Posted on 05/23/2002 8:52:25 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
And yet few enter a marriage with the idea of it being finite. It is assumed that it will continue indefinitely, which is what the framers assumed about the Union. As marriage should be the palladium for happiness between a couple, so Union is the palladium of safety and security of this nation -- as George Washington said.
One aspect of the neo-reb rant is its unreasonable nature.
Your whole position involves many camels passing through the eyes of many needles.
Walt
Not attacking up mile-long hills well-covered by batteries may also have had something to do with it....Lee might have learned from the six charges up Malvern Hill that failed in 1862, during the Chickahominy campaign, but then he did it again at Gettysburg. Ouch.
By way of explanation, this was a habit officers on both sides had acquired in the Mexican war, when they got away with assaulting prepared positions defended by infantry and artillery repeatedly, because of the Napoleonic weapons they were facing and the inexperience of most of the Mexican troops. They wouldn't have gotten away with it against Wellington, but they weren't facing Wellington. So they, and Bobby Lee particularly, imbibed a deadly lesson. Thus Edward Bonekemper, How Robert E. Lee Lost the Civil War (Sergeant Kirkland's Press, Fredericksburg, Va.: 1998).
Touche'! Habet! One ear and the tail, sir.
Now if I understand this aright, the supremacy clause basically states that the constitution (and laws made in pursuance thereof and treaties) stands as the supreme law of the land - even overriding any laws made by individual states.
Correctamundo.
Nothing in any subsequent amendments take away this power.
Not quite. All subsequent amendments modify everything that has been agreed to heretofore. But you are correct, the Supremacy Clause remains in place and was not repealed by any Amendment. Just beware that you don't walk on the reserved (undelegated) powers which are mentioned and warned about in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. Which include the power of the People to act as Sovereign.
The question you will want to argue is, did the People of New York and Georgia give up their sovereignty, and cease to be a people -- cease to exist except as policy objects -- the minute they ratified the Constitution? Would you like to argue that the Constitution was like a locked room, in which the federal government replayed the scene of Odysseus and the suitors of Penelope, as soon as the doors closed behind them? Do you really want to argue that the Supremacy Clause gave the federal government, as soon as a State had ratified the Constitution, or joined the Union, the powers of a Roman paterfamilias, to cordon off a state, rope off and herd its people, cut them off and slay them, burn them down and take what was left to divide among the other states as spoil, because the States checked their sovereignty and their rights at the door, and that their rights -- and their fate -- became whatever today's triumphant faction in federal government said it was?
Think about this before you reply. I call it the "Penelope's Suitors" model of Union.
Secession, in this case, can be defined as breaking away from the federal government.
No. The word "government" isn't in it. Secession is a people-to-people political act, modeled on the Roman model in which the plebs physically removed themselves from the Roman civitas and passed, as a body, out of the jurisdiction of Roman law. They did so because they had the right to do so, because they weren't bound to the land, to the City, or to service.
The Southern States were Peoples, the same Peoples who had ratified the Constitution in the first place, and they didn't just legislate disunion like some pork-chop appropriations bill. They convened and sat, State by State, as a People, and exercised Sovereignty -- which cuts all deals, and trumps all powers and rights. Their act was above governments and constitutions. It was a sovereign act by a sovereign entity determining its own fate as if by revolution. The Southern States deliberated on various solutions to their discontents, and after more than 30 years of discussion, they went into convention, assumed their more awful aspect as the several Peoples, and seceded. They didn't rebel, as Lincoln trivialized their actions. What they did, they did by the highest right there is, for which they answered only to God Himself.
And then Abraham Lincoln conquered them, and made himself, as the First Magistrate of the United States Government, their master and Sovereign.
Pretty revolutionary, huh? I wonder if people in the People's Republic of Ohio ever got it. It's not too subtle -- like the difference between being your own person, and saying "sir" a lot.
Had Ernest Hemingway been alive in 1861, he would have been first in line to offer his services to Victoria Woodhull.
And you say we Southerners have no sense of humor.
Quoting Article I, Section 9 (in part): "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Pardon me if I point out that 1861 was anterior to 1869; that the Supreme Court is notorious for reading election returns and war news; and that they were....wrong, just as they were wrong in Plessey vs. Ferguson and United States vs. Miller.
And like I said, when we talk about Union and disunion, convention and ratification and secession, we're playing at a level above the Supreme Court's pay grade. The real answer was, the acts of secession voted by the conventions and plebiscites of the Southern States in 1860 and 1861 were ultra vires the United States and its federal courts.
You can quote Article 1, Section 9 all you want. It means nothing. This is not an example of an ex post facto law. It is the court ruling on the Constitutionality of a piece of legislation passed by the state of Texas. They ruled that act invalid.
It's the Yankee influence since the war.
Could the Pig Have Flown?
The so-called seceded states' ability to consolidate their revolution aganst the lawful government was inversely proportional to the willingness of the loyal Union people to oppose them.
The rebels never had a chance. Sam Houston said, "They will never let you go."
Too bad he was shouted down by the traitors.
Walt
Good for you. Myself, I've always thought "living document" was just another anagram for "now we've got you!" and "screwed to the wall!"
Is an "emanation" the moral equivalent of "interstices"? Or is it more an ex post facto "penumbra"?
No it doesn't mean "nothing"........unless you've seceded!
This is not an example of an ex post facto law. It is the court ruling on the Constitutionality of a piece of legislation passed by the state of Texas. They ruled that act invalid.
Point is, the decision was handed down in 1869, Helloooo! So it's not a valid reference when discussing the secession debates, any more than it is valid to teach a course on John Marshall, but then include scholiae all over the place on what Thurgood Marshall would have said about that, or what William O. Douglas invented later.
No more valid, either, than insinuating that the executive orders of Andrew Jackson and James Knox Polk were invalid because they owned slaves, in contravention of the XIIIth Amendment.
Okay,.... <reconsidering>...then it's arguing a posteriori, which in historiography is called teleology. And it's a fallacy.
You have, I hope, from time to time noticed the difference between "we won't make it" and "we shouldn't try". Two different concepts, separated by moral courage. The latter is the hallmark of a slave.
"Ureasonable" is a subjective judgement; what appears unreasonable to you may appear perfectly reasonable to someone else. You suffer, rather seriously, from the illusion that subjective judgements on your part represent an objective reality. You will never be able to even begin to understand the world you live in until you overcome this malady. Unfortunately, your prognosis is not encouraging.
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