Posted on 04/23/2002 1:16:15 PM PDT by WhiskeyPapa
It was actually the Framers of the Constitution who did that. Lincoln was simply the first to have to enforce it. Andy Jackson came close.
Shuckmaster's keyboard must have seceded.
Thanks for the kind words. I did some research, but the article is pure David.
in all my teaching career I had never seen, in a published book,such a gross error as the one about the Clay Eulogy.
It fairly takes ones breath away.
Regards,
Richard F.
James Madison did not agree with you.
Who should I trust, you or the Father of the Constitution?
Well if you think diLorenzo is bad, take a sample of the scholarship over at CrownRights.com
It is the place where most of these Bubba's bought their libraries, and their video collections as well. I am sure this crap is finding its way into home school cricula, and it frightens the hell out of me. You can even get copies of Amos 'n Andy or Birth of a Nation there as well as the riveting works of some yahoo name Durand who makes DiLorenzo look like Milton Freedman.
You are absolutely correct on what you said above about the importance of challenging demagogues like DiLorenzo. It is not simply about re-fighting the Civil War. It is about assuring that the historical record is straight for our children and not allowing people with an ugly agenda hijack Conservatism.
History is important.
James Madison to Daniel Webster
15 Mar. 1833Writings 9:604--5I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession." 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 guy who wrote the Constitution said secession was non-sense. What are your credintials?
History is important.
Right. And, for example, Worldnetdaily, which is a large and rapidly growing enterprise, is selling "The Real Lincoln" in its homeschooling section. Good people on the staff of WND have expressed unwillingness to pass judgment on the book, and said that there will be time enough to pull it off their site if its "reputation" implodes in the course of argument about it. That means that without public argument that DiLorenzo is a hack, the book will stay on WND's web store, and heaven knows how many other such sites, to be purchased by unsuspecting people impressed by footnotes.
Scholarly opinion about Lincoln will be completely unaffected by tracts like this. But the practice of writing lying junk about Lincoln, and promoting and publishing it outside of neo-reb ghettoes, really can receive encouragement or discouragement from the fate of such a book. It's an incredibly brazen thing to attempt -- lying on this scale about Lincoln, and just daring anyone to disagree. It's an act of will, not of mind. And I suspect, from the glee with which Walter Williams, Sobran, and Paul Craig Roberts wrote about the thing in advance, that if it avoids being disgraced it will be the first of a new round of such brazen junk. Why shouldn't they publish it, and sell it to a few score thousand people, if no one seriously objects.
What would be REALLY GREAT would be if some thoughtful opponents of Lincoln would 'fess up and say: "DiLorenzo's work is crap, and a disgrace to the noble school of thought of anti-Lincolnism. We want to have a renewed serious debate about Lincoln, taking his best case seriously, and defeating it, and learning deep truths about political community, etc., from our victorious debate with his defenders. And we resent the debasing of our position that work like "The Real Lincoln" cause."
If you would care to make the argument that the South had "good cause" in 1860 to secede because they did not like the outcome of an election, please be my guest. In fact, I look forward to it. None of the neo-confederates ever do that. They just repeat Calhoun's lie that Madison rejected in 1833, that states could just leave whenever they felt like it.
Legally, states are bound, under any and all circumstances. The Constitution does provide a way that requires the agreement of other states. The Constitution does not provide a self-destruct button. That is a recipe for anarchy, and anarchy is obviously not what the Framers intended. If oppression is intolerable, natural law gives us all the moral right to rebellion, as states, or as individuals.
But you can't just walk away because you lost an election, which is exactly what happened in 1860-61. They had no legal or moral justification for their actions.
Well, that is not supported in the record.
Lincoln -never- denied natural rights, but he definitely held that unilateral state secession was outside United States law -- was in fact absurd and unjust:
Consider this text:
"What is now combatted, is the position that secession consistent with the Constitution -- is lawful, and peaceful. It is not contended that there is any express law for it; and nothing should ever be implied as law, which leads to unjust or absurd consequences. The nation purchased, with money, the countries out of which several of these states were formed. Is it just that they shall go off without leave, and without refunding? The nation paid very large sums, (in the aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred millions) to relieve Florida of the aboriginal tribes. Is it just that she shall now be off without consent, or without making any return? The nation is now in debt for money applied to the benefit of the so-called seceding states, in common with the rest. Is it just, either that creditors shall go unpaid, or the remaining States pay for the whole? A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave, pay no part of it herself?
Again, if one state may secede, so may another; and then when all shall have seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their money? If we now recognize this doctrine, by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do, if others choose to go, or to extort terms terms upon which they will promise to remain...
If all the states, save one, should assert the power to drive that one out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians would at once deny the power, and denounce the act as the greatest outrage upon State rights. But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of being called "driving the one out," should be called "the seceding of the others from that one," it would exactly what the seceders claim to do; unless, indeed, they make the point, that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully do, what the others because they are a majority may not rightfully do. These politicians are subtle, and profound, on the rights of minorities. They are not so partial to that power, which made the Constitution, and speaks from the preamble, calling itself "We the People."
A. Lincoln 7/4/61
Walt
Under the 10th amendment, the people retain the rght to reserve the Union, which is what they have done.
But the 10th is not even in play. Article 1, section 8 gives the power to Congress to provide for the common defense and general welfare. If a state secedes, the general welfare is diminished. Congress is empowered under the Constitution to prohibit state secession.
IF IF IF the states retained complete sovereignity -- which they don't you'd have nothing but anarchy.
I will now wave my magic Jefferson Davis wand, and you will disappear:
"Conscription dramatized a fundamental paradox in the Confederate war effort: the need for Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. Pure Jeffersonians could not accept this. The most outspoken of them, Joseph Brown of Georgia, denounced the draft as a "dangerous usurpation by Congress of the reserved rights of the states...at war with all the principles for which Georgia entered into the revolution." In reply Jefferson Davis donned the mantle of Hamilton. The Confederate Constitution, he pointed out to Brown, gave Congress the power "to raise and support armies" and to "provide for the common defense." It also contained another clause (likewise copied from the U.S. Constitution) empowering Congress to make all laws "necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Brown had denied the constitutionality of conscription because the Constitution did not specifically authorize it. This was good Jeffersonian doctrine, sanctified by generations of southern strict constructionists. But in Hamiltonian language, Davis insisted that the "necessary and proper" clause legitimized conscription. No one could doubt the necessity "when our very existance is threatened by armies vastly superior in numbers." Therefore "the true and only test is to enquire whether the law is intended and calculated to carry out the object...if the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional."
--Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson P.433
EVEN Jefferson Davis said the central government could coerce the states in the matter of conscription. And if in conscription, why not secession?
Oddly, the man Davis sounds JUST LIKE Chief Justice John Marshall:
"In the case now to be determined, the defendant, a sovereign state, denies the obligation of a law enacted by the legislature of the Union...In discussing this question, the counsel for the state of Maryland deemed it of some importance, in the construction of the Constitution, to consider that instrument as not emanating from the people, but as the act of sovereign and independent states. 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. "
And:
"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... "
And:
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."
And:
"Among the enumerated powers, we do not find that of establishing a bank or of creating a corporation. But there is no phrase in the instrument which, like the articles of confederation, excludes incidental or implied powers; and which requires that everything granted shall be expressly and minutely described. Even the 10th amendment, which was framed for the purpose of quieting the excessive jealousies which had been excited, omits the word "expressly," and declares that the powers "not delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the states are reserved to the states or to the people," thus leaving the question, whether the particular power which may become the subject of contest, has been delegated to the one government, or prohibited to the other, to depend on a fair reading of the whole instument... It would probably never be understood by the public. Its nature, therefore, requires, that only its great outlines should be marked, its important objectives designated, and the minor ingredients which compose those objects,, be deduced from the nature of the objects themselves. That is the idea entertained by the framers of the American constitution, is not only to be inferred from the nature of the instrument, but from its language. Why else were some of the limitations, found in the 9th section of the 1st article, introduced? .... The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of the nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done, by confining the choice of means to such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of congress to adopt any which might be appropriate, and which were conclusive to the end. " --John Marshall, Chief Justice, writing in McCullough v. Maryland, 1819
How about that?
Sounds like Davis had a copy of McCullough in hs back pocket when he wroyte to Governor Brown. Guess he lost it after the war.
POOF!
Walt
If you can show any academic fraud by me, you need to do it, and not talk about it.
La-de-dah.
Hello, hello? Is anybody there?
Hello?
Walt
Nor did they ever mention a time when the states could take unilateral action where the interests of the other states are involved. Secession should have required the approval of at least a majority of all the states since the interests of all the states were affected. The south did not do that.
ROTFLMAOPIMP!
I think a lot of people, when they see these CSA apologist fantasy rants say to themselves, "gee, is that right? I didn't know that."
So it is good that Dr. Ferrier and Dr. Quackenbush and Ditto and X and Non-sequitur and a few others don't let these sleaze bags slide slanderously by.
Walt
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