Posted on 01/13/2004 9:01:35 AM PST by Aurelius
Dust jackets for most books about the American Civil War depict generals, politicians, battle scenes, cavalry charges, cannons[sic] firing, photographs or fields of dead soldiers, or perhaps a battle between ironclads. In contrast our book {[url=http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2XGHOEK4JT&isbn=0842029613&itm=7]Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War Mark Thornton, Steven E. Woodworth (Editor), Robert B. Ekelund[/url]features a painting by Edgar Degas entitled the "Cotton Exchange" which depicts several calm businessmen and clerks, some of them Degas’s relatives, going about the business of buying and selling cotton at the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. The focus of this book is thus on the economic rationality of seemingly senseless events of the Civil War – a critical period in American history.
What caused the war? Why did the Union defeat the Confederacy? What were the consequences of the War? The premise of the book is that historians have a comparative advantage in describing such events, but economists have the tools to help explain these events.
We use traditional economic analysis, some of it of the Austrian and Public Choice variety, to address these principal questions and our conclusions generally run counter to the interpretations of historians. In contrast to historians who emphasize the land war and military strategy, we show that the most important battle took place at sea. One side, the blockade runners, did not wear uniforms or fire weapons at their opponents. The other side, the blockading fleet, was composed of sailors who had weapons and guns but they rarely fired their cannons in hopes of damaging their opponents. Their pay was based on the valued of captured ships. Historians often have argued that the Confederacy lost because it was overly reluctant to use government power and economic controls, but we show the exact opposite. Big Confederate government brought the Confederacy to its knees.
Some now teach that slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War – an explanation that historians have developed in the twentieth century. However, this analysis does not explain why the war started in 1861 (rather than 1851 or 1841) and it fails to explain why slavery was abolished elsewhere without such horrendous carnage.
We emphasize economics and politics as major factors leading to war. The Republicans who came to power in 1860 supported a mercantilist economic agenda of protectionism, inflation, public works, and big government. High tariffs would have been a boon to manufacturing and mining in the north, but would have been paid largely by those in the export-oriented agriculture economy.
Southern economic interests understood the effects of these policies and decided to leave the union. The war was clearly related to slavery, but mainly in the sense that Republican tariffs would have squeezed the profitability out of the slave-based cotton plantation economy to the benefit of Northern industry (especially Yankee textiles and iron manufacturing). Southerners would also have lost out in terms of public works projects, government land giveaways, and inflation.
The real truth about wars is that they are not started over principle, but over power. Wars however, are not won by power on the battlefield, but by the workings and incentives of men who go to work in fields and factories, to those who transport, store and sell consumer goods, and most especially to the entrepreneurs and middlemen who make markets work and adapt to change. This emphasis and this economic account of tariffs, blockade and inflation, like the focus of Degas’s "Cotton Exchange" reveals the most important and least understood aspect of war.
You are confused. You forget there is a HIGHER authority than the court - GOD. As Blackstone, Vattel, Puffendorf and Grotius said (the founders relied on the writings of these men), Divine Law is the basis of all law. DThe founders recognized this when they declared that the right to life is INALIENABLE, in effect, placing the United States under Divine sovereignty. Know what "inalienable" means? It means the court HAS NO AUTHORITY TO ABROGATE IT. Yet that is precisely what they did in Roe and Doe! They exceeded their authority by playing God, therefore, their ruling is EVIL and DESPOTIC on its face. Again I ask you: Does the right to privacy trump the right to life (the court says it does)? If it doesn't, should good men stand by and obey such an egregiously EVIL ruling? In Nazi Germany perhaps...this is America!
The authority is God. He says so. And the founders said as much as well. It's common sense - we use the faculty of Reason. When reason contradicts absolute moral principles, that reason is corrupted.
Yes he did.
And a constiutional violation does not occur just because you say it does.
Strictly speaking, a constitutional violation is not contingent upon the word of any one person or body of persons. It happens independent of what anyone says and even independent of whether or not anybody notices. It is the job of judges to take notice of the more egregious violations and act to correct them. Sometimes they are successful in this. Sometimes they are not.
It occurs when a majority of the Supreme Court justices agrees that it has occured.
No it doesn't. The court can only rule on a constitutional violation that has already occurred, hopefully with a mind to correcting that violation.
By that definition then so was Lincoln's.
Not really. Lincoln ran right over the state courts where they conflicted wiht him just like he ran over state legislatures and even entire state governments (i.e. Missouri). The Confederate state courts, by contrast, remained open and issued writs of habeas corpus throughout the war.
Me ;o)
1. The only substantive record from the Constitutional Convention of somebody speaking on the clause - its proposal by Pickney - says that Congress should have the suspension power.
2. The testimony of a delegate in attendence at the Constitutional Convention, Robert Yates, says that the Constitution gives Congress the suspension power.
3. The testimony from the state ratification conventions indicates that they understood Congress to have the suspension power.
4. The testimony of two very prominent founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and Richard Henry Lee, says that Congress has the suspension power.
5. The testimony of the most prominent and venerated Chief Justice in US History, John Marshall, says that Congress has the suspension power.
6. The testimony of St. George Tucker, "America's Blackstone" and the first major legal scholar to analyze the Constitution, says Congress has the suspension power. So does that of another prominent legal scholar William Rawle.
7. The testimony of at least four other pre-war Supreme Court Justices - that of Taney, Story, Saulsbury, and Curtis - says that Congress has the suspension power.
By contrast only Lincoln says they do not, and only you, Rehnquist, and O'Conner writing 140 years after the fact seem to agree with Lincoln's tortured defense for suspending the writ. Your case, to put it mildly, is in severe want of evidence, to say nothing of legal scholarship and good old common sense.
READ IT AND WEEP:
"The privileges and benefit of the writ of Habeas Corpus shall be enjoyed in this Government, in the most expeditious and ample manner; and shall not be suspended by the Legislature, except upon the most urgent and pressing occasions, and for a limited time not exceeding months." - Charles Pickney, announcing the proposal to limit the suspension of habeas corpus, Constitutional Convention, 1787
"The people by adopting the federal constitution, give congress general powers to institute a distinct and new judiciary, new courts, and to regulate all proceedings in them, under the eight limitations mentioned in a former letter; and the further one, that the benefits of the habeas corpus act shall be enjoyed by individuals." - Richard Henry Lee, Anti-Federalist #16, "Federal Farmer"
"In the same section it is provided, that "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion and invasion, the public safety may require it." This clause limits the power of the legislature to deprive a citizen of the right of habeas corpus, to particular cases viz. those of rebellion and invasion; the reason is plain, because in no other cases can this power be exercised for the general good." - Robert Yates, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, Anti-Federalist #9, "Brutus"
"The safest and best restriction, therefore, arises from the nature of the cases in which Congress are authorized to exercise that power [of suspending habeas corpus] at all, namely, in those of rebellion or invasion. These are clear and certain terms, facts of public notoriety, and whenever these shall cease to exist, the suspension of the writ must necessarily cease also." - Judge Francis Dana, presenting the Constitution to the Massachusetts Ratification Convention
"In the United States, it can be suspended, only, by the authority of congress; but not whenever congress may think proper; for it cannot be suspended, unless in cases of actual rebellion, or invasion. A suspension under any other circumstances, whatever might be the pretext, would be unconstitutional, and consequently must be disregarded by those whose duty it is to grant the writ." - St. George Tucker, Commentaries, 1803
"The decision that the individual shall be imprisoned must always precede the application for a writ of habeas corpus, and this writ must always be for the purpose of revising that decision, and therefore appellate in its nature. But this point also is decided in Hamilton's case and in Burford's case. If at any time the public safety should require the suspension of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, it is for the legislature to say so. That question depends on political considerations, on which the legislature is to decide." - Justice John Marshall, writing for the majority in Ex Parte Bollman and Swartwout, United States Supreme Court, 1807
"Those respecting the press, religion, & juries, with several others, of great value, were accordingly made; but the Habeas corpus was left to the discretion of Congress, and the amendment against the reeligibility of the President was not proposed by that body." - Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, 1821
"The Constitution seems to have secured this benefit [habeas corpus] to the citizen by the description of the writ, and in an unqualified manner admitting its efficacy, while it declares that it shall not he suspended unless when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety shall require it. This writ is believed to be known only in countries governed by the common law, as it is established in England; but in that country the benefit of it may at any time be withheld by the authority of parliament, whereas we see that in this country it cannot be suspended even in cases of rebellion or invasion, unless the public safety shall require it. Of this necessity the Constitution probably intends, that the legislature of the United States shall be the judges. Charged as they are with the preservation of the United States from both those evils, and superseding the powers of the several states in the prosecution of the measures they may find it expedient to adopt, it seems not unreasonable that this control over the writ of habeas corpus, which ought only to be exercised on extraordinary occasions, should rest with them. It is at any rate certain, that congress, which has authorized the courts and judges of the United States to issue writs of habeas corpus in cases within their jurisdiction, can alone suspend their power" - William Rawle, "A View of the Constitution of the United States of America," 1826
"It would seem, as the power is given to congress to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in cases of rebellion or invasion, that the right to judge, whether exigency had arisen, must exclusively belong to that body." - Justice Joseph Story, "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States," Book 3, Chapter XXXII, § 1336, 1833
"And who could hold for a moment, when the writ of habeas corpus cannot be suspended by the legislature itself, either in the general government or most of the States, without an express constitutional permission, that all other writs and laws could be suspended, and martial law substituted for them over the whole State or country, without any express constitutional license to that effect, in any emergency? Much more is this last improbable when even the mitigated measure, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, has never yet been found proper by Congress, and, it is believed, by neither of the States, since the Federal Constitution was adopted." - Justice Levi Woodbury, dissent in Luther v. Borden, United States Supreme Court, 1849
"With such provisions in the constitution, expressed in language too clear to be misunderstood by any one, I can see no ground whatever for supposing that the president, in any emergency, or in any state of things, can authorize the suspension of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus, or the arrest of a citizen, except in aid of the judicial power. He certainly does not faithfully execute the laws, if he takes upon himself legislative power, by suspending the writ of habeas corpus, and the judicial power also, by arresting and imprisoning a person without due process of law." - Justice Roger B. Taney, Ex Parte Merryman, US Circuit Court of Appeals, 1861
"There has been much discussion concerning the question whether the power to suspend the "privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" is conferred by the Constitution on Congress, or on the President. The only judicial decisions which have been made upon this question have been adverse to the power of the President.Still, very able lawyers have endeavored to maintain -- perhaps to the satisfaction of others -- have maintained, that the power to deprive a particular person of the "privilege of the writ," is an executive power. For while it has been generally, and, so far as I know, universally admitted, that Congress alone can suspend a law, or render it inoperative, and consequently that Congress alone can prohibit the courts from issuing the writ, yet that the executive might, in particular cases, suspend or deny the privilege which the writ was designed to secure. I am not aware that any one has attempted to show that under this grant of power to suspend "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus," the President may annul the laws of States, create new offences unknown to the laws of the United States, erect military commissions to try and punish them, and then, by a sweeping decree, suspend the writ of habeas corpus as to all persons who shall be "arrested by any military authority." I think he would make a more bold than wise experiment on the credulity of the people, who should attempt to convince them that this power is found in the habeas corpus clause of the Constitution. No such attempt has been, and I think none such will be made. And therefore I repeat, that no other source of this power has ever been suggested save that described by the President himself, as belonging to him as commander-in-chief." - Justice Benjamin R. Curtis, "Executive Power," 1862
And your arguement is ridiculous any way you want to look at it. You do not decide what is outside the scope of the Constitution. You never have and, fortunately, never will.
Learned opinions all. But the Constitution is silent on who has the sole authority to suspend habeas corpus. In matters where actions or laws seem to conflict with the Constitution then it is up to the Supreme Court to decide whether those actions or laws have, in fact, violated the Constitution. Until the court does make such a decision then Lincoln's were not unconstitution just because you say they were.
Once again you are simply wrong. Article I, Section 1 makes it indisputable that the power belongs to Congress.
In matters where actions or laws seem to conflict with the Constitution then it is up to the Supreme Court to decide whether those actions or laws have, in fact, violated the Constitution.
...if, that is, the supreme court's ruling is rendered necessary by the appeals process. Alternatively, a lower federal court can settle the matter of constitutionality so long as its ruling is not appealed. I know of no record indicating that Lincoln ever appealed any of the rulings against him on habeas corpus. Do you?
Typrical ELITIST mindset...only the courts have the mental capacity to READ the words in that plain document and interpret its meaning. Clearly, murder is wrong by the standards of ETERNAL RIGHT AND WRONG - I don't give a FLIP what the idiots in black robes say about it. They should have been impeached for Roe v. Wade, and Doe and Lawrence.
I will ask you one more time: Does privacy trump life? What does Reason tell you?
Which laws are you referring to?
I would have to know what quote you are referring to.
No, only the courts have the jurisdiction to do that. They have been vested with that power by the Constitution and we hope that the best legal minds are appointed to those position, and we place our trust in them that they will interpret the law the way the founders would have done. We do this because the alternative is too ridiculous and frightening - the idea that each individual can decide what is legal and what is not. That individual states can decide to ban guns while others do not, other states can decide that Arabs should he rounded up without warrant and other states may not. That people may decide that God wants all the Jews dead. I don't agree with every decision the court has made. I am downright opposed to some of them. But that's the way things go and the alternative is, by my way of thinking, even more frightening. They tend to get it right more often than not, IMHO, while I haven't detected the same track record with a lot of their opponents on this thread.
According to any number of Jackson biographers, including his widow, Jackson owned up to 9 slaves at a time.
The guy was about as poor as a church mouse.
On the contrary, Jackson was solidly middle class, probably upper middle class. He was a frugal man and made shrewd investments. When he died he left his wife in comfortable estate. She lost it all at the end of the war though. Sank everything into confederate currency.
Besides, what would he do with a slave? Have him help him in the artillery lectures at VMI?
Grooms, cook, gardeners, maids, etc., ect. Same as many other middle class southerners. Besides, what would he do with a slave? Have him help him in the artillery lectures at VMI?
No, you are the one who is incorrect. Article I is silent on who may suspend habeas corpus. It only covers the conditions under which it can be suspended.
Alternatively, a lower federal court can settle the matter of constitutionality so long as its ruling is not appealed.
No, a lower court may determine constitutionality if the Supreme Court declines to take their ruling under consideration. At that time, the lower court decision is accepted as the opinion of the Supreme Court.
Well, when they make rulings that have nothing to do with the Constitution, then they are outside the law. A court cannot say there is a constitutional right to sodomy when plainly that right does not exist in writing. Scalia said as much in his dissent on Lawrence v. Texas. That's my point - we do not have to accept EVERY SINGLE RULING no matter what it is - because that opens the door for TYRANNY! The judge on the Court is not the final arbiter of right and wrong - they are confined by the Constitution, yet they continuously rule outside the Constitution, and even defy original intent when ruling within the Constitution (as they continuously do on 10 commandment cases and Free Exercise cases).
If you want to believe that the courts must be obeyed no matter what they rule, you go right ahead. Meanwhile, I will place God's law above those men in black robes.
We do this because the alternative is too ridiculous and frightening - the idea that each individual can decide what is legal and what is not.
When a judge rules outside the bounds of the Constitution, that is precisely what he is doing - placing his INDIVIDUAL biases above the written law (Lawrence, Everson, affirmative action, etc.). Show me the right to sodomy in the Constitution if you can...
I am downright opposed to some of them. But that's the way things go and the alternative is, by my way of thinking, even more frightening. They tend to get it right more often than not, IMHO, while I haven't detected the same track record with a lot of their opponents on this thread.
Glad to hear it. The question is, do you obey a judge no matter what? I don't. When a man's law contradicts God's law, I am obligated to obey God's law, and would rather be DEAD than do otherwise. That is what honor and virtue are all about. Some things are right and some things are wrong, and a judge doesn't get to decide what is right and wrong. Morality comes from God, not from man.
How do we know this? Because the part of the CSA constitution that covers this is directly copied (with a few minor changes) from the U.S. Constitution! Now, in Davis' case, he had the blessing of Congress. But the fact is that, according to Taney, Congress can't delegate the Writ to the president or the military! What a laugher!
Consider this text: [used by permission]
"Taney's opinion in the Merryman case hardly supports your argument: Taney's first point finds all of Davis' later actions on the subject illegal, as the following excerpt shows: "First, the President, under the Constitution and laws of the United States, can not suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, nor authorize any military officer to do so." In other words, Taney believed that only Congress had that power and could not legally delegate it to the President or any other agency of government. Thus, if you take the Taney opinion to be the law of the land, then Davis' actions were as illegal as Lincoln's were.
But the Merryman case was not a Supreme Court case involving interpretation by the whole court of a constitutional question. It was only a lower court case in which Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney rendered an ex-parte personal opinion. As such, it was not an authoritative statement of the law of the land.
In the final analysis, the constitutional power to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus is a carefully limited emergency power. In the late 1700s when the Constitution was drafted, and in the early 1860s, communications were difficult and Congress was not in session very many weeks in any year. Accordingly, constitutional law recognized that the President had to have strong powers to act swiftly and unilaterally in response to threats to national security arising from rebellion or invasion, and in the eyes of many people the power to suspend the writ was one of those powers (the Constitution is really ambiguous on who has that power).
In the end, both contending American presidents exercized and abused that power, both delegated it to their militaries to a large extent, both unionist and secessionist populations chafed under the abuse but tolerated it as necessary to national security in wartime, and the practice of the two presidents differed only in scale --- not in principle, IMHO."
So, will you condemn Davis? Now I know this may take a few years to sink in. But by the authority most often cited to blast Lincoln, Davis is just as guilty.
Walt
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