Was Secession Treason?

Daveblack ^ | June 30, 2003 | DaveBlack

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America was founded on a revolution against England, yet many Americans now believe the myth that secession was treasonable. The Declaration of Independence was, in fact, a declaration of secession. Its final paragraph declares inarguably the ultimate sovereignty of each state: [T]hat these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. Following the Declaration of Independence, each colony established by law the legitimacy of its own sovereignty as a state. Each one drew up, voted upon, and then ratified its own state constitution, which declared and defined its sovereignty as a state. Realizing that they could not survive upon the world stage as thirteen individual sovereign nations, the states then joined together formally into a confederation of states, but only for the purposes of negotiating treaties, waging war, and regulating foreign commerce. For those specific purposes the thirteen states adopted the Articles of Confederation in 1781, thus creating the United States of America. The Articles of Confederation spelled out clearly where the real power lay. Article II said, “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.” The Article also prohibited the secession of any member state (“the union shall be perpetual,” Article XIII) unless all of the states agreed to dissolve the Articles. Six years later, the Constitutional Convention was convened in Philadelphia, supposedly to overhaul the Articles. The delegates in Philadelphia decided to scrap the Articles and to propose to the states a different charter—the United States Constitution. Its purpose was to retain the sovereignty of the states but to delegate to the United States government a few more powers than the Articles had granted it. One major difference between the two charters was that the Constitution made no mention of “perpetual union,” and it did not contain any prohibition against the secession of states from the union. The point was raised in the convention: Should there be a “perpetual union” clause in the Constitution? The delegates voted it down, and the states were left free to secede under the Constitution, which remains the U. S. government charter today. After the election of Thomas Jefferson, the Federalist Party in New England was so upset that for more than ten years they plotted to secede. The party actually held a secession convention in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1814. Although they ultimately decided not to leave the Union, nobody really questioned the fundamental right of secession. In fact, the leader of the whole movement, Massachusetts Senator Timothy Pickering, said that secession was the principle of the American Revolution. Even John Quincy Adams, who was a staunch unionist, said in an 1839 speech about secession that in “dissolving that which can no longer bind, we would have to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center.” Likewise, Alexander Hamilton said, “to coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised.” These men, and many others, understood that there was a right of secession, and that the federal government would have no right to force anybody to remain in the Union. Some people see the Confederates as traitors to their nation because many Confederate leaders swore to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States when joining the United States Army. However, at that time people were citizens of individual states that were members of the United States, so that when a state seceded, the citizens of that state were no longer affiliated with the national government. Remember, the Constitution did not create an all-powerful national democracy, but rather a confederation of sovereign states. The existence of the Electoral College, the Bill of Rights, and the United States Senate clearly shows this, and although it is frequently ignored, the 10th Amendment specifically states that the rights not given to the federal government are the rights of the states and of the people. But if states do not have the right to secede, they have no rights at all. Lincoln’s war destroyed the government of our founding fathers by the “might makes right” method, a method the Republicans used to quash Confederates and loyal Democrats alike. After the war, Jefferson Davis, the President of the Confederacy, was arrested and placed in prison prior to a trial. The trial was never held, because the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Mr. Salmon Portland Chase, informed President Andrew Johnson that if Davis were placed on trial for treason the United States would lose the case because nothing in the Constitution forbids secession. That is why no trial of Jefferson Davis was held, despite the fact that he wanted one.  So was secession treason? The answer is clearly No.

[capitan_refugio]

I believe the figures I provided for you did show a couple of things. They address how different parts of the country dealt with the issue of slavery.

In 1790, every existing state, save for Masachusetts and Maine (which had been part of Massachusetts) permitted slavery. Even then, slavery was a predominately southern institution. For instance, in 1790, black slaves made up over 60% of South Carolina's total population, and 40% of Virginia's population. However, in the next 60 years, up to the 1850 Census, the North was extremely successful in ridding itself of this evil practice. In 1850's, several political events hastened the eventual conflict between the States. And by 1860, in the North, the practice of slavery was nearly extinct.

In 1790 there were 694,000 slaves.
In 1820 there were 1,500,000 slaves.
In 1830 there were 2,000,000 slaves.
In 1840 there were 2,500,000 slaves.
In 1850 there were 3,200,000 slaves.
In 1860 there were 3,800,000 slaves.

Even after the prohibition of slave imports around 1800, the slave population was growing exponentially.

Your analogy is absurd. Let me pose another. Is a reformed drug addict morally superior to a practicing drug addict? Most people in the south did not participate in the slave trade; however, the powerful landed Southern elite were slave addicts in the worst way. They brought the South down because they were morally decrepit and were unable to muster the moral courage to do the right thing.

[capitan_refugio]

"Consult any diplomatic history or text published anywhere in the world, and there appears a remarkable unanimity on what constitutes nationhood. The accepted definition in the 1860's, as now, requires that a people sets up and maintains a working civil government, is able to protect territorial integrity, and is recognized as a nation by the other leading nations of the world. Of these three key elements, the Confederacy achieved only the first, the operation of a working, if rickety civil government. Territorially the Confederacy lost ground in huge chunks almost daily and from the outset. As for recognition, not one single nation, large or small, granted formal diplomatic relations or exchanged ambassadors. In the absense of two of the three requisite standards of nationhood, and especially the vital recognition, the Confederacy can not be regarded as anything more than a very organized insurrection or sepratist movement."
- William C. Davis
"The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy"
Winner of the Austin Civil War Round Table's Laney Prize

William Davis is the recipient of three Jefferson Davis Awards.

[capitan_refugio]

"Incredibly, there is a notion among some that the South really was not beaten by the Union. A few years ago a quiz at the Sons of Confederate Veterans meeting contained a question referring to April and May 1865 as the period at which "the Confederacy withdrew from the war." Withdrew? ... When a contestant's industry is destroyed. When the will of its people to continue the fight is crushed. When its armies are surrounded or on the run and are dissolving rapidly through desertion. When its ports are closed and its territory carved up into uncoordinated bits. When its economy is shattered, and it cannot feed its people in uniform, or keep them from simply going home. When its armies have no where to go, no one to turn to, and cannot muster enough men at arms to meet a foe at odds even as bad as one-to-two. And when the men leading those armies have long since concluded that they cannot win. When all that happens, a combatant does not "withdraw" from a war ... The Confederacy was utterly, crushingly, devastatingly defeated, and to suggest anything else, is not just myth, but pure fantasy."
- William C. Davis

If they don't have their mythology, they don't have anything.

[capitan_refugio]

I don't see the Constitution being shredded, but I do believe we have seen over the past 40 or more years an assault on the Constitution through the judiciary. In part because of the necessity of having Supreme Court nominees approved by the Senate, only a handful of truly conservative justices have been appointed to the Court since the days of John Kennedy and the rise of Federally-sponsored socialism. (I am aware that the trend goes back even further, but under Kennedy and Johnson, Federal social programming, with the accedence of the courts, accelerated.)

Today, there are arguably only three philsophical conservative justices on the USSC: Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. There are four unabashed liberal justices: Stevens, Souter, Ginsberg, and Beyer. Note that both Stevens and Souter were nominees by Republican presidents (Ford and GHW Bush, respectively). Souter, in particular, has turned out to be a stealth liberal. The other two, O'Conner and Kennedy have often been moderate, or swing votes on the Court; they too, are both nominees of a Republican president, Reagan.

Seven of nine justices on the bench of the USSC have been Republican nominees, and yet there exists only a "moderate" court. The true test of our current President will be in his Court appointments, if he has any. There are four likely candidates for retirement (or death) in the next few years. One is a conservative - Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is in his 31st year on the bench and is 79 years old. Two are liberals - John Paul Stevens, who is four years older than Rehnquist, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who is 70 years old and has been in frail health due to colon cancer and other ailments. The fourth likely retirement is moderate Arizonan Sandra Day O'Conner.

If President Bush can choose more people like Scalia, Thomas, and Rehnquist, the socailist excesses of the past 40 years will be peeled away, and the world will be a better place.

[mac_truck]

P.S. all you stupik Yankees share a common trait with the gwhore lovers, a willingness to believe anything.

[ContraryMary]

Of course it was treason -- just as it was treasonous for the southern states to secede a century later. The fact that the American colonists won their war of secession while the South did not, makes the colonists no less treasonous.

[stand watie]

NOT a problem.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

you are also a "native American"!

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

YEP! most commonly with a .36 caliber or .44 caliber bullet in the back of the head.

the damnyankees were REALLY good at coldblooded murder of un-armed civilians & NON-white POWs in gray uniforms.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

according to Dr. Walter Williams, NO state would have ratified the Constitution if they had believed that secession would be punished at the point of a bayonet.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

TWBTS was started by the HATEFILLED damnyankees in KS. the year was 1855.

BTW, the American Bible Society paid for rifles to attack the civilian farmers in MO. the rifles were called "bibles for kansas".

HUNDREDS of poor farmers were slaughtered by those "oh, so wonderful & marvelous" folks from KS;they were called REDLEGS.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

YOU get the PINK POPCICLE AWARD for today's dumbest post.

if the damnyankees had had a lick of common sense, they would have traded with the CSA;we southrons would have needed things from damnyankeeland for decades, if not forever.

BUT since the WHOLE reason for the WBTS was to subjugate the south, the north chose war.

that is TRUTH!

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

our southland was willing FINALLY to go to war to protect our NATURAL rights.

slavery had little or nothing to do with the war, period. end of story.

free dixie,sw

[azhenfud]

"...slavery had little or nothing to do with the war, period. end of story..."

In retrospect, maybe slavery did. Only the faces of the masters/slaves changed. The government now owns the shackles.
Regards,
Az

[Non-Sequitur]

YOU get the PINK POPCICLE AWARD for today's dumbest post.

That was posted three days ago and you're just getting around to awarding your daily award? By rights it should have won your PINK POPCICLE (sic) AWARD on July 3rd. Who's the dumb one?

[Non-Sequitur]

slavery had little or nothing to do with the war, period. end of story.

Bullsh...I mean, bull manure.

[Non-Sequitur]

according to Dr. Walter Williams, NO state would have ratified the Constitution if they had believed that secession would be punished at the point of a bayonet.

Oh well hey, if Dr. Williams said it then it must be so. End of discussion right there.

[Ditto]

He also co-wrote the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions that bemoaned the attempt to concentrate power "into one sovereignty" and made reference to the Constitution as a "compact to which the States are parties" and that the States are "not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government" and that "as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."

Madison is stating that the Constitution is a compact that each State can judge for itself whether it has been violated and what measure of redress is required of them.

Both said that states are not bound to enforce acts of Congress which violate the Consititution, but where do either say that there is a right to unilateral secession, and exactly what features of the "compact" were being violated by the Federal government in 1860?

[capitan_refugio]

N-S

I suppose, since under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union these states were bound together permanently as a country, they ratified the Constitution so they could get out! ;^)