Posted on 04/04/2003 11:09:24 AM PST by WhiskeyPapa
First, I will not go into detail as to what I have doen in the last 48 hours that has prevented me from posting, after all we do all have lives beyond this board (at least I hope we do).
But, I for one, my friend, am not an attorney and have never claimed to be. I will freely admit that my opinions are those of a layman. I am not going to spend an inordinate amount of time doing research to 'prove' something, which I believe, is basic common sense and one that was in line with the intention of our founding fathers.
Those intentions, I believe, were to:
Establish a form of government that maximized the individual and minimized the power of central control.
Today, it seems to a large extent that we have simply replaced the King with a centralized government (albeit a representative one, and not a dictatorship).
Rather then referring to case law, which the question you ask is in some ways a bit ludicrous, I would defer to a question, which follows shortly.
The 'bit ludicrous' refers to this:
You are, in essence, asking to sight examples where the federal government has agreed to restrict their own limits to the obtaining of additional powers. Do you really think they are going to do that?
Now, as an example of what I feel is the government’s unconstitutional encroachment, I would ask the following:
By what constitutional authority does the federal government have the right to restrict my travel to a foreign country?
Specifically, I refer to Cuba. Mind you I have no desire to go to Cuba, but I feel it is wrong for the Fed to tell me I cannot go.
Thanks for your intelligent responses, though we disagree, this discussion is interesting.
Your kind words are appreciated. I hope our paths cross againn on this board.
Your certainly welcome and your kind thoughts are appreciated!
Wally, I percieved you to be an intelligent person, one with a realistic approach to history and on the long term effects of actions taken at important crossroads of history. Thus I am surprised by your statement.
Lincoln was willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands of men for one primary cause: To establish the sanctity and power of the federal government.
He could have given a rat's ass about the plight of the African Black.
He succeeded in two areas:
First, he established the power of the government to effect the destiny of the people, thus opening the doors to FDR's "New Deal". A deal which further established the dependence of the wortking man on the power of the King, er government.
Second, he granted 'liberty' to the African blacks. But in so doing he, in essence, subscribed them to a continued economic dependency on the Master, who in this case was the federal government.
I would also point out that the best method today to bring blacks and other poor people out of the poverty, is not through further government dependency, but is based on two factors:
Education and hard work.
The policy of the Fed to day, discourages both, much to everyones detrement.
We do not disagree that the Blacks needed, and deserved freedom, what we disagree on is the willingness of Lincoln to cause the death of tens of thousands of people to achieve this freedom.
Lincoln's view of the Constitution and the nature of the government differed not one whit from that of Washington, Madison, Jefferson or Jackson.
Jefferson:
"It is hoped that by a due poise and partition of powers between the General and particular governments, we have found the secret of extending the benign blessings of republicanism over still greater tracts of country than we possess, and that a subdivision may be avoided for ages, if not forever." --Thomas Jefferson to James Sullivan, 1791
"Our citizens have wisely formed themselves into one nation as to others and several States as among themselves. To the united nation belong our external and mutual relations; to each State, severally, the care of our persons, our property, our reputation and religious freedom." --Thomas Jefferson: To Rhode Island Assembly, 1801.
"The preservation of the general government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801.
"It is of immense consequence that the States retain as complete authority as possible over their own citizens. The withdrawing themselves under the shelter of a foreign jurisdiction is so subversive of order and so pregnant of abuse, that it may not be amiss to consider how far a law of praemunire [a punishable offense against government] should be revised and modified, against all citizens who attempt to carry their causes before any other than the State courts, in cases where those other courts have no right to their cognizance." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1797. ME 9:424
It is a fatal heresy to suppose that either our State governments are superior to the Federal or the Federal to the States. The people, to whom all authority belongs, have divided the powers of government into two distinct departments, the leading characters of which are foreign and domestic; and they have appointed for each a distinct set of functionaries. These they have made coordinate, checking and balancing each other like the three cardinal departments in the individual States; each equally supreme as to the powers delegated to itself, and neither authorized ultimately to decide what belongs to itself or to its coparcener in government. As independent, in fact, as different nations." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1821. ME 15:328
"The spirit of concord [amongst] sister States... alone carried us successfully through the revolutionary war, and finally placed us under that national government, which constitutes the safety of every part, by uniting for its protection the powers of the whole." --Thomas Jefferson to William Eustis, 1809. ME 12:227
"The interests of the States... ought to be made joint in every possible instance in order to cultivate the idea of our being one nation, and to multiply the instances in which the people shall look up to Congress as their head." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1785. ME 5:14, Papers 8:229
"By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties." --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1060.htm
Jackson:
"If this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the Union would have been dissolved in its infancy. The excise law in Pennsylvania, the embargo and non-intercourse law in the Eastern States, the carriage tax in Virginia, were all deemed unconstitutional, and were more unequal in their operation than any of the laws now complained of; but, fortunately, none of those states discovered that they had the right now claimed by South Carolina. The war into which we were forced, to support the dignity of the nation and the rights of our citizens, might have ended in defeat and disgrace, instead of victory and honor, if the states who supposed it a ruinous and unconstitutional measure had thought they possessed the right of nullifying the act by which it was declared, and denying supplies for its prosecution. Hardly and unequally as those measures bore upon several members of the Union, to the legislatures of none did this efficient and peaceable remedy, as it is called, suggest itself. The discovery of this important feature in our Constitution was reserved to the present day. To the statesmen of South Carolina belongs the invention, and upon the citizens of that state will unfortunately fall the evils of reducing it to practice."
Madison:
"The doctrine laid down by the law of Nations in the case of treaties is that a breach of any one article by any of the parties, frees the other parties from their engagements. In the case of a union of people under one Constitution, the nature of the pact had always been understood to exclude such an interpretation." (Remarks to the Constitutional Convention, July 23, 1787).
Washington:
"Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole."
The framers of the Constitution clearly saw that the government was going to ruin under the Articles of Federation. The Constitution limited the power of the states and -transferred- some of the most important elements of sovereignty exclusively to the federal 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 judiciary, ad in all those powers extending over the whole nation. "
Justice James Wilson, 1793
"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 themselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is likewise 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."
--Chief Justice John Jay, Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793
Walt
He did.
"I confess that I hate to see the poor creatures hunted down down, and caught, and carried back to their stripes and unwarranted toils; but I bite my lip and keep quiet. In 1841 you and I had together a tedious low-water trip, on a Steam Boat from Louisville to St. Louis. You may remember, as I well do, that from Louisville to the mouth of the Ohio there were, on board, ten or a dozen slaves, shackled together with irons. That sight was a continual torment to me; and I see something like it every time I touch the Ohio, or any other slave-border. It is hardly fair for you to assume, that I have no such interest in a thing which has, and continually exercises, the power of making me miserable. You ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union."
8/24/54
"Judge Douglas, and whoever like him teaches that the negro has no share, humble though it may be, in the Declaration of Independence, is going back to the era of our liberty and independence, and so far as in him lies, muzzling the cannon that thunders its annual joyous return; that he is blowing out the moral lights around us; when he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them; that he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and national.
October 13, 1858
I wish to return Judge Douglas my profound thanks for his public annunciation here to-day, to be put on record, that his system of policy in regard to the institution of slavery contemplates that it shall last forever. We are getting a little nearer the true issue of this controversy, and I am profoundly grateful for this one sentence. Judge Douglas asks you "why cannot the institution of slavery, or rather, why cannot the nation, part slave and part free, continue as our fathers made it forever?" In the first place, I insist that our fathers did not make this nation half slave and half free, or part slave and part free. I insist that they found the institution of slavery existing here. They did not make it so, but they left it so because they knew of no way to get rid of it at that time. When Judge Douglas undertakes to say that as a matter of choice the fathers of the government made this nation part slave and part free, he assumes what is historically a falsehood. More than that; when the fathers of the government cut off the source of slavery by the abolition of the slave trade, and adopted a system of restricting it from the new Territories where it had not existed, I maintain that they placed it where they understood, and all sensible men understood, it was in the course of ultimate extinction; and when Judge Douglas asks me why it cannot continue as our fathers made it, I ask him why he and his friends could not let it remain as our fathers made it?
October 15, 1858
And when this new principle [that African Americans were not covered by the phrase "all men are created equal"] -- this new proposition that no human being ever thought of three years ago, -- is brought forward, I combat it as having an evil tendency, if not an evil design; I combat it as having a tendency to dehumanize the negro -- to take away from him the right of ever striving to be a man. I combat it as being one of the thousand things constantly done in these days to prepare the public mind to make property, and nothing but property of the negro in all the States of the Union.
I do not wish to be misunderstood upon this subject of slavery in this country. I suppose it may long exist, and perhaps the best way for it to come to an end peaceably is for it to exist for a length of time. But I say that the spread and strengthening and perpetuation of it is an entirely different proposition. There we should in every way resist it as a wrong, treating it as a wrong, with the fixed idea that it must and will come to an end.
March 1, 1859
I say now, however, as I have all the while said, that on the territorial question -- that is, the question of extending slavery under the national auspices, -- I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which assists or permits the extension of the institution on soil owned by the nation. And any trick by which the nation is to acquire territory, and then allow some local authority to spread slavery over it, is as obnoxious as any other.
February 1, 1861
"I will say now, however, I approve the declaration in favor of so amending the Constitution as to prohibit slavery throughout the nation. When the people in revolt, with a hundred days of explicit notice, that they could, within those days, resume their allegiance, without the overthrow of their institution, and that they could not so resume it afterwards, elected to stand out, such amendment of the Constitution as now proposed, became a fitting, and necessary conclusion to the final success of the Union cause. Such alone can meet and cover all cavils. Now, the unconditional Union men, North and South, perceive its importance, and embrace it. In the joint names of Liberty and Union, let us labor to give it legal form, and practical effect."
6/15/1864
This is why Frederick Douglass said that Lincoln was "swift, radical, zealous and determined."
Lincoln used his great --political-- skills to assess when and if voting rights for blacks be acceptable to the great mass of whites -- at least in the north. The attempt to legitimize blacks as Americans can be seen in these letters he wrote :
Private
General Hunter
Executive Mansion
Washington D.C. April 1, 1863
My dear Sir:
I am glad to see the accounts of your colored force at Jacksonville, Florida. I see the enemy are driving at them fiercely, as is to be expected. It is mportant to the enemy that such a force shall not take shape, and grow, and thrive, in the south; and in precisely the same proportion, it is important to us that it shall. Hence the utmost caution and viglilance is necessary on our part. The enemy will make extra efforts to destroy them; and we should do the same to preserve and increase them.
Yours truly
A. Lincoln
_________________________________________________________
Hon. Andrew Johnson
Executive Mansion,
My dear Sir:
Washington, March 26. 1863.
I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as some man of your ability, and position, to go to this work. When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave-state, and himself a slave- holder. The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed of, force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of fifty thousand armed, and drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi, would end the rebellion at once. And who doubts that we can present that sight, if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it please do not dismiss the thought. Yours truly
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hon Soc of War
Executive Mansion
Washington
July 21, 1863
My Dear Sir:
I desire that a renewed and vigorous effort be made to raise colored forces along the shores of the Missippi [sic]. Please consult the General-in-chief; and if it is perceived that any acceleration of the matter can be effected, let it be done. I think the evidence is nearly conclusive that Gen. Thomas is one of the best, if not the very best, instruments for this service.
Yours truly
Lincoln also proposed --privately-- to the new governor of Louisiana that the new state constiution include voting rights for blacks. A year later, in April, 1865 he came out --publicly-- for the suffrage for black soldiers, because his great --political-- skill told him that the time was right.
It was a direct result of this speech, and this position, that Booth shot him.
President Lincoln, besides ordering the army (note that this is only a few months after the EP) to use black soldiers more vigorously, made many public speeches to prepare the people for the idea of black suffrage.
"But to be plain, you are dissatisfied with me about the negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish that all men could be free, while I suppose that you do not. ....peace does not appear as distant as it did. I hope it will come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to worth the keeping in all future time. It will have then been proved that, among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and that they who take such appeal are sure to lose their case, and pay the cost. And then, there will be some black men, who can remember that, with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet they have helped mankind on to this great consumation; while, I fear, there will be some white ones, unable to forget that, with malignant heart, and deceitful speech, have strove to hinder it. Still let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy final triumph. Let us be quite sober. Let us dilligently apply the means, never doubting that a just God, in his own good time, will give us the rightful result."
8/23/63
"When you give the Negro these rights," he [Lincoln] said, "when you put a gun in his hands, it prophesies something more: it foretells that he is to have the full enjoyment of his liberty and his manhood...By the close of the war, Lincoln was reccomending commissioning black officers in the regiments, and one actually rose to become a major before it was over. At the end of 1863, more than a hundred thousand had enlisted in the United States Colored Troops, and in his message to Congress the president reported, "So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any." When some suggested in August 1864 that the Union ought to offer to help return runaway slaves to their masters as a condition for the South's laying down its arms, Lincoln refused even to consider the question.
"Why should they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them?" he retorted. "Drive back to the support of the rebellion the physical force which the colored people now give, and promise us, and neither the present, or any incoming administration can save the Union." To others he said it even more emphatically. "This is not a question of sentiment or taste, but one of physical force which may be measured and estimated. Keep it and you can save the Union. Throw it away, and the Union goes with it."
--"Lincoln's Men" pp 163-64 by William C. Davis
Lincoln's sense of fairness made him seek to extend the blessings of citizenship to everyone who served under the flag.
His great political skill made him realize that blacks --were--not-- leaving -- he played that card and no one was biting, black or white. That being the case, he knew he had to prepare for the future, and that future involved full rights for blacks.
Walt
Complete nonsense.
Jefferson never explicitly said, "I believe states have the legal right to secede." However, everything he ever said that touched on the subject was consistent with that right.
More nonsense.
"The interests of the States... ought to be made joint in every possible instance in order to cultivate the idea of our being one nation, and to multiply the instances in which the people shall look up to Congress as their head." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1785. ME 5:14, Papers 8:229
"By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties." --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806.
Walt
Read these letters carefully. You don't know the history.
"Hon. Horace Greeley:
"Dear Sir,
"I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable [sic] in it an impatient dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
"As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave anyone in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the neared the Union will be "the Union as it was". If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free."
Yours,
A. Lincoln
And this letter:
"You ask me to put in writing the substance of what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Governor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took, that I would, to the utmost of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I have publically declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving by every indispensible means, that government--that nation--of which that constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation, and preserve the constitution? By general law life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb.
I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful, by becoming indispensible to to the preservation of the of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it...When in March, and May and July 1862 I made earnest, and succcessive appeals to the border states to favor compensated emancipation, I believed the indispensable neccessity for military emancipation and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that measure. They declined the proposition; and I was, in my best judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, I hoped for greater gain than loss; but of this, I was not entirely confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none in our white military force, no loss any how or any where. On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite one hundred and thirty thousand soldiers, seamen and laborers. These are palpable facts, about which there can be no cavilling. We have the men; and we could not have them without the measure.
And now let any Union man who complains of the measure, test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms; and in the next, that he is for taking these hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union side, and placing them where they would be but for the measure he condemns. If he can not face his case so stated, it is only because he can not face the truth.
I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In telling this tale I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity. I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the Nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God."
4/4/64
A. Lincoln
Walt
Yeah; they come in handy when I see the same old BS over and over and over.
Walt
may i gently suggest that you check out the records of KLAN WATCH? (NOT a friend of dixie, btw)
ANYTHING that exposes the damnyankees as the hatefilled, self-serving, self-righteous hypocrytes that they demonstrably ARE is BS in YOUR eyes, though not in the eyes of FAIR-minded persons.
FRee dixie,sw
because something is written down on some leftist site on the worldwidewierd does NOT make it factual.
the main difference between ravison,#3,WP and others of that ilk and NS is that ole' NS has a brain, though it is badly programmed.
FRee dixie,sw
No. There is a difference between the executive and judicial branches of government. I'm asking you to cite case law where the courts, up to and including the USSC, have put the state ahead of the federal. Surely you wouldn't reach conclusions about the US Constitution without some legal precedent to support your position. That would be..ludicrous, don't you agree?
By what constitutional authority does the federal government have the right to restrict my travel to a foreign country?
Specifically, I refer to Cuba. Mind you I have no desire to go to Cuba, but I feel it is wrong for the Fed to tell me I cannot go.
I am unaware that the federal government is preventing you from going to Cuba. Consular Information
I'm pretty sure that if you want to leave the country no one will stop you. You just might have some difficulty getting back in...
I have checked them out. You should try it yourself sometime. The Klanwatch data has been rolled into tolerance.org and they identify 5 klan chapters in Indiana and about 80 in what I take to be the 15 sothron states you mentioned. So you ridiculous claim that the SPLC has identified 5 times as many klansmen in Indiana than in all the southern states combined is complete and utter bullsh*t, on a par with the rest of your postings.
Flattery will get you nowhere.
Indeed.
A friend bought me a small desktop stars and bars, and dared me to put it in my office. I did so with perfect equanimity, knowing that no one would recognize it; and none of the students or faculty who entered my office (including a couple of reporters from the campus newspaper) in the following two years did. A couple of people asked me what it was, and I simply asked them what they thought it was. One thought Cuban, the other Texan. I told 'em both they were close. (90 miles for Cuba, zero for Texas, by my reckoning)
"The future inhabitants of the Atlantic & Missipi States will be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their union, & we wish it. Events may prove it otherwise; and if they see their interest in separation, why should we take side with our Atlantic rather than our Missipi descendants? It is the elder and the younger son differing. God bless them both, & keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better." - Thomas Jefferson, August 12, 1803 (emphasis added)
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