Posted on 03/26/2002 10:38:41 PM PST by kattracks
Do states have a right of secession? That question was settled through the costly War of 1861. In his recently published book, "The Real Lincoln," Thomas DiLorenzo marshals abundant unambiguous evidence that virtually every political leader of the time and earlier believed that states had a right of secession.
Let's look at a few quotations. Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address said, "If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it." Fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in the union ... I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.'"
At Virginia's ratification convention, the delegates said, "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." In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what "the people" meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, "not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong." In a word, states were sovereign; the federal government was a creation, an agent, a servant of the states.
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Maryland Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel said, "Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty." The northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace.
Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South's right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful could produce nothing but evil -- evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content." The New York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go." DiLorenzo cites other editorials expressing identical sentiments.
Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, "It is poetry not logic; beauty, not sense." Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives "to the cause of self-determination -- government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth." Mencken says: "It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves."
In Federalist Paper 45, Madison guaranteed: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite." The South seceded because of Washington's encroachment on that vision. Today, it's worse. Turn Madison's vision on its head, and you have today's America.
DiLorenzo does a yeoman's job in documenting Lincoln's ruthlessness and hypocrisy, and how historians have covered it up. The Framers had a deathly fear of federal government abuse. They saw state sovereignty as a protection. That's why they gave us the Ninth and 10th Amendments. They saw secession as the ultimate protection against Washington tyranny.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Contact Walter Williams | Read his biography
©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
The "People" come up from time to time.
Justice Wilson-- "As to the purposes of the Union, therefore, Georgia is not a sovereign state...in almost every nation, which has been denominated free, the state has assumed a supercilious preeminence above the people who have formed it: Hence, the haughty notions of state independence, state sovereignty and state supremacy...Who were these people? They were the citizens of thirteen states, each of which had a separate constitution and government, and all of which were connected by articles of confederation. To the purposes of public strength and felicity the confederacy was totally inadequate. A requistion on the several states terminated its legislative authority; executive or judicial authority, it had none. In order, therefore, to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for common defense and to secure the blessings of liberty, those people, among whom were the people of Georgia, ordained and established the present constitution.
By that constitution, legislative power is vested, executive power is vested, judicial power is vested...
We may then infer, that the people of the United States intended to bind the several states, by the legislative power of the national government.
...Whoever considers, in a combined and comprehensive view, the general texture of the constitution, wil be satisfied that the people of the United States intended to form themselves into a nation for national purposes. They instituted, for such purposes, a national government complete in all its parts, with powers legislative, executive and judiiciary, ad in all those powers extending over the whole nation."
Jay, Chief Justice:-- The Question we are now to decide has been accurately stated, viz.: Is a state suable by individual citizens of another state?...
The revolution, or rather the Declaration of Independence, found the people already united for general purposes, and at the same time, providing for their more domestic concerns by state conventions, and other temporary arrangements.
...the people nevertheless continued to consider themselves, in a national point of view, as one people; and they continued without interruption to manage their national concerns accordingly; afterwards, in the hurry of the war, and in the warmth of mutual confidence, they made a confederation of the States, the basis of a general Government.
Experience disappointed the expectations they had formed from it; and then the people, in their collective and national capacity, established the present Constitution. It is remarkable that in establishing it, the people exercised their own rights and their own proper sovereignty, and conscious of the plenitude of it, they declared with becoming dignity, "We the people of the United States," 'do ordain and establish this Constitution." Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country.; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the state governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform. Every State Constitution is a compact made by and between the citizens of a state to govern themeselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is liekwise a compact made by the people of the United States to govern themselves as to general objects, in a certain manner. By this great compact however, many prerogatives were transferred to the national Government, such as those of making war and peace, contracting alliances, coining money, etc."
--From Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793
Chief Justice John Marshall-- "The powers of the general government, it has been said, are delegated by the states, who alone are truly sovereign; and must be exercised in subordination to the states, who alone possess supreme dominion. It would be difficult to sustain this proposition.
The convention which framed the constitution was, indeed, elected by the state legislatures. But the instrument, when it came from their hands, was a mere proposal, without obligation, or pretensions to it...
To the formation of a league, such as was the confederation, the State sovereignties were certainly competent. But when "in order to form a more perfect union," it was deemed necessary to change the alliance into an effective government, possessing great and sovereign powers, and acting directly on the people, the necessity of deriving its powers from them, was felt and acknowledged by all...
If any one proposition could command the universal assent of mankind, we might expect that it would be this -- that the government of the Union, though limited in its powers, is supreme within its sphere of action. This would seem to result, necessarily, from its nature. It is the government of all; its powers are delegated by all; it represents all; and acts for all. Though any one state may be willing to control its operations, no state is willing to allow others to control them. The nation, on those subjects on which it can act, must necessarily bind its component parts. But this question is not left to mere reason; the people have, in express terms, have decided it, by saying, "this constitution, and the laws made in pursuance thereof,: shall be the supreme law of the land," and by requiring that the members of the state legislatures, and the officers of the executive and judicial departments of the states, shall take an oath of fidelity to it. The government of the United States, then, though limited in its powers, is supreme; and its laws, when made in pursuance of the constitution, form the supreme law of the land, "anything in the constitution or laws of any state, to the contrary notwithstanding."
--From the majority opinion in McCullough v. Maryland 1819
"The constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the constitution declares, by "the people of the United States."
-Justice Story, Martin v, Hunter's Lessee, 1816
Once when I posted similar excerpts --it was probably on a newsgroup -- one of the confederate apologists returned, "what do you expect? Those are all federalsts!"
That was a pretty funny comment, right up there with casting aspersions on the opinions of dead people.
Fact is though, that enough people adopted the "federaliist" position to maintain the government against a gigantic unlawful insurrection.
And nothing you can say will ever be anything but sour grapes.
Walt
My point was that, doubtlessly true as your statement is for the period of the campaign, nevertheless the secession of the South, and its implicit surrender of any claim of right to spread slavery either to the Nebraska Territory or to the Old Northwest, would have tended to abate Lincoln's support, as soon as the free-soilers in the Northwest got around to thinking about it, for a war of forcible reunion. That was my point. So Lincoln's residual support would have been eroding from that point forward, and........whaddayaknow, the South Carolinians opened fire on Fort Sumter, changing everything, just at the moment juste.
I'll give Lincoln credit for practical intelligence.
Seward and Chase, his chief rivals for the nomination, were as strong for union as Lincoln was.
They were Easterners who represented the business interest in the tariff question. I'm not sure how pointing to them is relevant here, except as pointers to the pretty-obvious fountainhead of "Unionism". Which I had stipulated to, scrupling long enough to wonder about the Northwestern free-soilers.
"We regard secession upon the part of any State as amounting directly to revolution, and precipitating civil war with all its sad train of consequences."
Thanks for posting this resolution, which never seems to show up when people are arguing over whether secession amounted to the uncontested right to revolution. At least the Minnesotans seem to have agreed with the Southerners, however much, for other reasons, they were prepared to deny Southerners the exercise of their right to revolutionize their affairs. It remains to agree with the Minnesotans that the South is now, and has been, a conquered province, and their Southern march, protectorate, and plaything.
Really, I believe, in the face of all this evidence, the burden is on the friends of Williams and Dilorenzo to show that Republicans believed in a right of secession.
Well, I would say you are most of the way there, but they still have their editorial corpus to fall back on, and the question of whether Republican rank-and-file opinion squared with that of the Unionist leadership.
We know how well GOP leadership today reflects the rank-and-file following, and how seldom it diverges in favor of an agenda set by the modern industrial and business lobby. </sarcastic irony>
This is a remarkable statement to make about Chase, who was the principal theorist for decades before the war of the Constitutional theory that slavery was forbidden by the Bill of Rights wherever federal authority was supreme on the question , and who came from Ohio, which didn't used to be "east" until there was much more "west." He was also a lifelong opponent of the tariff, a position which he modified with great reluctance in search of the presidency in 1860.
Seems to me he was much more of a Western, free trade, anti-slavery rep than an eastern, business, pro-slavery rep.
Saying that material that was posted on a newsgroup is somehow suspect is as ridiculous as saying that the words don't matter because the people that wrote them are dead.
Justice Story threatened to have the Supreme Court of Virginia held personally in contempt in the matter of Martin v. Hunter's Lessee.
And he didn't tell them that in a newsgroup.
Walt
I didn't post that for you so much as the lurkers, who aren't so rabidly in denial of the clear historical record.
Walt
Depends on what part of the "South" you are talking about. S. Carolina and Mississippi whre more than 50% slave. As to slavery 'lasting forever' all I can do is go by the words of the men who went to war to defend slavery. I their minds, it was surly ging to last as long as they could force it. They made millions from it and were not ging to let it go easily.
| State | Free Population | Slave Population |
| Alabama | 519,121 | 435,080 |
| Florida | 78,679 | 61,745 |
| Georgia | 505,088 | 462,198 |
| Louisiana | 376,276 | 331,726 |
| Mississippi | 354,674 | 436,631 |
| South Carolina | 301,302 | 402,406 |
| Texas | 421,649 | 182,566 |
I have uncovered a few things that I think shed a great light on the cockroach that was Lincoln. . .
That Lincoln was nothing more than a socialist or communist: . . .
Perhaps it is not coincidental that Lincoln’s administration enacted into law three planks of the Communist Manifesto. . . .
It seems that the Union army was stocked with men from the failed communist revolutions of 1848. . . .
It also seems that the "god" Lincoln was somewhat a pervert and a homosexual. . . .
Fascinating post!
Have you arrived at any final conclusions yet about Lincoln the man?
Here's a good one.
"...in the wake of the assasination, editors, generals and public officials across the South voiced the opinion that the region had lost its best friend. Indignation meetings, so-called, were convened in many places. Lincoln stood for peace, mercy, and forgiveness. His loss, therefore, was a calamity for the defeated states. This opinion was sometimes ascribed to Jefferson Davis, even though he stood accused of complicity in the assasination....He [Davis] read the telegram [bringing news of Lincoln's death] and when it brought an exultant shout raised his hand to check the demonstration..."He had power over the Northern people," Davis wrote in his memoir of the war," and was without malignity to the southern people."
...Alone of the southern apologists, [Alexander] Stephens held Lincoln in high regard. "The Union with him in sentiment," said the Georgian, "rose to the sublimnity of religious mysticism...in 1873 "Little Elick" Stephens, who again represented his Georgia district in Congress, praised Lincoln for his wisdom, kindness and generosity in a well-publicized speech seconding the acceptance of the gift of Francis B. Carpenter's famous painting of Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation."...[in 1880] a young law student at the University of Virginia, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, speaking for the southern generation that grew to maturity after the war, declared, "I yield to no one precedence in love of the South. But because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy"...
the leading propenent of that creed was Henry W. Grady, editor of the Atlanta Constitution. In 1886 Grady, thirty-six years old, was invited to address the New England Society of New York, on the 266th anniversary to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth. General Sherman, seated on the platform, was an honored guest, and the band played [I am not making this up] "Marching Through Georgia" before Grady was introduced. Pronouncing the death of the Old South, he lauded the New South of Union and freedom and progress. And he offered Lincoln as the vibrant symbol not alone of reconciliation but of American character. "Lincoln," he said, "comprehended within himself all the strength, and gentleness, all the majesty and grace of the republic." He was indeed, the first American, "the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, in whose ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in whose great soul the faults of both were lost."
--From "Lincoln in American Memory" by Merrill D. Peterson P. 46-48
Walt
What Mercer said in her article was essentially correct and she never once mentioned you, Mr. Ferrier, or the "Declaration Foundation" (sic).
So let's keep this little talk we are having perfectly understandable for the audience (those reading the thread). Exactly what justified, in your mind, your condescending ad hominem attacks on Mercer and DiLorenzo?
What did you expect him to say about slavery in a race for the Illinois legislature, at age 24, given that Illinois was a free state? That's like looking for comments on our relationship with China in a campaign speech for the city council.
...my point was that I didn't understand why the internal search on that website even pulled that speech as a result given the parameters I had set. Now do you understand?
You are over-educated no doubt. What you call "evidence" is piss poor. Put together a decent "brief" and I will be glad to give it my attention next week. I expect by then that you will have explained your gutter tactics in attacking Mercer and DiLorenzo.
The key to this semantic question is that Lorenzo said:
made it a point to mention....
and Quackenbush twisted those words into:
revealed his single-minded devotion....
So you see, Quackenbush is simply being disingenuous in order to discredit DiLorenzo. Most speeches cover a variety of topics; and most of Lincoln's did. It follows that "making a point to mention" cannot be construed to be "a single-minded devotion" to an issue.
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