Posted on 02/18/2012 11:09:23 AM PST by HMS Surprise
There is nothing more irritating to a warrior-poet than an unwillingness to debate. If speech is troubling, or blatantly false, or amateurish, then it will fall of its own weight. I don’t need, and I suspect a majority of truthseekers don’t want, an administrator hovering above the public forum deciding which issues are too controversial for polite company.
The Civil War has become untouchable, unless you agree with the standard arguments. 1. Lincoln was a god among men. 2. The South was evil. 3. Union is the ultimate goal of the American experiment. 4. The Federal government’s design trumps the rights of the People, and the States. 5. Political bands are eternal, and must be preserved at all costs. 6. The ends justify the means.
The arguments for the necessity of the War between the States are considered unassailable, and I have noticed lately that the political-correctness has reached such a high level that even purportedly conservative blogs are beginning to remove threads that stray into pro-rebellion territory.
I understand the temptation to ignore this issue for political expediency, but the goal of individual liberty (personal freedom), as well as State sovereignty (political freedom), can never be accomplished unless we acknowledge and understand that the Civil War planted the seeds of the eventual unconstitutional federal takeover of every aspect of American life.
Some basics that are undeniable, albiet censorable, follows.
(Excerpt) Read more at teapartytribune.com ...
“Odd, since in your very first post to me you felt free to edit an excerpt from Tucker’s View of the Constitution.”
As I wrote in post 194, My intent there was to demonstrate that the words you emphasized undermine the concept of the contract.
“Now you decide that’s not even the topic of the conversation?”
I knew from the beginning that it wasn’t the main topic to be discussed.
“No, your trying to reconcile the laws governing the civil States with the rules governing the administrative actions of the federal government.”
There appears to be a miscommunication.
“You’ve also danced, spun and tossed out enough straw-men to populate the cornfields of Iowa, yet you never answer the simple question -
Where in the Constitution does it stipulate payment or terms required for a State leaving the Union?”
You wrote: Trying to prevent the South from leaving the compact after their Notice was duly given because of some idea the other parties are owed without that stipulation being in the Contract in the first place....
I asked: Why do you say it wasn’t in the contract?
You responded: Then do please show me the part of the Constitution that you believe stipulates payment required for leaving the Union.
Your response did not answer my question, it assumes the Constitution is the contract in question, and it brings in the concept of payment, which I had not mentioned. (You may counter that I mentioned “penalty” which is true, but penalty and payment have different connotations.) I think you crafted a response that would eventually allow you to say “Gotcha”, and that did not respond to my question.
Your complaint about my not answering your question is invalid.
I don’t see anything to be gained by pursuing our discussion further.
For Lincoln everything was about saving the Union. By contrast, everything in the pretended confederacy was about protecting and preserving slavery. To extend the bounds of slavery, they would raise 100,000 men to invade other states. To preserve slavery, they would destroy the Union. To preserve slavery, they would draft men to fight, yet exempt slave owners. To preserve slavery they would refuse to raise soldiers of African ancestry. If the south was raising African ancestry soldiers and giving them their freedom, there was no point to the rebellion.
“Which is, in and of itself, true.”
So, you were just jerking me around when you wrote “Source please.”
Did you not see the topic of the thread?
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There appears to be a miscommunication.
No, there is no 'miscommunication'. Marriage IS a civil contract. The Constitution creates an administrative one.
You're trying to compare apples to oranges.
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I asked: Why do you say it wasn’t in the contract?
Because it isn't. Since you implied it was, I asked (repeatedly) for you to show it to me. You dodged the question. 'He who asserts must also prove' is a very old legal adage. Perhaps you're unfamiliar with it.
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I think you crafted a response that would eventually allow you to say “Gotcha”, and that did not respond to my question.
I think you're still spinning.
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So, you were just jerking me around when you wrote “Source please.”
No, I was illustrating that a debate consists of statements backed by facts substantiated with third party sources, NOT someone rattling out their opinion and expecting others just to 'take their word for it'.
Have a nice day.
Please show me where it says the Supreme Court has either original or appellate jurisdiction in controversies pertaining to a State and one of its own Citizens.
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See Texas v. White.
I've seen it. The agreement was between White and the Sovereign State of Texas. It was not made while Texas was a member of the Union.
If, therefore, it is true that the State of Texas was not, at he time of filing this bill, or is not now, one of the United States, we have no jurisdiction of this suit, and it is our duty to dismiss it. [p720]
The court ASSUMED the question of jurisdiction in order to justify it's actions, and they answered their own assumption by saying Texas never had the right to leave.
Limits on the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court.
this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial, as well as the other departments, hold their delegated trusts.
James Madison, Report on the Virginia Resolutions
By it's opinion that Texas never had the right to leave the Compact, the SC negated its own authority. True Law cannot contradict itself.
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Accordingly, state pretensions to unilaterally leave are unconstitutional, and void.
Please show me the part of the Constitution that prevents it.
The States unilaterally left the Articles of Confederation and PERPETUAL Union.
Not only is there nothing in the Constitution of the United States that bestows the authority you claim, there is a great deal of previous history that says otherwise.
If the right of secession didn’t exist, WHY was the House trying to come up with an amendment to the Constitution making a procedure for it?
Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 1860-1861
MONDAY, December 17, 1860 Page 82
Art. 8. Whenever a convention of delegates, chosen in any State by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, shall rescind and annul its ratification of this Constitution
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Accordingly, federal pretensions to judge a State's Right to unilaterally leave are unconstitutional, and void.
Your presumption is in error, particularly since you have the hubris to imply those who don't agree with your assumption somehow lack 'understanding'.
"The federal government, then, appears to be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign nations, and with each other. Their submission to its operation is voluntary: its councils, its sovereignty is an emanation from theirs, not a flame by which they have been consumed, nor a vortex in which they are swallowed up. Each is still a perfect state, still sovereign, still independent, and still capable, should the occasion require, to resume the exercise of its functions, as such, in the most unlimited extent.
St. George Tucker View of the Constitution of the United States – 1803 [paragraph 337]
With regard to the Constitutional compact, you must remember that three states specifically reserved the right to reassume their own governance if necessary for their happiness or if they were oppressed. You can't blame them for this safety valve -- they were about to become part of an experimental form of government.
Should the federal government start oppressing the states and the people, resuming a state's own governance was a way out of the mess without having to fight their way out (again). Resuming their own governance was a form of check and balance against a possible overbearing federal government, much like the checks and balances designed in the Constitution to to keep one branch of the government from becoming all powerful.
Similarly, if a group of states gained power and started oppressing other, weaker states, the weaker states had a way out through withdrawing from the compact. I've read that this was a concern expressed at the Virginia ratification convention. They recognized the different interests between Northern and Southern states, and that there were more Northern states than Southern states.
You have to remember too, that the ratifiers voting for the resume governance statements included some of the biggest names in Constitutional history. James Madison (one of the authors of the Federalist Papers and often called the Father of the Constitution) and John Marshall (later Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) were on the five-person committee that wrote the words of the Virginia ratification document, and they voted for it when it passed. Alexander Hamilton and John Jay (the other two authors of the Federalist Papers; Jay being the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) voted for New York's resume governance statement.
As far as I know, none of the other states or Congress objected to those reservations to reassume governance. In fact, a majority of the original states either specifically said in their ratification documents that reassuming governance was consistent with the Constitution or proposed what later became the Tenth Amendment, which basically reserved powers to the states respectively, or to the people.
Jefferson Davis brought up the Tenth Amendment argument supporting secession on the floor of the Senate on January 10, 1861:
...the tenth amendment of the Constitution declared that all which had not been delegated was reserved to the States or to the people. Now, I ask where among the delegated grants to the Federal Government do you find any power to coerce a state; where among the provisions of the Constitution do you find any prohibition on the part of a State to withdraw; and if you find neither one nor the other, must not this power be in that great depository, the reserved rights of the States? How was it ever taken out of that source of all power to the Federal Government? It was not delegated to the Federal Government; it was not prohibited to the States; it necessarily remains, then, among the reserved powers of the States.
More on the other parts of your interesting post later as I get time.
You go on and on about how Northerners robbed Southern planters of their earnings, so it wouldn't be hard to conclude that you were forgetting about a large part of the Southern population and didn't care about whether they were being robbed or not. That's textbook "not caring."
But of course, I was speaking tongue in cheek. Your cheap shot deserved a response in the same spirit. And you set it up so well that anybody would have been tempted to take a swing at it.
Like I said, it was an irregular process, and it was inevitable that there would be challenges to its legitimacy.
Offers were made to pay for forts, etc., and take on their share of the public debt, but the offers were refused/ignored.
I think de Tocqueville would agree with you that there would be challenges to secession (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter 19, emphasis added, posted originally by missing poster 4CJ):
However strong a government may be, it cannot easily escape from the consequences of a principle which it has once admitted as the foundation of its constitution. The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their sovereignty, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right. In order to enable the Federal government easily to conquer the resistance that may be offered to it by any of its subjects, it would be necessary that one or more of them should be specially interested in the existence of the Union, as has frequently been the case in the history of confederations.
If it be supposed that among the states that are united by the federal tie there are some which exclusively enjoy the principal advantages of union, or whose prosperity entirely depends on the duration of that union, it is unquestionable that they will always be ready to support the central government in enforcing the obedience of the others. But the government would then be exerting a force not derived from itself, but from a principle contrary to its nature. States form confederations in order to derive equal advantages from their union; and in the case just alluded to, the Federal government would derive its power from the unequal distribution of those benefits among the states.
If one of the federated states acquires a preponderance sufficiently great to enable it to take exclusive possession of the central authority, it will consider the other states as subject provinces and will cause its own supremacy to be respected under the borrowed name of the sovereignty of the Union. Great things may then be done in the name of the Federal government, but in reality that government will have ceased to exist.
"By it I presume that you mean those of us who hold the view that the union, under both the Articles of confederation and the United States Constitution to be perpetual, but I see nothing suicidal in it whatsoever.
In any event I hold the opinion that viewing the US Constitution as a "suicide pact" is myopic and more than a little foolish. I'm glad that you do not count yourself among that number ;-)
Where exactly is that agreement to remain in the Union? Perhaps you are thinking of the perpetual Union of the Articles of Confederation. That didn't last very long, and the word perpetual was left out of the Constitution.
The new government formed by the Constitution started taxing imports from late ratifiers North Carolina and Rhode Island as they did foreign countries. In that same period, President George Washington appeared before the First Congress and refused to take action on some matters pertaining to Indians in North Carolina because, as he said, North Carolina was not a member of the Union.
I think of other official documents that said something was perpetual that did not turn out to be. The Treaty of Paris (1783) that settled the war between England and the former colonies said in Article 7 that the treaty established a perpetual peace between the two countries. Official representatives from both countries signed the document. But, of course, the fact that the countries agreed to the treaty did not result in perpetual peace as the War of 1812 showed.
I remember also The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England; May 19, 1643 (Link). It said in part:
The said United Colonies for themselves and their posterities do jointly and severally hereby enter into a firm and perpetual league of friendship and amity for offence and defence, mutual advice and succor upon all just occasions both for preserving and propagating the truth and liberties of the Gospel and for their own mutual safety and welfare.
I think that Confederacy died out sometime after King Philip's War of 1676. Massachusetts virtually wiped out the Indian tribe they were fighting in that war, and they ended up making slaves out of the Indians they captured.
I think at best the term "perpetual" in such documents expresses the hope that whatever it is will be long lasting. But often it is not.
Perhaps Alexander Hamilton would disagree with you on punishing seceding states:
It has been well observed, that to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to a single State. This being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war? Suppose Massachusetts or any large State should refuse, and Congress should attempt to compel them, would not they have influence to procure assistance, especially from those States which are in the same situation as themselves? What picture does this present to our view? A complying State at war with a non-complying State; Congress marching the troops of one State into the bosom of another; this State collecting auxiliaries, and forming, perhaps, a majority against its federal head. Here is a nation at war with itself! Can any reasonable man be well disposed towards a Government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself -- a Government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. This single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against such a Government.
The Constitution did not give the government the power to coerce states. Coercion was voted down, if I remember correctly. The courts before the war could not force state officials to enforce a federal law or a governor to extradite suspects to the state where they might have committed the crime. It might have been the governor's duty under the Constitution, but the Supreme Court ruled the federal government could not force the governor to do it if he refused.
Does a seceding state need the permission of other states in order to secede? Republicans proposed several amendments to that effect in 1860-1861 because such a requirement was not in the Constitution.
Suppose other states were oppressing the seceding state in some serious way. Should the oppressing states get to decide whether the oppressed state gets to secede? Maybe it is to their advantage not to let the state go.
Who gets to decide what is sufficient to justify secession? The Founders in several states felt they had the right to decide for themselves what is necessary for their happiness and whether to secede, not some court, not Congress, and not other states.
Who gets to decide what is necessary for your happiness? (I know. Your spouse if you have one.)
Secession is the supra-Constitutional action of a state to protect itself. It is not prohibited by the Constitution. John Taylor, who was raised by Edmund Randolph, the president of the Virginia Ratification Convention, wrote of the Constitution that:
In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation. But the union possesses no innate sovereignty, like the states; it was not self-constituted; it is conventional, and of course subordinate to the sovereignties by which it was formed.
The sovereignties which imposed the limitations upon the federal government, far from supposing that they perished by the exercise of a part of their faculties, were vindicated, by reserving powers in which their deputy, the federal government, could not participate; and the usual right of sovereigns to alter or revoke its commissions.
Sorry for going on so long. I suspect that you've not heard some of these arguments before unless you have been following these threads.
Sorry, wrong Edmund. Edmund Pendleton was president of the Virginia Ratification Convention. Edmund Randolph was the governor of Virginia and a delegate to the convention.
[John] Taylor was orphaned as a small child. He was adopted by a maternal uncle, Edmund Pendleton, a leading Virginia politician, lawyer and judge. He attended Donald Robertson's Academy with fellow students: James Madison (a distant cousin), and George Rogers Clark. Taylor attended the College of William and Mary and then studied law at his uncle's office. He served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, rising to the rank of colonel, and serving under Patrick Henry and General William Woodford, and leading a regiment under the Marquis de Lafayette.
“...as I get time.”
I understand that part for sure. I’ve got other things pressing me too.
Your post provided pause for thought (which is good) and I’ll try to get back to you on it when I can, unless I find all the thoughts lead to dead ends. (We might disagree on that.)
I read your second post once, but if I have any comment it won’t be till I’ve read it again which isn’t going to be right now.
Mostly I wanted to let you know that I wasn’t ignoring you.
“[John] Taylor was orphaned as a small child. He was adopted by a maternal uncle, Edmund Pendleton,”
I will be darned.
I “do” genealogy as I’m able, and both those guys are in the family tree. John Taylor is my wife’s second cousin seven times removed and Edmund Pendleton is her first cousin eight times removed.
They were just names in a pedigree to me. I didn’t know more about them till your post. Now I’ll have to incorporate that into notes or something so other family members will know.
You’re a veritable cornucopia of things to take my time :)
Of course anyone from that era can have thousands of distant relations living now so it’s not a major deal, but I do find it interesting.
Texas, by pretending to secession, and committing insurrection, reverted to the status of a territory. It has no authority to alienate land or people from the US. All it could do was invalidate its state government, ruin a lot of property, and get a lot of people killed. Unfortunately, some of the wrong people got killed.
The three states did not assert their individual authority to rescind ratification. Rather, they asserted the right to rescind ratification on the part of all the states, and all the people. Such a right would be exercised by amendment, by legislation, or by court case. The rebels of 1860 had none of that, and reverted to the right of revolution, with requires military victory, which they did not get, due in part to the 40 regiments of southern men who fought against the revolution.
Rather odd that you quote Hamilton’s assertion that coercing the states (by the federal) to be mad, when the war started with the states coercing the federal. After the war started, the US government had all rights and duties to put down the insurrection.
Projection is a sign of mental illness. Madness, if you will.
Source, please.
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All it could do was invalidate its state government,
LOL! That's a legal impossibility. A State government cannot invalidate itself, nor can it be invalidated by an inferior power. I've already posted legal sources to illustrate that it is up to the State whether or not to abide by the Constitution.
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ruin a lot of property, and get a lot of people killed. Unfortunately, some of the wrong people got killed.
Yeah. Too bad the federal government just didn't follow the Constitution and adhere to Law of Nations like it was SUPPOSED to.
Withdrawing from the contested areas and sending an ambassador to the government of the Confederate States to discuss recompense would have kept a LOT of people from dying.
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