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Well, Jefferson's monuments of error are those who would wish to dissolve the union. Hardly a ringing endorsement of secessionist theory there.
The other quote is the same one you posted just above. The copy and paste keys are getting a workout. Not so much the brain cells.
I hope you all that are saying this is illigal are actually ready to back up your rhetoric by also publically stating that you believe the Federal Government should be able to tell states..(and then by proxy the people) what to do, not the other way around.
I believe that the people created the states, and the states created the Federal Government, They’re not OUR bosses, WE are theirs!
In Federalist Paper 45, Madison guaranteed: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."
Insurrection and rebellion are mentioned several times in the Constitution, though not in a favorable light, being grouped at times with other crimes.
Which is ironic, considering the reasons behind writing the Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation to begin with. If the Constitution explicitly condoned rebellion, it would ultimately have been an ineffective document, and incidents such as Shay's Rebellion would have been protected.
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Secession is not a crime, there is simply no right to it. It is a meaningless act... sort of like declaring yourself to be invisible.
If secession is not a crime, why did Buchanan and Lincoln declare it illegal? And while the right to secession is not outlined in the Constitution - for obvious reasons - it is possible to amend said document, thereby requiring a seceding state to gain 3/4 of the other state's permission as well as a slew of other prerequisites for Constitutional amendment.
One could surmise that the 10th Amendment already includes secession as an implied power, and considering the length the Supreme Court has taken some other Amendments it seems plausible enough..
I'm not sure how. The original question was whether Texas had status as a state despite its act of secession during the war. Not only does the answer influence determinations concerning the apllicability of law to fact in the case proper, but as Texas was the plaintiff in an original bill, if it were not a state, the case could not have proceeded. Chase answers the question directly and thoroughly, based on what were already known and accepted standards and thinking.
Again, we will just have to agree to disagree on this one. I stand by my original contention. That the dicta had no binding force in terms of precedent. BTW -- Texas was under Reconstruction Rule at the time the case was filed, so it is kinda up in the air what the powers that be had in mind. And as Coon Dog pointed out, Chase was hardly a dis-interested party in the outcome. He was a rabid-anti-secessionist and like others of the ilk, treated the Southern states as states when it suited, and as conquered subjects when it suited.
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It was written in the summer of 1892, and the original wording was very carefully considered by the author who himself put particular emphasis on "indivisible". Certainly people today if they ever recite the Pledge do so in at least a detached manner. I raised the point in furthering into the future a continuum of thought concerning the perpetual nature of the union.
The Pledge is not law of the land, anyway. Speaking of the "indivisible" part. Like many states, Texas has its own pledge. To wit: "Honor the Texas Flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas. One and Indivisible'. As it is, the annexation agreement allowed Texas to divide into 3 to five seperate states...so really, the pledge is contradictory to that fact. So I really don't see any relevance with either one as to the larger issue.
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I don't know. Lincoln was 17 years old when Jefferson died. Chase was 18. They certainly may have disagreed on things as men will do, but I expect that the foursome would actually have looked forward to a chance to sit down together.
Perhaps. I know I would have loved to been the fly on the wall!
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It has been widely reported that they engaged in a revolution, which I have no reason to doubt. The right of revolution is confirmed in the Constituition. The right of secession is not. Some will try to take the 10th Amendment as a means by which to incorporate powers that they can imagine without limit as justly belonging to the states as they are not reserved to the feds. This is cheating, especially if evidence should exist pointing to the notion of the power's never having been admitted to or meant to exist at all.
It is not cheating, and I think we are coming the full circle here. It is wrong to frame the question as where is a state given the right to secede? The way to put it is where is the federal government given the authority to prevent it. It has been pointed out many, many, times on this thread of the vast powers retained by the soveriegn states as opposed to the specified and limited ones granted by the federal government.
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Having looked, I've found no indication of the word having had any distinctly different definition at the time. It was commonly used in association with things that are presumed to have no end, such as hope, honor, faith, or service to the Lord, but never that I have come across in the sense of "perpetual until next week" or "perpetual for the time being".
Fair enough, but as you know though, the AOC was replaced by the Constitution which contained no such wording.
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Yes, I saw it. The permanency of the Confederacy was of course undone by agents beyond their control, so no test of the strength of their commitment was ever made. But they would have encountered some issue without doubt if member states had felt free to come and go with repsect to the CSA as they might have seen fit to at this time or that.
This relates to the matter addressed concerning the AOC. I think we all agree (as Doc pointed out) that certainly the countries INTENDED and desired for the union/confederacy to be perpetual/permanent. But this is more than offset by the voluntary nature of union and underpinnings of the American Revolution and beliefs of the founding fathers as they saw the relationship of the governed to government.
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If it were so obvious, there would not now or ever have been debate of it, and particularly not debate in which the obvious side keeps coming up short. I suspect myself that among the long-lived founders and certainly among their immediate successors, there was some kicking of oneself for not having thought to include specific language barring simple secession.
There really wasn't...for the longest time (a true debate over it). The prevailing consensus in the North was letting the South go in peace (which was all they wanted to do, anyhow). Lincoln knew this well...which was why he provoked the incident at Ft. Sumter. That way he could unite northern opinion for his invasion around the issue that U.S. honor had been insulted. It was strategy which -- I admit -- worked as planned.
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This is certainly an important concept, but it is not fractal, in that it looks different at different levels of magnification. The nature of a representative republic based on democratic principles is that some portion of the population will always be subject to governance without its consent. Tens if not hundreds of millions gave no consent at all for an improper war in Iraq, but there was no rush to secession over it. Here we have something as benign as modernizing a health care system that is rapidly driving the nation toward further financial ruin, and this is somehow taken as a sign of the over-reach of an out-of-control government necessitating disolution of the union? This seems a little far-fecthed.
Sure, it is the nature of the beast, so to speak, that some segment of the population will always be underrepresented in a federal republic. However, I don't think your comparissons of issues today are quite on target with the way it was then (after all, there are many conservatives who oppose the war in Iraq). In those days, however, you had a pretty well defined division which generally followed straight lines. There was differences between the North and South which were fairly evident from the beginning. In fact, a good book on the subject is "Cracker Culture in the Old South." It was written by the late Dr. Grady McWhiney of Texas Christian University, and his theses is that those animosities traced back to the old country. They didn't much like each other to begin with! LOL
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Well, it's an endorsement of revolution as the eternal right of oppressed peoples, but it doesn't go much further than that.
But revolution generally involves secession and a declaration of independence. For sure the American Revolution did. Something else to consider, is that Salmon Chase was under no illusions. Concerning the upcoming trial of Jefferson Davis on charges of treason, he strongly advised Edwin Stanton to "cease and desist". As he put it:
"If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion...His (Davis') capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason."
I hope you all that are saying this is illigal are actually ready to back up your rhetoric by also publically stating that you believe the Federal Government should be able to tell states..(and then by proxy the people) what to do, not the other way around. I believe that the people created the states, and the states created the Federal Government, They’re not OUR bosses, WE are theirs!
As is almost fashionable, you take the analogy to the worng and a much overblown extreme. The people collectively -- not you and yours -- are the "boss" of the legislature, in that by their numbers, they retain or retire their representatives based on overall performance and impression. The word "boss" does not mean that you or anyone else has any legitimate right of intrusion into the operations of this government. Indeed, the government was deliberately set up so as to shield and insulate those representatives from the whims and vicissitudes of popular passion, these being easily fired up and manipulated to ill-advised end by the chicanery of charlatans and the deceits of demagogues.
Outside of the voting booth, you may speak and write in whatever fora may accommodate you regarding your ideas and the wisdom of pursuing them. You may convey these ideas to your representatives by many means, including by hiring a lobbyist to go hang out around his or her office and harass his or her staff. But you have no expectation at all that your efforts will bear fruit. No reprensentative at any level of government is beholden to you or committed in any way to doing what you think should be done. Any assumption by you of any such obligation is unwarranted and entirely inappropriate.
Which is ironic, considering the reasons behind writing the Constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation to begin with.
The Philadelphia Convention, like unsuccessful versions before it, convened to consider amendments to the Articles, this on account of inefficiency and ineffectiveness that had been brought about under the Articles as they were, including an inability to react in anything like a responsible manner to Shay's Rebellion.
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Originally Posted by Frankie117
If the Constitution explicitly condoned rebellion, it would ultimately have been an ineffective document, and incidents such as Shay's Rebellion would have been protected.
I think the founders beat you to this idea by treating insurrection and rebellion in the same terms as other crimes.
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Originally Posted by Frankie117
If secession is not a crime, why did Buchanan and Lincoln declare it illegal?
Crime consists of violations of the criminal code. Legality has to do with conformance to all valid law, up to and including the Constitution.
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Originally Posted by Frankie117
And while the right to secession is not outlined in the Constitution - for obvious reasons - it is possible to amend said document, thereby requiring a seceding state to gain 3/4 of the other state's permission as well as a slew of other prerequisites for Constitutional amendment.
That's right. You can propose and seek to pass any sort of amendment to the Constitution that you'd like. This was tried about 800 times during the 1990's, for instance.
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Originally Posted by Frankie117
One could surmise that the 10th Amendment already includes secession as an implied power, and considering the length the Supreme Court has taken some other Amendments it seems plausible enough..
One could surmise as well that your state govenment has the implied 10th Amendment power to come over to your house and pull out all your teeth with a pliers. That power is, after all, not reserved to the federal government anywhere within the Constitution.
As is almost fashionable, you take the analogy to the worng and a much overblown extreme. The people collectively -- not you and yours -- are the "boss" of the legislature, in that by their numbers, they retain or retire their representatives based on overall performance and impression. The word "boss" does not mean that you or anyone else has any legitimate right of intrusion into the operations of this government. Indeed, the government was deliberately set up so as to shield and insulate those representatives from the whims and vicissitudes of popular passion, these being easily fired up and manipulated to ill-advised end by the chicanery of charlatans and the deceits of demagogues.
Outside of the voting booth, you may speak and write in whatever fora may accommodate you regarding your ideas and the wisdom of pursuing them. You may convey these ideas to your representatives by many means, including by hiring a lobbyist to go hang out around his or her office and harass his or her staff. But you have no expectation at all that your efforts will bear fruit. No reprensentative at any level of government is beholden to you or committed in any way to doing what you think should be done. Any assumption by you of any such obligation is unwarranted and entirely inappropriate.
Tell me sir, could your father enter into a contract that required you to make payments to another party without your consent or approval? No court would entertain the validity of such a contract. Could your grandfather enter such a contract? Again no.
But the sheeple earnestly believe that an agreement entered into by generations long deceased are perpetually binding on all subsequent generations. And that a body of people need permission to form a government of their choosing, failing to understand that the people are sovereign, not their government. Or as Jefferson wrote, that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
On the other hand, Madison did author Federalist, no. 39, in which he stated:
Each State in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. Acknowledging that a State, having the ability to bind itself with a 'voluntary act', would imply that State would also have the ability to UNBIND itself with another 'voluntary act', would it not?
Anyone who refuses to recognize that secession (and the armed insurrection it would undoubtedly engender) is the last refuge of the patriot is a simpleton. You have traded your freedom for stability - in perpetuity - if you cannot admit that the permanent political class, coupled with unconstitutional government support of nearly (soon to be more than) half of the population of this country, has polluted the well of liberty. It is arguable as to whether the well can be cleaned up, short of digging a new well.
Shouldn't have taken power. Lincoln was wrong to stop them. He ABUSED his power, yet some think he was one of our greatest presidents. Balderdash!
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