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Old 12-02-2014, 11:39 AM
 
14,780 posts, read 43,582,793 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The Mysterious Benefactor View Post
All fair questions. And I suppose if I had all of the right answers, I could be remembered as a great president. Though I have the benefit of hindsight, in this case, I personally would have allowed secession rather than a war leaving 600,000 Americans dead and the South destroyed.
Fair enough. My perspective is that such a course of action would have meant that the United States and by extension "Americans" would have ceased to exist as an identifiable body. By allowing the precedent of secession being acceptable when disagreements arise, you establish the basis for the country to divide into smaller and smaller regional entities. Your course would ensure that there wouldn't be a USA and most likely not a CSA either as there was plenty they disagreed on once you removed their common rallying point of pro-slavery.

I think the price paid was ultimately worth it to counter the folly of the southern cause and forge a better and stronger nation.

 
Old 12-02-2014, 11:46 AM
 
Location: Atlanta
6,793 posts, read 5,644,866 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT View Post
I know the facts, I'm just interested in you clarifying your interpretation of the facts.
I didn't contradict facts therefore no clarification required.
 
Old 12-02-2014, 12:14 PM
 
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Moreover, James Madison argued that the Union was a different type of contract. “We are not to consider the Federal Union as analogous to the social compact of individuals: for if it were so, a majority would have a right to bind the rest, and even to form a new constitution for the whole… .” The Constitution was framed by the unanimous consent of the States present in convention assembled in Philadelphia, but it had no teeth until the States, in convention, ratified it. Even at that point, Madison suggested, the States could not bind the rest into accepting the document or remaining in the Union. The Constitution does not have a coercive principle, as Ellsworth called it. An “indissoluble” Union would suggest that it does.
Waging war “against them (the States)” is an act of treason, and as per the Constitution, a State can only be “protected” by the central government on the application of the legislature or the executive in the case of invasion. Lincoln violated both constitutional safeguards against coercion by the central government in 1861, of course only if the states remained in the Union, as he insisted they did. If not, war required a declaration from Congress, something Lincoln did not have, and by declaring war, Congress would have recognized the Confederate States as a legitimate government. Either way, Lincoln violated the Constitution, thus rendering the “bloody nose” argument against secession void.
The “one people” argument was dissected by John Taylor of Caroline and Abel P. Upshur in their respective commentaries on the document. In his New Views of the Constitution of the United States, Taylor contended that the continuity between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution reinforced the sovereignty of the states, and declared that, “There are many states in America, but no state of America, nor any people of an American state. A constitution for America or Americans, would therefore have been similar to a constitution for Utopia or Utopians.” This view is in sharp contrast to Chase, who argued that continuity maintained a “perpetual” Union. Taylor wrote, “This construction bestows the same meaning upon the same words in our three constituent or elemental instruments, and exhibits the reason why the whole language of the constitution is affianced to the idea of a league between sovereign states, and hostile to that of a consolidated nation.”
Upshur was more direct in his defense of both nullification and secession as a right of the sovereign States. Published as a direct attack on Story’s polemic, Upshur’s A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government is perhaps the last great commentary of the antebellum period. Upshur decried the “imaginative construction” of people like Story and Webster and insisted that consolidation was never the aim of the Constitution. In defending the right so the States to control the government and “interpose” their sovereignty to curtail central authority, Upshur said:
The checking and controlling influences which afford safety to public liberty, are not to be found in the government itself. The people cannot always protect themselves against their rulers; if they could, no free government, in past times, would have been overthrown. Power and patronage cannot easily be so limited and defined, as to rob them of their corrupting influences over the public mind. It is truly and wisely remarked by the Federalist, that “a power over a man’s subsistence is a power over his will.” As little as possible of this power should be entrusted to the federal government, and even that little should be watched by a power authorized and competent to arrest its abuses. That power can be found only in the states. In this consists the great superiority of the federative system over every other. In that system, the federal government is responsible, not directly to the people en masse, but to the people in their character of distinct political corporations. However easy it may be to steal power from the people, governments do not so readily yield it to one another. The confederated states confer on their common government only such power as they themselves cannot separately exercise, or such as can be better exercised by that government. They have, therefore, an equal interest, to give it power enough, and to prevent it from assuming too much. In their hands the power of interposition is attended with no danger; it may be safely lodged where there is no interest to abuse it.
During the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania outlined “the distinction between a federal and a national supreme government; the former being a mere compact resting on the good faith of the parties, the latter having a complete and compulsive operation.” If the Constitution established a federal government, and it did, then the Constitution did not have a “compulsive operation.” In essence, the people of the states in convention could either interpose their sovereignty to arrest the acts of the general government or withdraw from the Union. Morris, a nationalist, recognized that the states still held sway when he suggested that the Constitution be voted on by state and that the states, not a consolidated people, had to ratify the document. The Constitution as ratified in 1787 and 1788 is “a mere compact resting on the good faith of the parties.” That compact can be unilaterally broken at any point by the same people of the States which ratified it.
Neither the Framers nor the ratifiers believed that the Constitution created a “consolidated nation” as Story suggested. It was argued in all state ratifying conventions that the opposite was true. The Union was made “more perfect” but never consolidated. The States still had all powers not delegated to the general government, as the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution clearly illustrates, and every State proposed a “Tenth Amendment” in their suggested bill of rights in the months after ratification. John C. Calhoun wrote that, “I maintain that sovereignty is in its nature indivisible. It is the supreme power in a state, and we might just as well speak of half a square, or half a triangle, as of half a sovereignty.” In other words, delegated powers were still retained by the people of the States at large for their exercise if they chose to rescind that delegation. Sovereignty can never be divided or surrendered in part. If the states had it in 1776 as Jefferson wrote, then they maintain that sovereignty to this day and thus can exercise that sovereignty through an act of interposition or withdraw.
As for those who suggest that a state carved from the common property of the United States does not have the same sovereignty as the original thirteen states, Jefferson made clear in his Northwest Ordinance of 1787 that new states would enter the Union on “equal footing” with the existing states, meaning that they had the same rights, privileges, and immunities as the original thirteen, including the right of interposition and withdrawal. Jefferson himself authored the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, a clear indication that he believed as much. Kentucky was not one of the original states, but the people of Kentucky had the same right of recourse that the people of Virginia had in opposing the unconstitutional Sedition Act of 1798. If the argument against this position is correct, then the original thirteen states, themselves pared from the territory of Great Britain, would be illegal and illegitimate. That is not the case.
Secession and interposition—nullification—are healthy discussions to have in a federal republic. There mere threat can, and has, spurred the central government to reform. The American people are not ready for secession. The states, the economy, and the people are too dependent on the central authority. If nothing else, Hamiltonianism has accomplished slavish loyalty to the system. Yet, perhaps following the lead of John Dickinson of Delaware would be appropriate at this critical juncture in American history. Americans as a whole recognize that the debt is excessive, America is virtually bankrupt, and the central authority is out of control. Secession is a manifestation of the fear that the situation will not improve. Perhaps that is the case, but Dickinson faced the same situation in the 1770s.
excerpted from: Is Secession Legal? | The American Conservative
 
Old 12-02-2014, 12:54 PM
 
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I'll see your right-wing political columnist and "historian" and raise you James Madison...

"The honorable gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. GERRY) asks if the sovereignty is not with the people at large; does he infer that the people can in detached bodies contravene an act established by the whole people? My idea of the sovereignty of the people is, that the people can change the Constitution if they please, but while the Constitution exists, they must conform themselves to its dictates. But I do not believe that the inhabitants of any district can speak the voice of the people: so far from it, their ideas may contradict the sense of the whole people."

*****

Dear Sir--I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes 'nullification' and must hasten the abandonment of 'Secession.' But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy. Its double aspect, nevertheless, with the countenance recd from certain quarters, is giving it a popular currency here which may influence the approaching elections both for Congress& for the State Legislature. It has gained some advantage also, by mixing itself with the question whether the Constitution of the U. S. was formed by the people or by the States, now under a theoretic discussion by animated partizans.

"It is fortunate when disputed theories, can be decided by undisputed facts. And here the undisputed fact is, that the Constitution was made by the people, but as imbodied into the several States, who were parties to it and therefore made by the States in their highest authoritative capacity. They might, by the same authority & by the same process have converted the Confederacy into a mere league or treaty; or continued it with enlarged or abridged powers; or have imbodied the people of their respective States into one people, nation or sovereignty; or as they did by a mixed form make them one people, nation, or sovereignty, for certain purposes, and not so for others.

"The Constitution of the U. S. being established by a Competent authority, by that of the sovereign people of the several States who were the parties to it, it remains only to inquire what the Constitution is; and here it speaks for itself. It organizes a Government into the usual Legislative Executive & Judiciary Departments; invests it with specified powers, leaving others to the parties to the Constitution; it makes the Government like other Governments to operate directly on the people; places at its Command the needful Physical means of executing its powers; and finally proclaims its supremacy, and that of the laws made in pursuance of it, over the Constitutions & laws of the States; the powers of the Government being exercised, as in other elective& responsible Governments, under the controul of its Constituents, the people & legislatures of the States, and subject to the Revolutionary Rights of the people in extreme cases.

"It might have been added, that whilst the Constitution, therefore, is admitted to be in force, its operation, in every respect must be precisely the same, whether its authority be derived from that of the people, in the one or the other of the modes, in question; the authority being equally Competent in both; and that, without an annulment of the Constitution itself its supremacy must be submitted to.

"The only distinctive effect, between the two modes of forming a Constitution by the authority of the people, is that if formed by them as imbodied into separate communities, as in the case of the Constitution of the U. S. a dissolution of the Constitutional Compact would replace them in the condition of separate communities, that being the Condition in which they entered into the compact; whereas if formed by the people as one community, acting as such by a numerical majority, a dissolution of the compact would reduce them to a state of nature, as so many individual persons. But whilst the Constitutional compact remains undissolved, it must be executed according to the forms and provisions specified in the compact. It must not be forgotten, that compact, express or implied is the vital principle of free Governments as contradistinguished from Governments not free; and that a revolt against this principle leaves no choice but between anarchy and despotism."

James Madison: Notes on Nullification
****

The entire argument you are proferring relies on the Constitution having been formed as a simple treaty/compact between the States. As clearly stated by Mr. Madison, this is NOT the case. The compact was formed by the People through their agents the States in their highest authorative capacity. They could have chosen to form a simple league or treaty, but they did not. They instead chose to bind the people of their several states into a single people, nation and sovereignty.

WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

NOT WE THE SEVERAL STATES...WE THE PEOPLE
 
Old 12-02-2014, 01:10 PM
 
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Thomas Jefferson had no problem with separation when it was thought in the future that
East & West may break off from each other.
I think he knew a thing or two about the Constitution.

God bless them both, & keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better
Thomas Jefferson on Secession (1803) – LewRockwell.com
 
Old 12-02-2014, 01:59 PM
 
14,780 posts, read 43,582,793 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Snowball7 View Post
Thomas Jefferson had no problem with separation when it was thought in the future that
East & West may break off from each other.
I think he knew a thing or two about the Constitution.

God bless them both, & keep them in union, if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better
Thomas Jefferson on Secession (1803) – LewRockwell.com
Jefferson had no problem with the idea of separation...as a last resort...

*****

"That must be the last resource, not to be thought of until much longer and greater sufferings. If every infraction of a compact of so many parties is to be resisted at once, as a dissolution of it, none can ever be formed which would last one year."

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience [has] shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."

"Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguished period and pursued unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate, systematic plan of reducing [a people] to slavery."

"...preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people -- a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;...should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

"But, my dear friend, if we do not learn to sacrifice small differences of opinion, we can never act together. Every man cannot have his way in all things. If his own opinion prevails at some times, he should acquiesce on seeing that of others preponderate at others. Without this mutual disposition we are disjointed individuals, but not a society."

*****

He was a vociferous defender of the right to revolution. His statement of "let them go" is taken out of context as he was talking about the States of New England and the "fools errand" upon which they were on with their talk of secession. It was not an actual invocation of a perceived right to do so beyond the inherent right of all peoples to make such a choice if left with no other choice.

Jefferson required a high hurdle for people to cross to justify rebellion. There must literally be no other option left other than submission to tyranny. I strongly feel that Jefferson would not have felt the Southern cause remotely justified in pursuing secession.

More interesting than that is we actually know how Jefferson treated "secessionists". He had them arrested and tried for treason as in the case of Aaron Burr.
 
Old 12-02-2014, 02:39 PM
 
Location: Parts Unknown, Northern California
48,564 posts, read 24,032,368 times
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Hey, Snowball...

Let me ask...

Suppose that it can be established that secession was entirely legal and that the US was wrong to have forced the Confederate States back into the Union.

In that case, what do you propose should be done? Should the eleven Confederate states be allowed to depart now in 2014? Should slavery be re-instituted in those states?

In other words, would you want the results of a successful secession imposed on the nation today?
 
Old 12-02-2014, 03:11 PM
 
1,562 posts, read 1,486,417 times
Reputation: 2686
Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT View Post
Fair enough. My perspective is that such a course of action would have meant that the United States and by extension "Americans" would have ceased to exist as an identifiable body. By allowing the precedent of secession being acceptable when disagreements arise, you establish the basis for the country to divide into smaller and smaller regional entities. Your course would ensure that there wouldn't be a USA and most likely not a CSA either as there was plenty they disagreed on once you removed their common rallying point of pro-slavery.

I think the price paid was ultimately worth it to counter the folly of the southern cause and forge a better and stronger nation.
You do establish the basis further divisions, no question. These divisions by no means would have been assured, though. Secession was not an easy decision for the South to make, nor would it have been done lightly by subsequent States. In order for comparatively minor disagreements among the States to cause continual secession and fragmentation, then the federal government would have to be of essentially no value. This would keep a constant pressure on the federal government to serve the needs of the people of each State effectively and equally. Not a bad thing.
We're in real danger of going off-topic here, so I'll only add that I appreciate the information you've provided, and your perspective.
 
Old 12-02-2014, 05:01 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT View Post
Jefferson had no problem with the idea of separation...as a last resort....
I don't think he would have done what Lincoln did.

Quote:
Originally Posted by NJGOAT View Post
More interesting than that is we actually know how Jefferson treated "secessionists". He had them arrested and tried for treason as in the case of Aaron Burr.
This is more than a stretch. Burr was acquitted, and it's not a good comparison because it
involved foreign countries and plans to settle frontierland.
 
Old 12-02-2014, 05:05 PM
 
9,981 posts, read 8,565,402 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
Hey, Snowball...

Let me ask...

Suppose that it can be established that secession was entirely legal and that the US was wrong to have forced the Confederate States back into the Union.

In that case, what do you propose should be done? Should the eleven Confederate states be allowed to depart now in 2014? Should slavery be re-instituted in those states?

In other words, would you want the results of a successful secession imposed on the nation today?
well, that doesn't make any sense, the last question, obviously would be ridiculous.
I am of the opinion that all-out civil war could have been avoided by a better President,
and perhaps a more careful Northern congress. Eventually, I think the two sides would
have reunited as the same United States again, working out differences without so
much waste and pain.
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