Posted on 05/23/2002 8:52:25 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
Regards
If any founder thought the way you did (regarding the Supremacy clause), I certainly can't imagine the Constitution being ratified, since many were terrified of a federal behemouth that usurped any and all powers at will. Madison, Hamilton and Jay wrote 85 Federalist Papers to coax the reluctant states to agree to the new government. And these three men also represented states that expressly reserved the right to "resume" the powers of self-government at will. Your construction would render the views of the father of the Constitution void, and with it that of a future Chief Justice.
Beside the Virginia & Kentucky Resolutions - check the debates. During May and June of 1787, the founders debated granting the federal government the power to "negative all laws passed by the several States contravening". It was voted down, not once, but on 3 separate occasions (3-7, 3-7, and 5-6).
The founders voted against your interpretation.
No literate person would read it that way, pamphleteer.
Robert E. Lee did.
Walt
Good for them.
This is all good information, thanks.
It makes quite a contrast with the way secessionists in Maryland who DID act to overthrow the government, who DID cut telegraph wires, who DID burn bridges and who DID kill federal soldiers were treated. They were all released unharmed.
As I said in another post referring at least to the North Carolina soldiers hanged for treason by Pickett -- the CSA hanged more people for treason in one day than the US has in 226 years.
It's no wonder Robert E. Lee said slavery had a bad effect on both white and black, is it?
I appreciate the even nature of your posts.
Walt
And under the tenth amendment, the people retain the right to maintain the Union, which they have done.
No less a light than Jefferson Davis maintained that the power to provide for the common defense allowed the Congress to coerce the states.
Was Davis wrong?
Walt
Right.
I think we can assume that Chief Justice Chase was a fairly literate person.
There's no way the neo-rebs can show that Lee didn't find the "we the people" phrase in the Constitution as suggesting a perpetual Union. As Chief Justice Chase said, what can be more perpetual than a perpetual union made more perfect?
Lee said it was "idle" to talk of secession, and no honest, literate person would do so.
Walt
Well, that is false.
"The men at the convention, it is clear enough, assumed that the national government must have the power to throw down state laws that contradicted federal ones: it was obvious to them that the states could not be permitted to pass laws contravening federal ones...
It did not take long for the supremacy of the Supreme Court to become clear. Shortly after the new government was installed under the new Constitution, people realized that the final say had to be given to somebody, and the Connecticut Jurist and delegate to the Convention Oliver Ellsworth wrote the judicary act of 1789, which gave the Supreme Court the clear power of declaring state laws unconstitutional, and by implication allowing it to interpret theConstitution. The power to overturn laws passed by Congress was assumed by the Supreme Court in 1803 and became accepted practice duing the second half of thenineteenth century."
"The convention was slow to tackle the problem of an army, defense, andinternal police. The Virginia Plan said nothing about a standing army, but itdid say that the national government could 'call forth the force of the union against any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof.'
The delegates had expected to discuss something like this clause, for one of the great problems had been the inability of the old Congress toenforce its laws. Surely it should be able to march troops into states when necessary to get state governments to obey. But in the days before the convention opened Madison had been thinking it over, and he had concluded that the idea was a mistake. You might well march your troops into Georgia or Connecticut, but then what? Could you really force a legislature to disgorge money at bayonet point? 'The use of force against a state,' Madison said, as the debate started on May 31, 'would be 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.' Although he did not say so at the moment, he had another way of enforcing national law, which not only would be more effective, but also philosophically sounder. As the government was to derive its power from the people, it ought to act on the people directly. Instead of trying to punish a state, which was, after all, an abstraction, for failure to obey the law, the U.S. government could punish individuals directly. Some person -- a governor, a tax collector, a state treasurer -- would be held responsible for failure to deliver the taxes. Similarly, the national government would not punish a state government for allowing say, illegal deals with Indians over western lands, but would directly punish the people making the deals. All of this seemed eminently sensible to the convention and early in the debate on the Virginia Plan the power of the national government to 'call forth the power of the Union' was dropped. And so was the idea that the government should be able to compell the states disappeared from the convention. It is rather surprising, in view of the fact that the convention had been called mainly tocurb the independence of the states, that the concept went out so easily. The explanation is, in part, that the states' righters were glad to see it go; and in part that Madison's logic was persuasive: it is hard to arrest anabstraction."--
"Decision in Philadelphia" by Collier and Collier
Walt
Not the people as a whole, only the people acting within their states, thru their legislatures/conventions.
Just like liberals.....can't even complete a thought, without trying to get into the federal Treasury.
If you'd read the rest of my reply before teeing me up, you'd see that I also contemplated the possibility that they remained in the Union service, because their own construction of the secession issue, viz. their personal political opinions, led them away from that duty to their neighbors that Lee exalted over his own political opinion. Lee was mistaken in his opinion of the States' rights to secede, but he wasn't so bullheaded as to allow his opinion, no matter how firmly held, to lead him to a clash of arms with his Virginia countrymen.
And, for the record, I don't have a marble saint. I've just expended quite a few electrons back up the thread (maybe you skipped those posts) agreeing with WP that Lee had serious weaknesses as a commander and as chief military advisor to Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government.
ROTFLMAO!
You understand - they don't. It's not what was said AFTER ratification, it's what was said before ratification. Kudos to you suh!
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