Was Secession Treason?

Daveblack ^ | June 30, 2003 | DaveBlack

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America was founded on a revolution against England, yet many Americans now believe the myth that secession was treasonable. The Declaration of Independence was, in fact, a declaration of secession. Its final paragraph declares inarguably the ultimate sovereignty of each state: [T]hat these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. Following the Declaration of Independence, each colony established by law the legitimacy of its own sovereignty as a state. Each one drew up, voted upon, and then ratified its own state constitution, which declared and defined its sovereignty as a state. Realizing that they could not survive upon the world stage as thirteen individual sovereign nations, the states then joined together formally into a confederation of states, but only for the purposes of negotiating treaties, waging war, and regulating foreign commerce. For those specific purposes the thirteen states adopted the Articles of Confederation in 1781, thus creating the United States of America. The Articles of Confederation spelled out clearly where the real power lay. Article II said, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” The Article also prohibited the secession of any member state (“the union shall be perpetual,” Article XIII) unless all of the states agreed to dissolve the Articles. Six years later, the Constitutional Convention was convened in Philadelphia, supposedly to overhaul the Articles. The delegates in Philadelphia decided to scrap the Articles and to propose to the states a different charter—the United States Constitution. Its purpose was to retain the sovereignty of the states but to delegate to the United States government a few more powers than the Articles had granted it. One major difference between the two charters was that the Constitution made no mention of “perpetual union,” and it did not contain any prohibition against the secession of states from the union. The point was raised in the convention: Should there be a “perpetual union” clause in the Constitution? The delegates voted it down, and the states were left free to secede under the Constitution, which remains the U. S. government charter today. After the election of Thomas Jefferson, the Federalist Party in New England was so upset that for more than ten years they plotted to secede. The party actually held a secession convention in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1814. Although they ultimately decided not to leave the Union, nobody really questioned the fundamental right of secession. In fact, the leader of the whole movement, Massachusetts Senator Timothy Pickering, said that secession was the principle of the American Revolution. Even John Quincy Adams, who was a staunch unionist, said in an 1839 speech about secession that in “dissolving that which can no longer bind, we would have to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center.” Likewise, Alexander Hamilton said, “to coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.” These men, and many others, understood that there was a right of secession, and that the federal government would have no right to force anybody to remain in the Union. Some people see the Confederates as traitors to their nation because many Confederate leaders swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States when joining the United States Army. However, at that time people were citizens of individual states that were members of the United States, so that when a state seceded, the citizens of that state were no longer affiliated with the national government. Remember, the Constitution did not create an all-powerful national democracy, but rather a confederation of sovereign states. The existence of the Electoral College, the Bill of Rights, and the United States Senate clearly shows this, and although it is frequently ignored, the 10th Amendment specifically states that the rights not given to the federal government are the rights of the states and of the people. But if states do not have the right to secede, they have no rights at all. Lincoln’s war destroyed the government of our founding fathers by the “might makes right” method, a method the Republicans used to quash Confederates and loyal Democrats alike. After the war, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was arrested and placed in prison prior to a trial. The trial was never held, because the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Mr. Salmon Portland Chase, informed President Andrew Johnson that if Davis were placed on trial for treason the United States would lose the case because nothing in the Constitution forbids secession. That is why no trial of Jefferson Davis was held, despite the fact that he wanted one.  So was secession treason? The answer is clearly No.

[Ditto]

What you are failing to do is contemplate the political concept of secession on its own. It is entirely possible that one could be completely dismissive of the South's reasons for secession in 1860 and yet understand that the political act of secession itself is not necessarily tied to the reasons of 1860.

I prefer to rely on James Madison who certainly knew what revolution was and what the Constitution meant. In 1833, he said that secession in the absense of intellorable abuse was just another name for revolution.

Unlike the men of Philadelphia in 1776, the south never demonstrated intollerable abuse in 1860. Losing an free and fair election is not a cause for revolution.

[Arkinsaw]

I prefer to rely on James Madison who certainly knew what revolution was and what the Constitution meant. In 1833, he said that secession in the absense of intellorable abuse was just another name for revolution.

Madison wasn't very consistent. He also co-wrote the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions that bemoaned the attempt to concentrate power "into one sovereignty" and made reference to the Constitution as a "compact to which the States are parties" and that the States are "not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government" and that "as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."

Madison is stating that the Constitution is a compact that each State can judge for itself whether it has been violated and what measure of redress is required of them.

When the founders threw out the "perpetual union" of the articles he was asked what should be done about States that did not ratify the new Constitution and went their own way. He replied that they should bid them go as brothers and hope they returned.

In fact, the Constitutional Convention considered and rejected a provision that would have authorized the use of Union force against a recalcitrant state. On 31 May 1787, the Constitutional Convention considered adding to the powers of Congress the right to call forth the force of the union against any member of the union, failing to fulfil its duty under the articles thereof.

The clause was rejected after James Madison spoke against it:

A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.

Madison, taken in small doses, is not efficacious.

[Non-Sequitur]

Secession only leads to war because one group is determine to force their views and tyranny on another.

True. And when the Davis regime did that, the Lincoln Administration was forced to accept the war that was forced on them.

[Non-Sequitur]

My personal opinion is that if the Constitution does not explicitly prohibit something then it is reserved to the States or the people respectively. But that is just my opinion and opinions are all we have.

But that isn't what the Constitution says or what the Supreme Court has ruled. Implied powers reserved to the United States can be identified and one of those it the power of Congress to approve any change in the status of a state.

[Arkinsaw]

But that isn't what the Constitution says or what the Supreme Court has ruled. Implied powers reserved to the United States can be identified and one of those it the power of Congress to approve any change in the status of a state.

The courts are a branch of the central government. The founders (Madison and Jefferson in the Kentucky-Virginia Resolutions) already said that the central government is not the final arbiter of its own powers, the States are. The States are equal judges and can judge for themselves the violation and the method of redress. Some States indicated in their ratification documents that they were not unfamiliar with the concept of withdrawing the powers they were delegating.

Conservatives traditionally bemoan the left's attempts to weaken the 10th Amendment, to treat it as an unimportant part of the Constitution. Conservatives also bemoan the left's efforts to centralize the government and take power away from the State and local level. Conservatives have traditionally supported peaceful self-determination such as in the cases of Taiwan, the Baltic countries, East Timor, Gibraltar etc. It appears that every people in the world are free to remove themselves from a consolidated central government but that the people of the US are bound for eternity to their central government no matter what that government does, how it acts, or regardless of whether the people give their consent to be governed by that government.

It doesn't make much sense to me, and its certainly not consistent.

[Blood of Tyrants]

B.S. You are so full of it. The North invaded the South after the South PEACEFULLY seceeded. After secession the Confederacy NEVER sought to force the North to turn to it's will, only to allow them to PEACEFULLY go their seperate way, right or wrong.

[capitan_refugio]

Was the South represented in the House?
Was the South represented in the Senate?
Were there Southerners on the Supreme Court?
Were Southerners denied the vote?
Did not the North go out of their way to tolerate the South's "peculiar institution?"

Where is the tyranny?
(I already know where the rhetoric is.)

If you are celebrating the 4th of July - Enjoy!

[Blood of Tyrants]

Was the South represented in the House?
Was the South represented in the Senate?

Is THAT what you call huge import tarrifs meant to FORCE the South to buy inferior Northern machinery and fund Northern ideals instead of allowing them to trade freely? BTW, go and read the history behind the 14th Amendment if you want to talk about so-called "representation".

Were there Southerners on the Supreme Court?

Not after secession. BTW, Johnson's AG advised him NOT to seek treason charges against any Confederates because he was fairly sure that the Supreme Court would rule that the States had the RIGHT to seceed. Thus, invalidating the entire Northern premise for the war and showing the truth that the North was the agressor.

Were Southerners denied the vote?

Again, go to the 14th Amendment and read it. It denied voting to EVERY person who had been a Confederate soldier or had supported it in any way.

Did not the North go out of their way to tolerate the South's "peculiar institution?"

The South did not want the tolerance of the North. They simply wanted to go their own way.

Where is the tyranny?
In Lincoln's soul.

[x]

The nation almost saw war in 1828 when the Tariff of Abominations was enacted. Then President Jackson made a bold statement that he'd have to back up with force had those tariffs not been drastically cut. It would only postpone the inevetable. It was the passing of the Morrill Tariffs shorlty after Lincoln's inauguration which sharply increased those duties, and his intent to enforce that tariff that sparked the War of Northern Agression. Whether out of fear on the North's part that an industrialized South, with slave labor would harm the Northern industries, or providing a monitary source to fund Northern economic expansion, or as punitive to slave-holding states as a means to end slavery, or maybe a sum of all combined is moot because the increased tariffs only after Lincoln took office sparked the conflict.

Time after time in the previous decades to 1860, Southern state represenatives, along with some of the Northern states made pleas in Congress to establish a more fair and equally just duty assessment - without any progress. So, there were from the second decade to the sixth of "cajoling, begging and pleading" with the government to equally tax. That's about the same time span of oppression from England the assembled colonies suffered. That's upon the same cause the American Patriots of the 18th century made their stand.

Tariffs were quite low from 1846. There was no need for Southerners to go "cajoling, begging and pleading" -- they largely wrote the tariffs themselves. Free elections -- and the Deep South Democrats' splitting their own party on the slavery issue -- brought the other side into office, and radical Southern Democrats didn't want to accept their defeat.

In 1860, those fire-eaters were already half-way out the door over slavery, and tariffs weren't a major concern for them. If tariffs had been their major interest, most likely a compromise would have been reached and there would have been no secession and no war.

It's not likely that a slavery-based Confederacy would have become an industrial superpower. Or that they would have become one any time soon, even if they gave up slavery. It's not what the secessionists wanted or intended either. Most of them were agrarians with an overconfidence about the power of cotton and the plantation economy. But would it have been a good thing if a slave-based economy had become an industrial superpower? Wouldn't that (quite unlikely) event have thrown the whole history of freedom off course and encouraged tyranny, slavery, and caste societies? Is it something we would applaud or encourage if it happened?

Did the North want to exploit the South for its own advantage? That may have been a result of the war, but I don't think it was any intention of Northerners. The idea was that higher tariffs would create an incentive to industrialize throughout the country. The intention wasn't to rob or beggar the South, but to shift the whole country, including the South to a sustainable path of industrial growth.

In this view, tariffs and the economic growth they encouraged would have helped to ween the South away from slavery. The idea was that protection would also have nurtured commercial classes that would bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, especially, though not exclusively in the South. There were some flaws in the protectionist approach, but was it so horrible an idea? If we oppose to slavery and applaud its demise, should we be so quick to condemn ideas that promised to lead the country up from slavery?

What we've seen in recent years is the growth of a confedero-libertarian view that doesn't always have much to do with the facts about mid-19th century America. Slaveholders benefited from a massive subsidy of uncompensated labor, a great violation of free market conditions, beside which tariffs pale in comparison.

The momentum for higher tariffs grew out of the Panic of 1857. It was felt that higher tariffs were needed to balance the budget and get the country out of the slump. This was probably bad economics, especially given what we know today. But it looks as though free traders allowed themselves to be divided over slavery and ceased to be as effective as they had been earlier.

There's a lesson in that for today's free marketeers: tie your cause too closely to things like secession and the Confederacy, overlook concerns with other forms of freedom and with the survival and continuity of free institutions, and you fatally weaken your cause. To count "free trade" or "state's rights" more than other, more basic freedoms and rights, is to make a mistake.

[Blessed]

The idea was that higher tariffs would create an incentive to industrialize throughout the country. The intention wasn't to rob or beggar the South, but to shift the whole country, including the South to a sustainable path of industrial growth.

This is not logical for two reasons. First the profitability of Southern Plantations was much greater than that of the sweat shops in the north. Why would they want to lower their standard of living. Second to assume economic planning as part of the political process in the 19th Century is a real stretch. It is much more logical to assume the North wanted to force the South to sell cotton at below market value and pay above market value for finished goods.The proof is in the way northern industry were protected from competing with southern industry into the 1940's. What effort was made to industialize the south by the central government in the 100 years following the war?

[x]

1. So it doesn't matter if a dollar is earned by free people working at their crafts or by masters exploiting the labor of slaves? Surely it does. Surely a country is better off with free labor than with slavery. And "sweat shops" weren't a large part of the picture before the Civil War. It was still an age of smaller shops and factories.

2. Planning wasn't part of the picture, either before or after the war. Incentives were. Planning and government efforts to industrialize the South came in with the New Deal in the 1930s. The Republican policy was conceived as self-help, rather than as top-down planning. That policy had some serious deficiencies, especially after the Civil War, when industries were already more established, and hardly infants needing protection, but it doesn't deserve the abuse some people throw at it.

I don't know how logical it is to assume that "the North wanted to force the South to sell cotton at below market value and pay above market value for finished goods." I think it attributes more sectionalism and malice to Northerners than is valid. Southernern cotton men naturally put themselves at the center of things. I'm not sure Northerners did.

It was said at the time that "slavery and free trade grow in strength together," and prominent protectionists believed that less free trade would mean less slavery. The "bottom line" perspective that slavery was always cheapest was something many well-intentioned people wanted to get away from, and rightly or wrongly, they saw protection as a way to do so.

[capitan_refugio]

"In 1860, when the Southern states were moving toward secession, the Tariff of 1857 had reduced tariffs to the lowest level since 1812. The Morrill Tariff Act of 1861 was not passed until after several states had seceded, thus reducing the number of anti-tariff representatives in the Senate. No Southern state even mentioned the tariff in its act of secession. In short, the claim that secession occurred because of high tariffs is a historical fiction."

CR - "Were there Southerners on the Supreme Court?"
BoT - "Not after secession."
CR - No justices by choice, and besides, Marylander Roger B. Taney stayed on until his death in 1863. He had been a thorn in the side of all those who loved freedom since his infamous Dred Scott decision. (I say infamous in regard to the slavery issue; however, for those who believe in a plain reading of the 2nd Amendment, the Dred Scott decision has one of the best arguments for private ownership of firearms ever written by the Supreme Court.)

Odd, isn't it, that the Court you believe would have ruled in favor of confederate because they "had the RIGHT to secede," ruled exactly the opposite way in Texas v White just one year later. Hmmmm.

BoT - "Again, go to the 14th Amendment and read it. It denied voting to EVERY person who had been a Confederate soldier or had supported it in any way."

Really? Could you show me where it says that? In section 3 it prohibits former rebels from holding civil or military positions. It seems you've gotten a little caught up in your own rhetoric. Let me quote from Reconstruction and Rights:

"When the Civil War ended, leaders turned to the question of how to reconstruct the nation. One important issue was the right to vote. Hotly debated were rights of black American men and former Confederate men to vote.

"In the latter half of the 1860s, Congress passed a series of acts designed to address the question of rights, as well as how the Southern states would be governed. These acts included the act creating the Freedmen's Bureau, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and several Reconstruction Acts. The Reconstruction Acts established military rule over Southern states until new governments could be formed. They also limited some former Confederate officials' and military officers' rights to vote and to run for public office. (However, the latter provisions were only temporary and soon rescinded for almost all of those affected by them.) Meanwhile, the Reconstruction acts gave former male slaves the right to vote and hold public office.

"Congress also passed two amendments to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment made African-Americans citizens and protected citizens from discriminatory state laws. Southern states were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before being readmitted to the union. The Fifteenth Amendment guaranteed African American men the right to vote."

Bot -"Where is the tyranny? In Lincoln's soul."

I can see you're going to be fun tomorrow. How can you possibly stand to live in a tyrannical hell hole like the United States? They need good people like you in Liberia. Think about it.

[azhenfud]

"I don't know how logical it is to assume that 'the North wanted to force the South to sell cotton at below market value and pay above market value for finished goods.'"

"Cotton could be bought in the South for three cents a pound and sold for forty cents and upwards to a dollar a pound, at the peak of market conditions, in England. The profit on about a 1,000 bales of cotton was around $250,000."
http://beachonline.com/commerce.htm

The North wanted the sole franchise to export the cotton to England, they just couldn't enforce it without blocking the Southern ports. (Now the FedGov has justified themselves for taking control with the "Warehouse Act" which gives them control of licensing all who export a commodity to foreign lands) It's logical enough to see the North wasn't about to allow the profit from the biggest export of the day to England just dry up. Not their cash-cow. About one-quarter of England's economy was dependent upon cotton."

"Southernern cotton men naturally put themselves at the center of things."

Cotton WAS the center.

[azhenfud]

"Southern states were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before being readmitted to the union.

So the Confederate States had somewhat sucessfully seceeded.

[capitan_refugio]

"Southern states were required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before being readmitted to the union."

"So the Confederate States had somewhat sucessfully seceeded."

This was discussed in the 1,100 post thread from a couple of days ago. I don't have my text or notes with me, so please bear with me as I recall the "theory."

The Supreme Court ruled in "Texas v White (1869)" that Texas had not left its jurisdiction. In other words, the Court opined, even though the people of Texas and the government of Texas (less Sam Houston) had illegally claimed to secede, the land remained part of the territory of the United States. Earlier, in July 1861, the Congress reasoned that the States in secession had ceased to have the attributes of organized States and were therefore, ineligible for representation in Congress, in the same way a territory may not have voting members of Congress (like the U.S. Virgin Islands, today).

I suppose you can say they were successful, in that they had to be re-admitted, after being forced to reorganize their State governments, and to change their State documents and laws, and after ratifying the 14th and/or 15th Amenedments. (The last states to be re-admitted came back after the 14th was already law, so they we required to ratify the 15th.)

The long and short of it was, where States "seceded," they ceased to have valid representation and ceased to be functioning entities, although the physical land never left the Union.

[Non-Sequitur]

The North invaded the South after the South PEACEFULLY seceeded. After secession the Confederacy NEVER sought to force the North to turn to it's will, only to allow them to PEACEFULLY go their seperate way, right or wrong.

And when they PEACEFULLY fired on Sumter then what did they expect would happen?

[Non-Sequitur]

The States are equal judges and can judge for themselves the violation and the method of redress.

But that isn't what the Constitution says.

[Arkinsaw]

But that isn't what the Constitution says.

Thats what Jefferson and Madison said it says in the Kentucky-Virginia Resolutions.

Even Daniel Webster said that [if the fugitive slave law was willfully violated by the north] "the South would no longer be bound to keep the contract. A bargain broken on one side is broken on all sides."

In Virginia's ratification document, they said, "The People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will."

When New York delegates met on July 26, 1788, their ratification document read, "That the Powers of Government may be resumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness;..."

On May 29, 1790, the Rhode Island delegates made a similar claim in their ratification document: "That the powers of government may be resumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness:..."

Webster again, "If the states were not left to leave the Union when their rights were interfered with, the government would have been National, but the (Constitutional) Convention refused to baptize it by the name .... If the Union was formed by the accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States."

John Quincy Adams said, "If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political associations will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited States to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint."

My view is not totally unsupported as you seem to say.

[Blood of Tyrants]

What were they supposed to do when the Union was asked to leave the fort that was no longer theirs to hold?

Give me a well deserved break. Lincoln ordered the commander of that fort not to leave because he wanted to provoke the South.

When are you people who ignore truth going to stop parroting the politically correct line that the North was good and the South was evil when the truth was that THE NORTH ALSO HAD SLAVES DURING THE WAR OF NORTHERN AGRESSION.

[Blood of Tyrants]

You probably think that Bush is a conservative, too!