Posted on 05/23/2002 8:52:25 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
While many on both sides wrapped themselves in various banners, some sincerely and others to mask the ugly realities, the bottom line is that the slave economy was totally incompatable with a free-labor market-based economy. The two could not peacefully co-exist indefinately. One or the other had to go, and all things considered, it's best that it was ended before modern weapon technology made its full presence known. We could have had a Verdun on the Ohio.
I'm a cross between lechuguilla and fire ants.
In matters of state powers vs state obligations and of prohibitions on states, the only applicable law is the Constitution. Since there is no prohibition against secession anywhere in any article or any amendment, then secession is a reserved state power, and a right reserved to the people of the states. The powers of the states and the rights of the people do not have to be listed to exist. the powers of the federal government do have to be listed. Those are the points of the ninth and tenth amendments.
The US Constitution is a very short, concise document written in plain, spare language. What is in the text is the supreme law of the land. What may or may not be implied is in the imaginations of men other than those who crafted the document and quite simply has no force of law.
A Constitutional argument which avoids citing the text of the document is no argument at all, it's a waste of time for all involved. You haven't addressed the legality of secession at all, other than to claim that it's illegal because you say so. Necessity aside, any power not delegated to the United States nor prohibited to the states by the Constitution is indeed a reserved power of the states and/or a reserved right of the people.
Try again and stick to what appears in the text. Your own inductive leaps of logic weren't ratified by the states and aren't part of the supreme law of the land.
In Marbury v Madison, Chief Justice Marshall disagreed:
It is also not entirely unworthy of observation, that in declaring what shall be the supreme law of the land, the constitution itself is first mentioned; and not the laws of the United States generally, but those only which shall be made in pursuance of the constitution, have that rank.
Federal laws (if any) must be made pursuant to the Constitution. It is the legislature that passes legislation, not the judiciary or executive branches. Marshall noted that the legislature just can't make laws up because they want to:
The powers of the legislature are defined and limited, and that those limits may not he mistaken, or forgotten, the constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished, if those limits do not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed, are of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it; or, that the legislature may alter the constitution by an ordinary act.
Nowhere is secession a right reserved to the states (not even the 10th amendment).
Marshall also opined that it "cannot be presumed that any clause in the constitution is intended to be without effect; and, therefore, such a construction is inadmissible unless the words require it." Your claim that the right of secession is not reserved is contrary to the construction of the 10th Amendment, which states that 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." There must be a grant of power to the federal government to prohibit secession, or a prohibition upon the states from seceding.
Of course, some will claim that the people have the right to prevent secession. First and foremost, the ratifications were acts of the people of separate states, not the acts of all the people as a common mass. In US Term Limits v Thornton, Justice Thomas wrote:
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.
... As far as the Federal Constitution is concerned, then, the States can exercise all powers that the Constitution does not withhold from them. The Federal Government and the States thus face different default rules: where the Constitution is silent about the exercise of a particular power--that is, where the Constitution does not speak either expressly or by necessary implication--the Federal Government lacks that power and the States enjoy it.
... To be sure, when the Tenth Amendment uses the phrase "the people," it does not specify whether it is referring to the people of each State or the people of the Nation as a whole. But the latter interpretation would make the Amendment pointless: there would have been no reason to provide that where the Constitution is silent about whether a particular power resides at the state level, it might or might not do so. In addition, it would make no sense to speak of powers as being reserved to the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole, because the Constitution does not contemplate that those people will either exercise power or delegate it. The Constitution simply does not recognize any mechanism for action by the undifferentiated people of the Nation.
... In short, the notion of popular sovereignty that undergirds the Constitution does not erase state boundaries, but rather tracks them. The people of each State obviously did trust their fate to the people of the several States when they consented to the Constitution; not only did they empower the governmental institutions of the United States, but they also agreed to be bound by constitutional amendments that they themselves refused to ratify. See Art. V (providing that proposed amendments shall take effect upon ratification by three quarters of the States). At the same time, however, the people of each State retained their separate political identities. As Chief Justice Marshall put it, "[n]o 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." McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 403 (1819).
Gee. I wonder why James Madison didn't see that? Maybe he was just another 'damnyankee'.
Hey ---- don't go throwing higher math at that good 'ol boy. You'll make his head explode.
As you have noted, the supremacy clause simply sets the pecking order. But that's it - nothing in it could be construed to give it the meaning you ascribe. There is nothing in the clause that would prohibit a state from seceding, or anything mandating that the relationship is permanent.
The 10th amendment merely reserves the rights not mentioned in the constitution to the states and people.
Exactly. And unless your version of the Constitution contains a prohibition against state secession, the states possess the right.
The book I have on this was written by one of the descendants of one of the murdered men. So that probably colors his take on it some. But he said there was nothing more than some general talk of aiding US forces if they approached the area.
There was a serious plot of violence and murder by some of the Unionists. Here is a quote from the book, "Tainted Breeze, The Great Hanging at Gainesville, Texas 1862", which I just received today:
"...Young focused on ferreting out only the members who had planned a violent uprising. Young's queries as prosecuting attorney ... did reveal the outlines of a terrifying plot. Several admitted they intended to take possesion of North Texas using munitions from militia arsenals in Gainesville and Sherman...They had identified Confederate sympathizers and intended to murder them and their families..."
Some of the Unionists admitted to trying to contact the Union army and disaffected Indian tribes to coordinate an uprising. They reportedly managed to get some gunpowder from one of the Indian tribes. (These communications were a violation of the Confederate Articles of War, I believe, and punishable by death as specified in the Articles.)
One of the Unionists boasted to the public from the hanging tree of his comrades' plan to kill Confederate men, women, and children. I'm sure that inflamed the community. (One of the jurors had reported that there were 300-400 armed men in sight in Gainesville on Oct 1, the day of mass arrest, so there the makings of a mob were present.)
When alerted of possible lynch mob activities, the jury quickly tried and released over a dozen prisoners to keep them out of the lynch mob's reach.
Although you've noted in one of your posts that it wasn't a lone sheriff facing down the mob after that, it was pretty close. There was one guard at the jail where the prisoners were kept, and he stood off the lynch mob with a pistol. The mob retreated but did manage to hang an accused deserter and horsethief from a less well defended jail.
The jury later gave up 14 to the mob when faced with the threat that all remaining prisoners would be hung. Those 14 had included some implicated by previous testimony.
You are right in that the Confederate soldiers in town apparently did not protect the jury or the prisoners. Jury members were threatened, and some who did not favor the hangings eventually left the jury and were replaced with harsher jurors. One of the jurors was actually a member of the Unionist group (and one of the hung was a slave owner).
After the assasination of Young (who had tried to keep the trial focused on those who planned violence and murder), the trial went downhill. Some of those subsequently hung had been arrested because of their membership in the Union group but apparently had not known the plans of the uprising. "Tainted Breeze" lists 6 of those by name. There may well have been others among the hung who did not know or participate in the secret plans of the insiders of this group that came out in the trial. "Tainted Breeze" says in its Introduction that few of the victims had planned to usurp Confederate authority. In fact, the bulk of the roughly 200 arrested were released.
You can't answer, so you toss an attempt at insult and disengage. That's exactly what you did when you were using the handle "Who is George Salt?". All of that testimony in Congress, all that money spent chasing down former Confederates in South Carolina and arresting 1800 men and holding trials in order to get 82 convictions (many of which resulted only in fines as the maximum penalty allowable), was much ado about nothing. Of course there were people willing to perjure themselves before Congress about a huge threat from former Confederates riding about at night in bedsheets. There were millions of dollars in loot at stake.
I don't have the non-existent nuts of a fictional former slave as family heirlooms. I'll bet you don't have any either. ahaha
You really should break down and read the document instead of rattling around from pillar to post pretending to know what it contains.
A+B+C= hassayampa indeed. I'll give you credit for the lamest attempt to make this ridiculous case since the last time Walt was drunk enough to try to paraphrase the 10th amendment, though.
You may read the 10th amendment's plain English and translate it into Martian if you like, but it still reads exactly as it did when it was ratified. The meaning hasn't changed any more than the meaning of the 2nd amendment has changed.
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