1. Davis may get a pass depite the fact that he was a slaveholder, not because he was a slaveholder. I have heard no one defend Davis' slaveholding. I have heard people agree with his ideas on the limitations of Federal power, but this is a separate issue from slaveholding. If we are going to denigrate all historical figures that did something wrong, we will be free of all historical figures and we run the risk of throwing the baby out with the bath water. To the day he died, I believe Davis believed in the inherent inferiority of black people (and I condemn him for that), but I still admire his efforts to oppose the Federal usurpation.
2. The issue of the centralization of power in the Confederacy was not an issue for any northerner. This was a debate within the Confederacy. Since Lincoln was claiming to be the government of all who lived in the area of the US as of 1860, the degree of centralization of the Federal government was an issue between all whom Lincoln claimed to rule. More to the point, the "common defense" argument is one thing, but both the US and CS Constitutions task Congress "to raise and support Armies," so Governor Brown was on shaky ground here. Most Federal usurpations before and since The Late Unpleasantness have come from the "necessary and proper" clause of Article I, Section 8, maybe the most abused portion of our Coinstitution. Does Congress really have a legitimate role in dictating how much water goes down the toilet with each flush? Is this really necessary and proper?
Hope this helps.
Respectfully,
D J White
But Davis saw federal power extending over the states. If that is a limit, so be it. Didn't you know that? He held the same ideas that Lincoln did.
"The Confederate Constitution, he [Davis] pointed out to [Governor] 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 existance 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
Oviously, if the central government may coerce the states in the issue of conscription, the states are not completely sovereign.
Walt
Name a federal usurpation -before- 1860.
I will grant you that the necessary and proper clause could be (and maybe has been)a source of abuse by the feds. But to say that the government may not use the clause to simply maintain the national framework is beyond stretching credibility.
Walt