Posted on 05/01/2002 4:39:27 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
I don't know that Jay uses the word "perpetual". He did say:
"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."
But perpetual, you say?
"The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom and forebearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was 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."
Robert E. Lee,January 23, 1861
Walt
As I stated above, the Preamble states that the purpose of the Constitution is to create a more perfect Union, which is an explcit acknowledgement that a "less perfect" union (that created by the "Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union") was already in existence.
From the perspective of the Constitution, the union of states did already exist, and was taken for granted. The Constitutional Convention was convened by the union of states in order to correct the defects of the Articles of Confederation (See Federalist 40), and to define a new relationship between Union and States. In that sense "the Union" really did create the states, at least insofar as they're defined by the Constitution.
But how does that explain North Carolina and Rhode Island whow were both in substance and in name, out of the Union after the Constitution had already been in operation?North Carolina didn't ratify the Constitution for nearly nine months after it was in operation and Rhode Island for full fifteen months. If the union created the states, now can they explain this one?
This is in perfect accord with Federalist 38, which said that the states are to be considered sovereign with regard to their ratification of the Constitution. The basic idea is that any state that did not ratify the Constitution was free to go its own way. It certainly wouldn't do to coerce a ratification from the states. However, once a state did ratify, it was explicitly bound to be part of the Union.
IOW, it's quite easy to explain.
Not at all. Given that preservation of the Union was paramount, the exemption is best explained as a wartime exigency -- to not make your allies mad, and to prevent a needless provocation to those in occupied areas.
But be that as it may, it only serves to highlight the fact that South Carolina WAS the first state to actually take the illegal action of unilateral secession. Had she tried it thirty years earlier, or had Massachussetts tried it or Connecticut tried it then the actions of the federal government should have been the same.
I have never said anything to the contrary, but I hold that, notwithstanding all this, there is no reason in the world why the negro is not entitled to all the natural rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I hold that he is as much entitled to these as the white man. I agree with Judge Douglas he is not my equal in many respects—certainly not in color, perhaps not in moral or intellectual endowment. But in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man.
Can you name a single southern leader who suggested that the black man was entitled to the same rights as a white man? One who suggested that the black man was his equal in any way?
A lot of us in the South sure as (Abraham Lincoln is in) Hell don't.
When?
If indivisibility is to be preserved by force, then there cannot be liberty and justice for all".
How many people are in "a lot"? 104? 278?
A great deal more than that.
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