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.
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©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.
Stephens said this after the war. Before the war, he sang a different tune, as you well know.
I came across Stephens' tomb down at Oak Lawn cemetary here in Atlanta a few months ago.
Also on the Oak Lawn property is the house from which Hood watched the Battle of Atlanta.
Walt
They are probably not there, just as the idea that "signals" from Europe prompted President Lincoln to pardon the bulk of the Souix indians is not to be found in the historical record -- this from the thread on war tribunals.
Walt
"Slavery, so called, was but the question on which these antagonistic principles,which had been in conflict, from the beginning, on divers other questions, were finally brought into actual and active collision with each other on the field of battle."
When you read the fuller quote, you cannot help but see that there is no contradiction between Stephens' two statements.
Actually, I gave the shorter quote for a reason, I was not talking about the immediate cause of armed conflict, I was talking about the disagreement on fundamental principles which had arisen between the two geographical regions in the decades before 1860, of which the one cited was by far the most significant. As so often happens, you gentlemen first transformed the issue, but even in addressing the altered issue, your allegation of a contradiction between Stephens' two statements is false.
I do not think what you argue is the thought of the Founding, or reflects the purpose and philosophical background of the Declaration; rather, I think you are rejecting those authorities and making a different case.
Am I right about this?
Regards,
Richard F.
Let me see now if I can understand just what it is that you are saying.
First, let's remember the context. The subject of my post #297 was a "disagreement on fundamentals" that arose in the decades before 1860. In that period slavery was institutionalized in the South, but was not completely absent in the North either. Can we say (1)that it was a "cornerstone" of the regime; and (2) that it can, as such be characterized as a denial of self-government. While it can be argued (successfully or not)that the Confederate Constitution made slavery a "cornerstone" of the Confederacy, (reflecting the hardening of opinion on the issue that resulted in reaction to Northern political manipulation of the issue), that has no bearing in the period under discussion. So, I would answer (1) in the negative. As to (2), granted that we now view chattel slavery as a particular evil, is it appropriate to characterize a regime that practiced it, or even institutionalized it, as "denying self-government"? If so, then we can regard our own government as denying the same because it denies the franchise to minors and non-citizens. More to the point, perhaps, both North and South denied the franchise to women, by your principle that would make the North guilty of "denying self-government". Admittedly, denying basic individual freedom is far worse than denying participation in the political process of a representative government, but they are two different things.
A primary manifestation of the conflict of principle mentioned by Stephens was, as perceived by the South, an economic exploitation of the South by the North in the form of transference of wealth from the former to the latter to provide "domestic improvements" and benefit Northern businesses. Taking your statement at face value, we would have to conclude that this was somehow motived by the Southern practice of slavery while the same also existed in the North?
Finally, you have use the phrase "whether the right of self-government can be claimed". What was the South "claiming" which you so characterize? The right that would accrue from a federal form of government rather than from a centralized national one. Again you suggest that the Northen attempt to deny that was justified by the fact that the South practiced slavery. Finally, I would say, the right to self-government exists, it is not something to be claimed. Further, the right to self-government by people of one region can be rightfully denied by people of another region only if the former have committed violent aggression against the latter (or perhaps against a third region).
I find it amazing that you managed to get so much wrong in one relatively short sentence.
Never mind, I see my post #307 as establishing quite definitively the irrelevance of the "Cornerstone" reference.
I often hear that complaint mentioned, but have yet to see a concrete example of the North 'exploiting' the south via internal improvements. Can you give me an example?
Years of practice. But don't worry, you are doing pretty well yourself.
First, let's remember the context. The subject of my post #297 was a "disagreement on fundamentals" that arose in the decades before 1860. In that period slavery was institutionalized in the South, but was not completely absent in the North either.
Question:1 Can we say (1)that it was a "cornerstone" of the regime?
Answer to 1: While it can be argued (successfully or not)that the Confederate Constitution made slavery a "cornerstone" of the Confederacy, (reflecting the hardening of opinion on the issue that resulted in reaction to Northern political manipulation of the issue), that has no bearing in the period under discussion. So, I would answer (1) in the negative.
So the Confederate Constitution (and Stephen's speech, and just about every other piece of evidence) suddenly reveals a regime, a civilization, for which slavery is the cornerstone, but this has no bearing on the period leading up to the birth of that regime? We are to take at face value the claim that the dispute which led to secession regarded only questions of political authority? It seems a pretty tame claim to assert that the character of the Confederate regime, particularly in the halcyon months before the magnitude of the Northern challenge became clear, reveals something of the fundamental character of the incubating Confederacy in the years leading up to 1860.
The South attempted to leave the Union in order to obtain practical liberty to organize a society based on a refusal, in principle, to accept human equality as a criterion of political justice. Its permanent and constitutional commitment to slavery as a fundamental right is the cornerstone of the Confederacy, as it was of the secession, because slavery presents the question of the role of human equality in political affairs in its clearest form. The South decided to form a polity based on the denial of human equality, and attempted to leave the Union when the election of 1860 made it clear that such denial would never be allowed to become the fundamental principle of the United States.
Question 2: (2) that it can, as such be characterized as a denial of self-government.
answers to 2: As to (2), granted that we now view chattel slavery as a particular evil,
wrong -- chosen in principle, not inherited as an existing evil, slavery represents the choice to embrace the principle of inequality as a political principle. It is not, thus chosen, a "particular evil."
is it appropriate to characterize a regime that practiced it, or even institutionalized it, as "denying self-government"?
Wholly appropriate. Again, the choice of the denial, in principle, of universal human equality as a political goal of any sort, and its replacement with the claim, in principle, that inequality is the fundamental political principle, is the denial, in principle, of the right of self-government as a property of human beings as such.
If so, then we can regard our own government as denying the same because it denies the franchise to minors and non-citizens. More to the point, perhaps, both North and South denied the franchise to women, by your principle that would make the North guilty of "denying self-government".
These denials all consistent with a fundamental commitment to enfranchising all human persons capable of rational thought. Minors are evidently not always so capable. The notion that a regime would give the vote to infants is absurd, the only question being at what age to draw the admittedly rough line. That such a line is drawn in good faith is evidence that a regime intends universality of franchise.
Do I really need to address the issue of women's suffrage? Perhaps it is enough to remind you that Lincoln, in his first (I believe) campaign address for the Illinois legislature, called for it. It is too clear to require argument that the principles of universal equality moved those who held them inexorably toward the realization that the franchise must be extended to women. The range and manner of the application of the principle of human equality is a prudential, and difficult matter. This has nothing to do with the case of a community whose members formally disavow that principle by declaring themselves superior to a class of obviously human beings, from whom they differ only in color. As Lincoln pointed out, the principle justifying slavery of Negroes would justify enslavement of "inferior" white communities as well. Once the presumption of equality in all men is formally disavowed, rule of the stronger is the inevitable result.
Admittedly, denying basic individual freedom is far worse than denying participation in the political process of a representative government, but they are two different things. A primary manifestation of the conflict of principle mentioned by Stephens was, as perceived by the South, an economic exploitation of the South by the North in the form of transference of wealth from the former to the latter to provide "domestic improvements" and benefit Northern businesses. Taking your statement at face value, we would have to conclude that this was somehow motived by the Southern practice of slavery while the same also existed in the North?
I think it has been sufficiently demonstrated on Free Republic that these economic arguments arose primarily in justifications after the fact for secession. Genuine disagreements on national economic policy did, and still do (in so far as we still have a republic) strain our ability to govern ourselves. But they are not fundamental disagreements, and men of good will, North and South (Stevens, for example, before the war) made it perfectly clear that they were issues open to compromise. Lincoln's remarks on the tariff in 1859 and 1860 are remarkable above all for his emphasis that he seeks only what the nation as a whole accepts as reasonable. I think it is historically incompetent to suggest that differences in economic policy caused or could (absent much more extreme cases) justify an attempt to rupture the Union. The South sought rupture on a truly fundamental matter, its denial of human equality.
By the way, re: existence of slavery in the North -- the crucial difference is precisely that those states which remained loyal thereby showed that their commitment to the principles of just self-government, human equality as an ultimate goal, above all, transcended their economic and cultural attachment to an unjust institution. It was not simply the existence of slavery that caused the war, it was the corruption of some slaveholders by that institution to the point that they chose it over the fundamental principles of just government.
Finally, you have use the phrase "whether the right of self-government can be claimed". What was the South "claiming" which you so characterize? The right that would accrue from a federal form of government rather than from a centralized national one.
The South was claiming the right to form a polity in which, as a fundamental principle, one class of mature rational animals governed another class of mature rational animals by force, without consent. At the time, they were closer to honesty on this point than their defenders are now. The simple reply to this claim is that a man who claims the right to govern not only himself, but another man without that man's consent, has destroyed any basis on which he can claim not to be himself governed by another without his consent.
Again you suggest that the Northen attempt to deny that was justified by the fact that the South practiced slavery.
I say that the South the right to form a polity based on inequality. No such right exists. The claim destroys itself. And to attempt the rupture of a community, the Union, devoted however imperfectly to the pursuit of just self-government, in order to form one formally devoted to the pursuit of injust rule by force, is morally monstrous.
Finally, I would say, the right to self-government exists, it is not something to be claimed.
That's what the slaves, and the defenders of their humanity, sought to point out with much patience and restraint. Lincoln with more patience and restraint than any man.
Further, the right to self-government by people of one region can be rightfully denied by people of another region only if the former have committed violent aggression against the latter (or perhaps against a third region).
"Regions" are no more relevant a distinction than "color." How does this last statement of yours stand once "Color" is substituted for "region?"
This speech, given in Virginia, with "anti-slavery" R.E. Lee in the audience, is rather less well know. Stephens is trying to persuade VA to withdraw from the Union, and he discusses the fundamental principles of the new confederacy:
*****
The great truth, I repeat, upon which our system rests, is the inferiority of the African.
The enemies of our institutions ignore this truth. They set out with the assumption that the races are equal; that the negro is equal to the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be legitimate. But their premises being false, their conclusions are false also. Most of that fanatical spirit at the North on this subject, which in its zeal without knowledge, would upturn our society and lay waste our fair country, springs from this false reasoning. Hence so much misapplied sympathy for fancied wrongs and sufferings. These wrongs and sufferings exist only in their heated imaginations. There can be no wrong where there is no violation of nature’s laws. We have heard much of the higher law. I believe myself in the higher law. We stand upon that higher law. I would defend and support no Constitution that is against the higher law. I mean by that the law of nature and of God. Human Constitutions and human laws that are made against the law of nature or of God, ought to be overturned; and if Seward was right the Constitution which he was sworn to support, and is now requiring others to swear to support, ought to have been overthrown long ago. It ought never to have been made. But in point of fact it is he and his associates in this crusade against us, who are warring against the higher law—we stand upon the laws of the Creator, upon the highest of all laws.
It is the fanatics of the North, who are warring against the decrees of God Almighty, in their attempts to make things equal which he made unequal. My assurance of ultimate success in this controversy is strong from the conviction, that we stand upon the right. Some years ago in the Hall of the House of Representatives, a very prominent gentleman from Ohio, announced with a great deal of effect, that we at the South would be obliged to yield upon this question of slavery, because we warred against a principle; and that it was as impossible to war successfully against principle in politics as it was in mechanics. The principle, said he, would ultimately prevail. He announced this with imposing effect, and endeavored to maintain that we were contending against the great principle of equality in holding our fellow men. in the unnatural condition of bondage. In reply, I stated to him, that I admitted his proposition as he announced it, that it was impossible to war successfully against a principle in mechanics and the same was true in politics—the principle would certainly prevail—and from that stand point I had come to the conclusion that we of the South would ultimately succeed, and the North would be compelled to yield their ideas upon this subject. For it was they who were contending against a principle and not we. It was they who were trying to make the black man a white man, or his equal, which was nearly the same thing. The controlling laws of nature regulate the difference between them as absolutely as the laws of gravitation control whatever comes within their action—and until he could change the laws of gravitation, or any other law of nature, he could never make the negro a white man or his equal. No human efforts or human laws can change the leopard’s spots or the Ethiopian’s skin. These are the works of Providence—in whose hands are the fortunes of men as well as the destiny of nations and the distinctions of races.
On this subject a change is evidently going on in the intellectual world—in the republic of thinkers. The British West India experiment has done much to produce this change. All theories on the problem of human society must in the end yield to facts—just as all theories and speculations in other departments of science must yield to the same sure and unerring test. The changes of sentiment upon the subject of negro subordination have been great already, for this is the proper term to designate his condition with us. That they will continue as truth progresses, there can be no doubt. All new truths progress slowly.
With us this change of view and sentiment has been wonderful. There has been almost a complete revolution within the last half century. It was a question little understood by the eminent statesmen of the South seventy years ago. This is no disparagement to their wisdom or ability. They were occupied in the solution of other great new truths upon which rested the first great principles of self-government by the governing race. These principles they solved and established. They met and proved themselves equal to the exigencies of their day and generation that was enough to fill the measure of their fame. Each generation in the eternal progress of all things connected with existence, must meet new questions, new problems, new phases of even old subjects, and it will be enough for the men of each generation, if they prove themselves equal to the requirement of the times in which they live. As our fathers were equal to all the questions of their day, so may their sons be at this and all succeeding times. This is the point to which our attention should be chiefly directed.
In our Constitution, provision is made for the admission of other States into the confederacy; but none can be admitted without first adopting our Constitution, and, consequently, none can be admitted who does not first adopt the fundamental principles on which our social and domestic institutions rest—thereby removing forever from our public or confederate councils that question which gave rise to so much disturbance in the old government.
*****
It's not easy to speak more plainly than this!
Cheers,
Richard F.
key portions
Very well said sir.
The wealthiest individuals in the US by 1860 were southern slave owners. Protecting that wealth, and the power and privilege that came with it, was what drive them.
*******
Reflections on the "Cornerstone Speech"
Stephens was briefly imprisoned after the war, at Fort Warren, in New York. While there he kept a diary in which he wrote (among other things) these reflections on what came to be known as "the Cornerstone Speech."
Stephens writes ...
"As for my Savannah speech, about which so much has been said and in regard to which I am represented as setting forth "slavery" as the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy, it is proper for me to state that that speech was extemporaneous. The reporter's notes, which were very imperfect, were hastily corrected by me; and were published without futher revision and with several glaring errors. The substance of what I said on slavery was, that on the points under the old Constitution out of which so much discussion, agitation, and strife between the States had arisen, no future contention could arise, as these had been put to rest by clear language. I did not say, nor do I think the reporter represented me as saying, that there was the slightest change in the new Constitution from the old regarding the status of the African race amongst us. (Slavery was without doubt the occasion of secession; out of it rose the breach of compact, for instance, on the part of several Northern States in refusing to comply with Constitutional obligations as to rendition of fugitives from service, a course betraying total disregard for all constitutional barriers and guarantees.)
I admitted that the fathers, both North and South, who framed the old Constitution, while recognizing exsisting slavery and guaranteeing its continuance under the Constitution so long as the States should severally see fit to tolerate it in their respective limits, were perhaps all opposed to the principle. Jefferson, Madison, Washington, all looked for its early extinction throughout the United States. But, on the subject of slavery -- so called -- (which was with us, or should be, nothing but the proper subordination of the inferior African race to the superior white) great and radical changes had taken place in the realm of thought; many eminent latter-day statesmen, philosophers, and philanthropists held different views from the fathers.
The patriotism of the fathers was not questioned, nor their ability and wisdom, but it devolved on the public men and statesmen of each generation to grapple with and solve the problems of their own times.
The relation of the black to the white race, or the proper status of the coloured population among us, was a question now of vastly more importance than when the old Constitution was formed. The order of subordination was nature's great law; philsophy taught that order as the normal condition of the African amongst European races. Upon this recognized principle of a proper subordination, let it be called slavery or what not, our State institutions were formed and rested. The new Confederation was entered into with this distinct understanding. This principle of the subordination of the inferior to the superior was the "corner-stone" on which it was formed. I used this metaphor merely to illustrate the firm convictions of the framers of the new Constitution that this relation of the black to the white race, which existed in 1787, was not wrong in itself, either morally or politically; that it was in conformity to nature and best for both races. I alluded not to the principles of the new Government on this subject, but to public sentiment in regard to these principles. The status of the African race in the new Constitution was left just where it was in the old; I affirmed and meant to affirm nothing else in this Savannah speech."
Taken from: Recollections of Alexander H. Stephens: His Diary kept when a prisoner at Fort Warren, New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1910., pp 172-174. Entry for 5 June 1866.
********
Again, seems pretty straightforward and claer.
Richard F.
Gov. Brown of GA on whether to leave the Union after the election of 1860
Best to you,
Richard F.
Except that I was not talking about the Confederacy, I was talking about the South in the decades prior to the war. Slavery may have been a fundamental element of the South's agricultural economy, but it did not have the fundamental role as a basis of the society that the "Cornerstone Speech" implies it would have in the Confederacy.
I assume you meant this for Aurelius!
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