overlooking the ratification documents of several sovereign states, and misinterpreting the quotations that you cut-and-paste.
You should have told General Eisenhower about you brilliant military maxim when he invaded Normandy while he still had unfinished business in Italy.
Sheeseh! Where do you guys get this stuff? The Brits had failed in splitting New England from the middle colonies at Saratoga. They had been run out of Boston. Washington's victories in New Jersey forced the British to retreat from Philadelphia. The Red Coats were pretty much bottled up in New York and the war was in a stalemate in the North. The British opened a second front in the deep South as a way of breaking that stalemate and forcing the Americans to defend across a broader front. Cornwalace marched all the way from Savannah to the Virginia tidewater. He closed every Southern port. Without the French fleet, the plan would have likely worked.
Well, of course the Union had a strong case for treason. But in the reality of the war's aftermath, what young nation, whose citizen's familiarity with the Declaration of Independence's lofty prose, penned in the generation of their grandfathers, was held much more dear, would be so foolhardy as to embark upon such a display of rank hypocracy and indecency that would ensue in trying Lee, et al, for the very same crimes Washington committed against the British?
The war solved the question definitively as to what will happen if states try to secede by force. The question as to what would happen if states try to secede by petition and appeal to the supreme court and world opinion has yet to be decided.
Who knows when Southern California may become North Mexico.
Please note my ommission of Thomas Jefferson, who I honestly feel is the most overrated American of the generation we are discussing.
Actually, Jefferson didn't even stay at Monticello at times. Whenever the British entered that part of Virginia, TJ fled his home, earning him the sobriquet "The Coward of Carter Mountain." Three times the British invaded Virginia while he was our governor, and three times he failed to call out the militia to defend the homeland.
The powers of the general government, it has been said, are delegated by the states, who alone are truly sovereign; and must be exercised in subordination to the states, who alone possess supreme dominion. This does nothing to support your argument, but rather only serves to erode it.
What I actually said (or quoted):
"The powers of the general government, it has been said, are delegated by the states, who alone are truly sovereign; and must be exercised in subordination to the states, who alone possess supreme dominion. It would be difficult to sustain this proposition. "
I'm not sure what your point is.
Too, when I first used a word processor in 1980 that would cut and paste, I thought it was way cool, and still very high about what makes personal compters useful.
Walt
Bump for Dixie!
What I always ask when this comes up, and I don't believe I've EVER gotten a response, is what was the long train of abuses by the federal government prior t 1860 that would parallel that on King George and his government prior to 1776?
I think we can assume that the colonists had grievances that they had tried to address through the system that were rebuffed. In what way did that happen in 1860-61?
The fact is that the rebellion of the southern states was not only outside US law, it was also completely unjustified. And lest anyone have second thoughts, Davis made sure that Old Glory was fired on in order to incite further treason.
Walt
Ditto, you should know that Normandy was a third front, opened for political purposes to keep our Soviet "allies" happy, and because the front in Italy was bogged down and the Germans didn't have the resources to defend Italy, the eastern front, and Normandy.
Secondly, the British found there was not a great and deciding advantage to holding the Northern cities (except for creature comforts in the winters) as long as General Washington maintained a viable army in the field. They could have held the cities if they had concentrated all their forces in doing so, but again, there was no decisive advantage in doing so. As long as Washington remained in the North with the bulk of the British army, he was at a disadvantage because he simply couldn't win, but only survive to fight another day. It was possibly a strategic mistake on the part of the Brits to extend the war to the South. If Washington was stuck in the North with no chance of victory, how much help would the French have likely given us? Not much. It was a stroke of (divinely-inspired?) luck for the Americans that Cornwallis chose an earlier-than-usual winter quarters at the end of a peninsula with no escape.
Months before 9/11, I put up the only flag on my car and in my house - the Confederate Battle Flag. I salute it every morning, first thing when I get downstairs. I refuse to salute any flag that literally few over LBJ's head as he hoaxed the U.S. into a war that killed 58,000 Americans for nothing over his made-up Gulf Of Tonkin "incident" - or any flag that literally flew over Bill Klinton's head as he ordered GIs into a war zone while sweet Monica sucked him. I refuse to salute any flag that literally flew over or in front of the IRS building where some faceless bureaucrat started a snafu threatening my elderly mother over $700 in alleged back taxes it later admitted she never owed - after hassling her for months, even threatening criminal prosecution, in just another of the IRS's famous "snafus." The Confederate flag never flew over any official who did any of this to anyone.
I look forward to the - inevitable, not long off - day of partition from Blue Nation.
Wrong! Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri were called Southern states before the war, and Border states when they refused to join the confederacy. Refusing to join the rebels did not make those states 'Northern’. Slavery was not legal in any Northern state at that time.
On one hand you rebels want to call Lincoln a tyrant who trashed the constitution, but on the other you insist that he ignore the constitution by banning slavery when he had no constitutional authority to do so. The emancipation proclamation only ended slavery in areas that were in rebellion and under the direct control of the military. It was legal for Lincoln as CiC to issue that executive order. He had no constitutional authority to end slavery in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky or Missouri, or other areas such as Eastern Tennessee which were not in rebellion. Slavery there could only be ended by the states themselves or by a Constitutional Amendment.
And that war was all about slavery. Every last drop of blood was spilt because of the absolutely corrupt and immoral Southern ‘Royalty’ who did indeed own 95% of all the slaves. They agitated for secession for decades, and planned for war for one reason; To protect and expand that evil institution of slavery. They understood that the tide of history and morality was against them and their peculiar institution. They understood that soon, the American people would outvote them and ban the horrible practice. They started that war to keep history a bay and to continue to make money from slavery. It was about MONEY made from the chains and bondage of other humans. That was all it was ever about.
I don't think so... Make no mistake, local tyranny is just as bad as Washinton tyranny. But the beauty of our original system was, if the local folks(states, cities, counties, towns) got out of control, people would just flee to friendlier confines. This competition would be a check against local politicians.
Today with the states reduced to more or less nothing this option has been destroyed. Where are we supposed to flee when Washington gets out of control. Mexico?
It goes back to the Federalist, Anti Federalist debate. I'm afraid Jefferson was right and Madison wrong.
Sober up there boy.
The southern states almost seceded in the late 1820s and early 1830s.. and slavery didn't have anything to do with it. Taxes, Taxes, Taxes and more Taxes.
Basically, what the quote is saying is that the states are sovereign and gave limited powers to the federal gov't.
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