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.
1] Did Dilorenzo get his facts wrong on Lincoln's use of the Bank issue, and 2] Were there any founders who said in public that there was a legal right of secession under the Constitution of 1787? On this last, I've given more evidence myself against our position than have our opponents! Rather paltry evidence, but better than nothing.
Frankly, this astonishes me. I'd have thought the "lost cause" newsgroups and sites would have had it right there for anyone to grab. You don't think it has almost no existence, do you?
Cheers,
Richard F.
"This [anti-slavery] agitation has produced one happy effect at least; it has compelled us to the South to look into the nature and character of this great institution, and to correct many false impressions that even we had entertained in relation to it.
Many in the South once believed that it was a moral and political evil; that folly and delusion are gone; we see it now in its true light, and regard it as the most safe and stable basis for free institutions in the world. It is impossible with us that the conflict can take place between labor and capital, which make it so difficult to establish and maintain free institutions in all wealthy and highly civilized nations where such institutions as ours do not exist. The Southern States are an aggregate, in fact, of communities, not of individuals.
******
Farewell, Locke! Farewell Jefferson! Farewell, America! A long farewell to all our greatness!"
But no, the God of battles has smiled upon us, and the Declaration has been vindicated.
Thanks be to God!
Cheers,
Richard F.
It is ironic how that epiphany occurred after the invention of the cotton gin allowed huge fortunes to be made from the up-land plantations. Slavery was a dying institution --- before it became so profitable.
James Madison rose and spoke against legalizing the use of force by the federal government againt a state:
"A Union of the States (containing such an ingredient) seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force agst. a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."
James Madison, Farrands Records, 31 May 1787, p. 54)
The delegates voted to suspend discussion (kill the issue) - it passed 9-0. The federal government was denied the use of force against a state (not an enumerated power).
Additionally, dicussing the 2nd amendment, Madison also opined:
"Let a standing army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger."
James Madison, Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 46, "The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared", 29 Jan 1788.
The father of the Constitution argued that the states could fight the federal government to protect their rights.
Perhaps you want more time.
That's OK, but I do expect an answer at the end of the day.
Cheers,
Richard F.
Cheers,
Richard F.
And that same father denied the right of secession, and held to a theory of government that was in sharp contradiction to human slavery.
I'd still love to see one word from Madison or any other Founder in support of a legal right to secession. Especially secession to preserve and perpetuate humn slavery.
Hoping you, who have wit and charity, can give it,
Richard F.
That should be, of course, "human slavery."
With all due respect, you'll be waiting forever if you're explicitly looking for the word "secession". The words the founders favored and employed were "disunion" and "disunited". The phrase "resume the powers of self-government" also comes to mind. Regarding your latter query, why limit secession/disunion/disunification to one specific case that was perfectly legal? Rhode Island & Providence Plantations refused to ratify until the Bill of Rights were tendered for ratification. But to answer you more directly, was not the ratification of the Constitution a secession from the Articles of Confederation? Article XIII of the AoC required unanimous consent to change that government, yet the founders discarded it in favor of a government that preserved and perpetuated human slavery.
Madison again reiterated the absurdity of using force against a state - even for unconstitutional acts:
"Any Govt. for the U. States formed on the supposed practicability of using force agst. the unconstitutional proceedings of the States, wd. prove as visionary & fallacious as the Govt. of Congs."
James Madison, James Madison: Writings, (edited by Jack N. Rakove, 1999), "Remarks in the Federal Convention on the Power to Negative State Laws", 8 June 1787, p. 100
And he again reiterated his beliefs in the limitations of federal powers, and the powers reserved by the states:
"The amendments which have occurred to me, proper to be recommended by congress to the state legislatures, are these:First. That there be prefixed to the constitution a declaration--that all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from the people.
... That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefensible right to reform or change their government, whenever it be found adverse or inadiquate to the purposes of its institution."
James Madison, James Madison: Writings, (edited by Jack N. Rakove, 1999), "Speech in Congress Proposing Constitutional Amendments", 8 June 1789, p. 441."The powers delegated by this Constitution are appropriated to the departments to which they are respectively distributed: so that the Legislative Department shall never exercise the powers vested in the Executive or Judicial, nor the Executive exercise the powers vested in the Legislative or Judicial, nor the Judicial exercise the powers vested in the Legislative or Executive Departments.
The powers not delegated by this Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively."
James Madison, James Madison: Writings, (edited by Jack N. Rakove, 1999), "Speech in Congress Proposing Constitutional Amendments", 8 June 1789, p. 444
Additionally, as an aside, it must also be noted that the Constitution was not ratified overnight. It took years for the original 13 states to ratify. And 85 Federalist Papers and numerous debates. North Carolina and Rhode Island refused to ratify until a Bill of Rights had been submitted.
North Carolina refused to ratify in August of 1788 until a Bill of Rights had been submitted.
The Rhode Island legislature voted down attempts at ratification conventions nine times, and when they put it to a referendum before the state's eligible voters they rejected it 2711 to 239. In the U.S. Congress, legislation was introduced to impose high tariffs on Rhode Island, and Connecticut actually called for the use of force to compel Rhode Isalnd to ratify. Votes for a convention failed for the 11th time in 1790, but after a delegate left early, the Governor cast the deciding vote in favor of a convention. During Rhode Island's convention the US Senate passed legislation imposing a total economic boycott on the state if it did not ratify the Constitution.
If a state may change it's mind, why would it only be recognized for accession and not secession/disunion? There is nothing in the Constitution that prohibits a state from changing it's mind and withdrawing, nor is there a power to force a state to remain. Just the opposite occurred - they prohibited the use of force against a state.
Freegards,
4CJ
I think the answer to that is actually quite clear. The transition from the AoC to the Constitution was in some respects a revolutionary moment . . . in the sense that it involved a genuine reconsideration and recommitment to national unity itself. It is clear in the Federalist that the possibility of disunion was contemplated. I would argue that the eventual rocky and ad hoc ratification process was substantially the reaffirmation by the people of America, as subdivided into states under an overall national unity dating from 1774, of their resolve to remain both one and many, rather than becoming, for the first time, 13 simply distinct polities.
To be a bit clearer, I say (with Lincoln, I believe) that in 1776 the entire American people decided to be "e pluribus unum," that is, to be a people of united sovereignty in some respects, and divided in others. The full implications of this judgment were unclear to almost everyone, most obviously the nature of national government necessary to accomplish the functions associated with the degree of national unity the people intended.
Obviously the organs of government which were inadequate even for the normal functioning of the degree of national sovereignty the people intended to establish were not adequate, or authorized, to reconsider and reaffirm the nature of national government necessary. So the Constitutional Convention was, for all its origin in the Congress, etc., a renewed attempt by the people in their one and many unity, to constitute "de novo" instruments of the sovereignty they had intended to establish.
I think all or almost all of the examples you offer are clear on this basis. But it remains true that the people confirmed their original decision, which remained unchanged from 1776, of being a people one and many, with corresponding sovereignties and governmental functions.
Madison again reiterated the absurdity of using force against a state - even for unconstitutional acts:
"Any Govt. for the U. States formed on the supposed practicability of using force agst. the unconstitutional proceedings of the States, wd. prove as visionary & fallacious as the Govt. of Congs." James Madison, James Madison: Writings, (edited by Jack N. Rakove, 1999), "Remarks in the Federal Convention on the Power to Negative State Laws", 8 June 1787, p. 100
And he again reiterated his beliefs in the limitations of federal powers, and the powers reserved by the states:
The preceeding simply argues to the impracticality of having the national sovereign empowered to enforce its will on the state sovereignty. I believe he is arguing that the official incorporation into fundamental law of the right of force in the national government would leave the sovereignty of the states nominal at best. This seems to me a prudential judgment, no doubt true. The supremacy clause of the Constitution is a contrast with this point.
"The amendments which have occurred to me, proper to be recommended by congress to the state legislatures, are these:
First. That there be prefixed to the constitution a declaration--that all power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from the people.
The preceeding is wholly consistent with a denial of secession by states, or even a legal secession by people. Governments can be perpetual with power derived from the people. On this account, they continue until the people withdraw their consent by revolution.
... That the people have an indubitable, unalienable, and indefensible right to reform or change their government, whenever it be found adverse or inadiquate to the purposes of its institution."
James Madison, James Madison: Writings, (edited by Jack N. Rakove, 1999), "Speech in Congress Proposing Constitutional Amendments", 8 June 1789, p. 441.
This again is simply the right of revolution. I see no bearing on the question of secession by one instrument of sovereignty from the relation the people have placed it in with another instrument of sovereignty.
"The powers delegated by this Constitution are appropriated to the departments to which they are respectively distributed: so that the Legislative Department shall never exercise the powers vested in the Executive or Judicial, nor the Executive exercise the powers vested in the Legislative or Judicial, nor the Judicial exercise the powers vested in the Legislative or Executive Departments.
The powers not delegated by this Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively." James Madison, James Madison: Writings, (edited by Jack N. Rakove, 1999), "Speech in Congress Proposing Constitutional Amendments", 8 June 1789, p. 444
If this is taken to mean "governmental powers," it simply intends that of known and justifiable governmental powers, the national instrument had only those specifically indicated, and the states the remainder. But secession from the arrangement the people,in their fundamental sovereignty, have established, is not among the powers of government. It is a power to be exercised only by the people themselves, and is the right of revolution.
Additionally, as an aside, it must also be noted that the Constitution was not ratified overnight. It took years for the original 13 states to ratify. And 85 Federalist Papers and numerous debates. North Carolina and Rhode Island refused to ratify until a Bill of Rights had been submitted.
North Carolina refused to ratify in August of 1788 until a Bill of Rights had been submitted.
Regarding this and the rest of the circumstances of ratification you mention, I say again that the moment was one of near-revolutionary ambiguity. No one thought national plebiscites made sense. Everyone understood that the people intended some degree of sovereignty to be excercised at the level of state political organization. Almost everyone understood that the people had also decided that there was to be a national sovereignty as well. The ratification process was the imperfect mechanism for appealing to the people, in the one and many unity they had chosen, for approval of the new instrument of government proposed as adequate for the kind of qualified national unity the people had chosen.
At such a moment, it was indeed awkward for one state to delay, or to act as though it was simply a people distinct from the rest of America. The treatment Rhode Island received from the new national instrument of government is quite compatible with the view that Rhode Island's government, even its people, had not yet done their duty as members of a partially national people. But the act that was lacking was not of a state per se -- it was the act of the people of Rhode Island, who were omitting to act as part of the national people which had formed more than a decade earlier, and from which the people of Rhode Island could not, finally, separate themselves by a simple legal act, but by rupturing the bonds that make a people one. Mere non-participation in a federation would not justify such hardball from the rest of the federation's members. Threatened revolution by non-ratification, apparently, did justify such treatment from fellow members of a Union -- at least so far as the United States understood matters. In Rhode Island's defense, it should be said that the delay, the squabbling, all were part of the deliberation, the recourse to reason,without which a people's united act is not a fundamentally legitimate exercise even of their unalienable sovereignty.
Eventually, if with imperfect elegance, a national/state combo decision was made by the people. Henceforward, it would be perpetual, until the right of fundamental revolution was again invoked by the whole people, or such a minority as had occasion to do so. Secession as legal act is not part of that picture.
With all due respect, you are 100% wrong.
But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy.The 'Father" of the Constitution saw no right to unilateral secession.James Madison to Daniel Webster, March, 1833
Uh, no, it does rely on the history of the United States, and on the original intent of the Framers.
......but is an assertion of a general right of secession, dependent on the will of a segment of what had been one united people, ......
To quote Ronald Reagan, "There you go again!"
I simply insist on the sovereignty of the People, and that the sovereignty of the States be something other than what you make of it, which is.... nothing.
.......with that segment and God alone the judges of their rectitude.
Substitute either "State" or "People" for your deprecatory word "segment", and I agree that you understand me perfectly. Sovereign means sovereign. State means State, not "department", "province", "subdivision", or "segment".
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?
No, I don't think so. By the Founding, I assume you mean both the Declaration of Independence, to which Lincoln and you other Unionists have had frequent recourse as an alternative resource of authority for your reinvention of the American system of government, and the Constitution. You are a Declarationist by your own profession, or else please correct me. I am a Constitutionalist, which is to say I have already conceded your Federalists a lot of unsavory mischief if only I can have the Bill of Rights.
But your recension of the American system removes the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, and your fellow enthusiasts have a great appetite for devouring even more of the Bill of Rights, beginning with the Second Amendment because it is the most crucial, but not despising to trample the First, Fourth, and Fifth as well, as resources of the recalcitrant with which we resist your triumphalist, imperial vision -- which I would characterize as Teddy Roosevelt's National Greatness on steroids and coke. And in exchange for our acquiescence in this transmutation of the American Experiment into an American fascist superstate, equipped with hypertrophied, people-crushing, pyramidal economic and political organs and driving its people under forced draught to ever-greater heights of "productivity" and political, economic, and military power (disposed of by credentialed people like yourself, to the permanent detriment of non-credentialed, second- and third-class citizens), we the overthrown, the subjugated, will receive a true "mess of pottage" in the form of Hillarycare, Social Security, and unemployment insurance. For which we're expected to be humbly grateful.
I don't think so, sorry. No sale.
Cheers,
Richard F.
I was limiting my responses to comments and published responses before ratification of the BoR. What Madison, Hamilton et al said BEFORE ratification is different in many cases.
Hamilton in Federalist 84 wrote about the lack of need for BoR and the federal government is described as one of limited, ENUMERATED powers. He argued that speech could not be infringed upon because the federal government had never been DELEGATED the power to restrict it.
So to look for an explicit use of the word "secession" or anything similar will not be found in all likelyhood. The Constitution defined the powers the federal government possesed - not what the states retained.
But why enumerate the natural right of revolution? The states could always do that - so the 10th is not a legalization of revolution - its legalization of the right to resume the powers of self government.
FReegards,
4CJ
Under both the 9th and 10th amendment the people also reserve the right to maintain the government.
That is what they have done.
Walt
Wow! All that? How about the guy who said this?
"Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for "perpetual union" so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution."Robert E. Lee Jan. 23, 1861
Wrong. Again - we are not a democracy - we are a constitutional republic. We have a mandated "republician" (representative) form of government. Remember that Justice you are so fond of quoting? The one that said something about NOT dissolving the lines that separate the states, "No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass"?
The "people" in the 10th cannot be understood to mean the federal government. The powers not delegated were reserved to the states OR to the people. Individual rights such as freddom of worship, freedom of speech, the right keep and bear arms, the right to a speedy trial, &C are reserved to the people of the several states. Other rights such the right to keep a state militia, resume self-government or anything else not enumerated are reserved to the states.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.The "United States" and the "people" cannot be one and the same. It'd be like saying "the powers not delegated to Walt, nor probhibited to Walt, are reserved to 4CJ, or to Walt". Ludicrous.
Amendment X, US Constitution
As Marshall himself opined:
"[I]t was neither necessary nor proper to define the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, not from the people of America, but from the people of the several States; and remain, after the adoption of the constitution, what they were before, except so far as they may be abridged by that instrument."
Sturges v Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122, 193 (1819).
How about the words of Hamilton?
"An entire consolidation of the States into one complete national sovereignty would imply an entire subordination of the parts; and whatever powers might remain in them, would be altogether dependent on the general will. But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States. This exclusive delegation, or rather this alienation, of State sovereignty, would only exist in three cases: where the Constitution in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the Union; where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the Union, to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally CONTRADICTORY and REPUGNANT."Now I don't know about you copy of the Constitution, but nowhere in mine is the power to secede granted to the federal government, nor is it prohibited to the states.
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 32, "The Same Subject Continued: Concerning the General Power of Taxation", 3 Jan 1788.
Want a more recent opinion? Try this:
And where the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or the people.Sorry. Thomas disagrees with your view, as does Madison, Hamilton and your beloved Marshall.Our system of government rests on one overriding principle: all power stems from the consent of the people. To phrase the principle in this way, however, is to be imprecise about something important to the notion of "reserved" powers. The ultimate source of the Constitution's authority is the consent of the people of each individual State, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole.
The ratification procedure erected by Article VII makes this point clear. The Constitution took effect once it had been ratified by the people gathered in convention in nine different States. But the Constitution went into effect only "between the States so ratifying the same," Art. VII; it did not bind the people of North Carolina until they had accepted it. In Madison's words, the popular consent upon which the Constitution's authority rests was "given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong." The Federalist No. 39, p. 243 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (hereinafter The Federalist). Accord, 3 Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution 94 (J. Elliot 2d ed. 1876) (hereinafter Elliot) (remarks of James Madison at the Virginia convention).
Justice Thomas, US Term Limits, Inc. v Thornton, (93-1456), 514 U.S. 779 (1995).
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