Posted on 04/30/2008 9:12:42 PM PDT by BnBlFlag
Good question but based on what I can tell of the knowlege of these two ignoramuses, I doubt it.
He seems very consistent to me. Secession with the consent of all the parties involved is permitted. Secession without the consent of all the parties involved is not. I'm not aware of any time he ever said unilateral secession was permitted. Nor am I aware of any time he said secession wasn't permitted at all. If he's veered back and forth then you'll have to point that out to me.
On the matter of secession, the controlling document is the Constitution. Black letters on white paper. And you have YET to show anyone the passage you think ought to be there, the one that confirms your own opinion.
I have. Several times. Scroll back to 434.
It. Just. Isn't. There.
You. Just. Have. To. Look.
It was my #417, here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2009537/posts?page=417#417
You don't need a link, btw, to get to it. Just go into the navigation window of your browser and, at the end of the URL, substitute for the current post number, ....[post number]#[post number], as for example "....page=417#417" to pull up a referenced post #417.
~
[You] I have. Several times. Scroll back to 434.
762 posted on Thursday, June 05, 2008 3:49:36 PM by Non-Sequitur
I replied to your #434 about secession later on, as part of a three-way conversation with our friend TexConfederate1861, in my post #451, here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2009537/posts?q=1&;page=451#451
I pointed out that secession is by definition unilateral, since it would be something else if it were decided by all the States, as shown by Madison's reductio ad absurdum that you quoted above -- which I will come back to; his Nullification-era letter quotes are interesting. Do you have a link, by the way? I found one of the quotes in a John Fielding tract against secession at x's linked reformist (and also Unionist and Declarationist) website, www.natreformassn.org.
I also addressed your argument that the seceding States committed "theft" and trampled the "rights" of the Union government and remaining members, in my post #447.
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 759 | View Replies | Report Abuse]
Sorry, lack of good vocabulary, and I was in a hurry. There is no good word to describe a person who enjoys the franchise, as opposed to a citizen or national who does not. "Voter" is too aoristic; "the voters" exist only on election day, really; which is not even to mention the slight connotation of condescension that has attached to the word over the years, as in "those idiots, who are putty in the hands of political malefactors but don't know it." The rest of the time, citizens who have the franchise are the "electorate" or the "constituency", but the word "constituent" introduces other qualifications and limitations (as to a particular politician, political subdivision, or municipality) and isn't appropriate, and "elector" is already spoken for as a technical term of U.S. electoral politics, and it doesn't mean a voter. There is no word AFAIK for "voting citizen as opposed to non-voting citizen; a citizen who has suffrage." Suggestions?
Yes, you posted your opinion on why I was incorrect. You've posted those same opinions time and again, and amazingly enough I didn't suddenly grab my head this time and shout, "My God! I've been wrong all along!" I do not subscribe to your position that some people have more rights than others, or that the Constitution will protect some states and not protect other's. I believe that the Constitutions meaning is clear; secession without the consent of all the parties involved is not permitted. I'm not alone in this belief, as I've shown from the quotes I've posted.
I pointed out that secession is by definition unilateral, since it would be something else if it were decided by all the States...
You've posted your opinion on that, yes.
Do you have a link, by the way?
I'm not sure which one you mean.
Here's the William Rives letter.
Here's the Alexander Rives letter
Here's the Webster letter
I also addressed your argument that the seceding States committed "theft" and trampled the "rights" of the Union government and remaining members, in my post #447.
Yes, your "Mine 'cause I say it's mine" arguement. The South took what they wanted, without compensation and without discussion. Your claim that Davis coulda, woulda paid for everything if only Lincoln had given in to his ultimatum does not alter that fact. Nor, I believe, did you ever answer the question that had Davis not made an offer to pay, as you claim he did, would that have meant the Southern secssion was illegal? Care to tackle that one?
[Your retort] He seems very consistent to me.
No, he wasn't. In 1798, he wrote the Virginia Resolutions, which touched precisely on federal-state relationships, which I cite and quote:
RESOLUTIONS AS ADOPTED BY BOTH HOUSES OF ASSEMBLY.
1. Resolved, That the General Assembly of Virginia doth unequivocally express a firm resolution to maintain and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of this State, against every aggression, either foreign or domestic, and that it will support the government of the United States in all measures warranted by the former.2. That this Assembly most solemnly declares a warm attachment to the union of the States, to maintain which, it pledges all its powers; and that for this end it is its duty to watch over and oppose every infraction of those principles, which constitute the only basis of that union, because a faithful observance of them can alone secure its existence, and the public happiness.
3. That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare that it views the powers of the Federal Government as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact; as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact, and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by the said compact, the States, who are the parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them.
4. That the General Assembly doth also express its deep regret that a spirit has in sundry instances been manifested by the Federal Government, to enlarge its powers by forced constructions of the constitutional charter which defines them; and that indications have appeared of a design to expound certain general phrases (which, having been copied from the very limited grant of powers in the former articles of confederation, were the less liable to be misconstrued), so as to destroy the meaning and effect of the particular enumeration, which necessarily explains and limits the general phrases, and so as to consolidate the States by degrees into one sovereignty, the obvious tendency and inevitable result of which would be to transform the present republican system of the United States into an absolute, or at best, a mixed monarchy.
5. That the General Assembly doth particularly protest against the palpable and alarming infractions of the Constitution, in the two late cases of the "alien and sedition acts," passed at the last session of Congress, the first of which exercises a power nowhere delegated to the Federal Government; and which by uniting legislative and judicial powers to those of executive, subverts the general principles of free government, as well as the particular organization and positive provisions of the federal Constitution; and the other of which acts exercises in like manner a power not delegated by the Constitution, but on the contrary expressly and positively forbidden by one of the amendments thereto; a power which more than any other ought to produce universal alarm, because it is levelled against that right of freely examining public characters and measures, and of free communication among the people thereon, which has ever been justly deemed the only effectual guardian of every other right.
6. That this State having by its convention which ratified the federal Constitution, expressly declared, "that among other essential rights, the liberty of conscience and of the press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified by any authority of the United States," and from its extreme anxiety to guard these rights from every possible attack of sophistry or ambition, having with other States recommended an amendment for that purpose, which amendment was in due time annexed to the Constitution, it would mark a reproachful inconsistency and criminal degeneracy, if an indifference were now shown to the most palpable violation of one of the rights thus declared and secured, and to the establishment of a precedent which may be fatal to the other.
7. That the good people of this commonwealth having ever felt, and continuing to feel the most sincere affection to their brethren of the other States, the truest anxiety for establishing and perpetuating the union of all, and the most scrupulous fidelity to that Constitution which is the pledge of mutual friendship, and the instrument of mutual happiness, the General Assembly doth solemnly appeal to the like dispositions of the other States, in confidence that they will concur with this commonwealth in declaring, as it does hereby declare, that the acts aforesaid are unconstitutional, and that the necessary and proper measure will be taken by each, for co-operating with this State in maintaining unimpaired the authorities, rights, and liberties reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
8. That the Governor be desired to transmit a copy of the foregoing resolutions to the executive authority of each of the other States, with a request that the same may be communicated to the legislature thereof. And that a copy be furnished to each of the senators and representatives representing this state in the Congress of the United States.
[Color added for emphasis.]
This is a historical document, not a historian's interpretation, and it is 30-odd years senior to your quotations from the Nullification period. But it shows clearly where the Nullifiers got some of their ideas.
It is worth noting that, as soon as these Resolutions were passed, Alexander Hamilton, then a major general of the new, Federalist U.S. Army under commander-in-chief George Washington (who was commissioned Army Chief of Staff and a general officer on leaving the presidency), immediately commented to a confidante, that the Adams Administration should send U.S. troops (not Militia) into Virginia at once on "some pretext", in order to put Virginians to the test. (Or against a wall.)
His instantaneous response to an outcry of violated freedom of speech, was to send the Army and invite violence, so he could kill people and break things and slap a State down, and with it all competing theories of government and the Constitution than his own. This was a fixture of Federalist and Whig politics, and it says something about Hamilton's intentions and the solidity of his protestations about the solidity of rights, and the counterproductivity of a Bill of Rights, when he wrote the last numbers of The Federalist.
If you had been in Madison's chair in 1798, staring down both loaded barrels of an Adams administration effectively controlled by Maj. Gen. Hamilton (through his political control of Adams's cabinet, which Adams passively accepted from the Washington Administration for continuity's sake -- like Lyndon Johnson, later on), who also had a brand-new Army at his beck and call and an excuse to use it, what would you do to remedy the obviously unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts?
Would you have just sat back and said, "oh, well, they're federal measures, blessed be the name of the federal government," and just rolled over while Hamilton "established" with solid acts what a bad idea the Bill of Rights had been, by proving it to be a chihuahua not a guard dog? Remember, the Supreme Court is in the hands of John Marshall now. The Federalists have a lock on the federal government.
The significance of Madison's reaction to the Alien and Sedition Laws as unconstitutional and usurpatory -- Hamilton's perhaps first foray into the happy Marshallsphere of "now that we've got power, we'll do whatever the hell we want, never mind what we said during the Ratification Debates or in Philadelphia" -- is that he is here a States'-righter, quite on the opposite side of the table from the "extreme Nationalist" (a historian's usage, not mine) position that he later took in support of Andrew Jackson. Here he explicitly holds out the "Compact Theory", which is precisely the model to which the Nullifiers appealed later, never mind that their theory came to grief, as any interposition theory was bound to do, on the Supremacy Clause.
And it's worth noticing that the word "nation" occurs only twice in the Constitution; once in reference to foreign countries, and again in the phrase, "Law of Nations", meaning international law.
And meanwhile, the permanent, threshhold grant of Sovereignty to the U.S. Government is still not there in the Constitution -- I looked again, just for you -- and neither is the language forbidding States to secede, or to resume their People's sovereignty for purposes not "approved" by the other States.
And tell us again, Non-Sequitur, against the background of the Alien and Sedition Acts .......
Just who would that be, the real Sovereign of the United States?
The People, or the "mixed monarchy" Madison talked about in the Virginia Resolutions?
Madison addressed that in the Alexander Rives letter: "But the ability and the motives disclosed in the Essays induce me to say in compliance with the wish expressed, that I do not consider the proceedings of Virginia in ’98-’99 as countenancing the doctrine that a state may at will secede from its Constitutional compact with the other States. A rightful secession requires the consent of the others, or an abuse of the compact, absolving the seceding party from the obligations imposed by it."
Just who would that be, the real Sovereign of the United States?
I do not believe that Madison would sign on for your odd-ball idea that some people are more sovereign than others.
LG:
I wasn’t implying that you have a law degree, but merely that as a course of study, or hobby, that you are a scholar of the Constitution, more learned than most on this forum, and certainly more than myself! :)
I believe the answer to that goes: "Yes, it would have been constitutional ..."
Just because you have a word or phrase for something -- "constitutional unilateral secession" -- doesn't mean the thing it represents actually exists in the real world.
But if your unmarried adult brothers are all slaveowners isn't it natural to assume that your attitude towards slavery would be different than if they weren't?
I don't know if you'd be counted as a part of a "slaveowning family" in that case or not, but your situation would be different from someone whose parents and siblings owned no slaves at all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.