Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: IrishBrigade; Bulwyf; wideawake

“...please refute, or at the very least, address the argument brought up of the Fugitive Slave Act”

That’s easy enough. By 1850 there was already a secession sentiment going around the South. In order to stifle secession talk and keep the country together Whig leader Henry Clay proposed his Compromise of 1850 which included the Fugitive Slave Act.

Nationalist Whigs who would otherwise have opposed state’s rights passed the bill. It was their baby, their long time leader had crafted it, so they were stuck with enforcing it. Democrats who otherwise would champion states rights didn’t object to it since it served the interests of their section.

It was compromise politics at its finest, no principals needed. But the issue of state’s rights, the Principles of ‘98 as authored by Jefferson and Madison, was still undecided. Lincoln would settle the issue by the venerable policy of killing off its supporters.


87 posted on 06/23/2015 12:57:15 PM PDT by Pelham (The refusal to deport is defacto amnesty)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 76 | View Replies ]


To: Pelham; IrishBrigade
That's so oblique it doesn't even qualify as a sidestep.

Fact: the same state legislatures that voted to secede were the state legislatures that demanded the Fugitive Slave acts.

The Democrats didn't passively accept their passage - they championed them and demanded ever stricter enforcement.

The Resolutions were flawed from the beginning: the Constitution Madison wrote says that the acts of the state legislatures are subordinate to federal law, not the other way around.

That's why the final Kentucky resolution admitted that Kentucky would obey federal law while reserving its ability to complain about it, and the Virginia resolution effectively did the same.

112 posted on 06/23/2015 8:52:26 PM PDT by wideawake
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 87 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson