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.
"If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side." --Ulysses S. Grant
Wlat you are just asking for a
PINKO ALERT
Do these people know how you and your fellow travelers vote?
Here is your reply to Leesylvanian from another thread:
==================================
Leesylvanian:
Keep in mind when dealing with WP that you're dealing with a man who favors the government's rights/authority over those of the people. He voted for Clinton twice. 'Nuff said!
Wlat (WhiskeyPapa):
Well, I've never said I voted for Clinton twice, so I am glad you will be glad to post a retraction. What I said was that I had never voted for a Republican presidential candidate. I voted for John Anderson in 1980. In '84 I voted Democratic. Same in '88. In '92 I DID vote for Clinton, although I was for Perot until he went batty. In'96 I didn't vote. In '00, I did vote for Al Gore. --Walt
780 posted on 2/28/02 10:49 AM Pacific by WhiskeyPapa [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 766 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
You cannot show that in the record. It is simply false.
" Antebellum Americans had been one of the most lightly taxed peoples on earth. And the per capita burden in the South had been only half that in the free states. Except for tariff duties-which despite Southern complaints were lower in the late 1850's than they had been for more than 50 years-
virtually all taxes were collected by state and local governments."
--Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson
Walt
PINKO ALERT
Do these people know how you and your fellow travelers vote?
Here is your reply to Leesylvanian from another thread:
==================================
Leesylvanian:
Keep in mind when dealing with WP that you're dealing with a man who favors the government's rights/authority over those of the people. He voted for Clinton twice. 'Nuff said!
Wlat (WhiskeyPapa):
Well, I've never said I voted for Clinton twice, so I am glad you will be glad to post a retraction. What I said was that I had never voted for a Republican presidential candidate. I voted for John Anderson in 1980. In '84 I voted Democratic. Same in '88. In '92 I DID vote for Clinton, although I was for Perot until he went batty. In'96 I didn't vote. In '00, I did vote for Al Gore. --Walt
780 posted on 2/28/02 10:49 AM Pacific by WhiskeyPapa [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 766 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
Well that says it right there. How can I say this nicely? I can't. McPherson is so full of it his eyes are probably brown. He praised many of lincoln's moves in the economy as good things. In fact lincoln compared himself to Clay. You do remember Clay don't you? You know, Whig, protectionist, national banking, etc. Yeah, great guy < /sarcasm>, if you're Karl Marx!!
Still false.
"One fact needs emphatic statement: of all the monistic explanations for the drift to war, that based upon supposed economic causes is the flimsiest.
The theory was sharply rejected at the time by so astute an observer as Alexander H. Stephens.
South Carolina, he wrote his brother on New Year's Day, 1861 was seceding from a tariff 'which is just what her own Senators and members of Congress made it.' As for the charges of consolidation and despotism made by some Carolinians, he thought they arose from peevishness, rather than a calm analysis of facts. 'The truth is, the South, almost in mass, has voted, I think, for every measure of general legislation that has passed both houses and become law for the last ten years.' The South, far from groaning under tyranny, had controlled the government almost from its beginning, and Stephens believed that its only real grievance lay in the Northern refusal to return fugitive slaves and to stop the antislavery agitation. 'All other complaints are founded on threatened dangers which may never come, and which I feel very sure would be averted if the South would pursue a judicious and wise course.'
Stephens was right. It was true that the whole tendency of federal legislation 1842 to 1860 was toward free trade; true that the tariff in force when secession began was largely Southern- made; true that it was the lowest tariff the country had known since 1816; true that it cost a nation of thirty million people but sixty million dollars in indirect revenue; true that without secession no new tariff law, obnoxious to the Democratic Party, could have been passed before 1863--if then.
"In the official explanations which one Southern State after another published for its secession, economic grievances are either omitted entirely or given minor positions. There were few such supposed grievances which the agricultural states of Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota did not share with the South--and they never threatened to secede. Charles A. Beard finds the tap-root of the war in the resistance of the planter interest to Northern demands enlarging the old Hamilton-Webster policy. The South was adamant in standing for 'no high protective tariffs, no ship subsidies, no national banking and currency system; in short, none of the measures which business enterprise deemed essential to its progress.' But the Republican platform in 1856 was silent on the tariff; in 1860, it carried a milk-and-water statement on the subject which Western Republicans took, mild as it was, with a wry face; the incoming President was little interested in the tariff; and any harsh legislation was impossible. Ship subsidies were not an issue in the campaign of 1860. Neither were a national banking system and a national currency system. They were not mentioned in the Republican platform nor discussed by party debaters. The Pacific Railroad was advocated both by the Douglas Democrats and the Republicans; and it is noteworthy that Seward and Douglas were for building both a Northern and a Southern line. In short, the divisive economic issues are easily exaggerated. At the same time, the unifying economic factors were both numerous and powerful. North and South had economies which were largely complementary. It was no misfortune to the South that Massachusetts cotton mills wanted its staple, and that New York ironmasters like Hewitt were eager to sell rails dirt-cheap to Southern railway builders; and sober businessmen on both sides, merchants, bankers, and manufacturers, were the men most anxious to keep the peace and hold the Union together."
Nevins, *The Ordeal of the Union* quoted on pp. 212-213
Walt
Well that says it right there. How can I say this nicely? I can't. McPherson is so full of it his eyes are probably brown.
No, that would be you.
I anticipated your response. See the words of Alexander Stephens in #45. What he said in 1861 is in complete agreement with what McPherson wrote in 1988.
Walt
The real and honest argument should come from careful review of the book. There is little or nothing new in the column; it is essentailly the same stuff that Mercer and Dilorenzo himself already published at WND.
I'm waiting to strike at the [copper]head of the snake, and leaving the tail alone.
Cheers,
Richard F.
Oh, one little kick at the tail ... couldn't resist. On the authority of the "fedgov" to decide the extent of its powers under the Constitution, the third para from the end of Federalist 39 is instructive.
"[S]ome such tribunal is clearly essential to prevent an appeal to the sword and a dissolution of the compact; and that it ought to be established under the general rather than under the local governments, or, to speak more properly, that it could be safely established under the first alone, is a position not likely to be combated."
One last question for our Rebel friends: Is there any direct and explicit statement of a legal right of secession in the whole Founding Era, from 1774 to and including the Hartford Convention? I don't mean such cloudy things as the Virginia "reservation," cited in Williams column, which is, to put it mildly, easily read as a notice of the natural right of Revolution. I seek instead a simple and direct statement of a legal right of secession, preferably using the term itself. If so, could we see get it sourced?
I'm not looking for controversy here, but hoping to get at historical truth.
Cheers again,
Richard F.
I have ordered the book and will be reviewing it, but I hoped someone would know if this remark from the column is true:
"Thomas DiLorenzo marshals abundant unambiguous evidence that virtually every political leader of the time and earlier believed that states had a right of secession.
Perhaps DiLorenzo will provide the evidence that I seek.
Anyway, my question is still out there, and I'd appreciate help in answering it. My own research has turned up nothing yet.
Cheers,
Richard F.
No you're not. You are hoping to establish your version of the truth, and will use whatever means are necessary.
No need to be unpleasant! And as a scholar, I do consider it possible that Lincoln missed some evidence, even important evidence. I'd just like to see it.
Regards,
Richard F.
It would be hard to hang that on George Washington, as he urged an immovable attachment to the national union.
Walt
I didn't know Lincoln cared about evidence. In any case, Amazon informed me Monday that my copy of DiLorenzo's book is in the mail, should have it any day now. So we will now be able to see what is what. It's even possible your allegations will prove correct. I know nothing about DiLorenzo. I do know something about Walter Williams, and if he takes the book seriously, that counts for a lot with me.
Well, now that the book is available, neither side should have an excuse for not backing up their case with facts, should they. I've been following this debate for some time now and it is not my impression that your side has been lacking in diligence in the use of insults and ad hominem attacks.
: "Is there any direct and explicit statement of a legal right of secession in the whole Founding Era, from 1774 to and including the Hartford Convention? I don't mean such cloudy things as the Virginia "reservation," cited in Williams column, which is, to put it mildly, easily read as a notice of the natural right of Revolution. I seek instead a simple and direct statement of a legal right of secession, preferably using the term itself. If so, could we see get it sourced?"
And I repeat that there may well be such quotations. The name of Timothy Pickering has been mentioned by some in this connection. That is the only one I can recall, and I don't have a quotation from him.
Regards,
Richard F.
You are among the best finders of evidence in these arguments. Do you know of anything that would answer my question?
I had thought that the defenders of secession would have it at their fingertips, but it seems not to be the case.
Lee said that "in 1808 ... Virginia statesmen ..." had held secession to be nothing other than "treason." Surely the Virginians of that era were responding to something from the New England malcontents, but there seems to be little trace of it.
Any thoughts?
Richard F.
Now I must admit to having some misgivings in responding to someone who claims to believe "that the Union created the States". (From an earlier exchange that we had) --But, in the interest of truth I will do so.
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