Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
I have come across an interesting constitutional argument made by Jefferson Davis that I have never heard brought up before (please forgive me if it has) which I will take even further:
If, as Lincoln claimed, the States that seceded from the U.S.A. could not secede and remained in the U.S.A., then he (as President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the Army of the United States) and every U.S. Army soldier that participated in the invasion of these States could be considered as having committed treason as defined in the U.S. Constitution by levying war against States of the United States (note that Article III, Section 3, Clause 1 uses the term “them”, not “it”, when describing the United States).
Here are Davis’ own words in a letter to J.L. Power of June 20, 1885:
“Ignorance and artifice have combined so to misrepresent the matter of official oaths in the United States that it may be well to give the question more than a passing notice. When the “sovereign, independent States of America” formed a constitutional compact of union it was provided in the sixth article thereof that the officers “of the United States and of the several States shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution,” and by the law of June 1, 1789, the form of the required oath was prescribed as follows: ‘I, A B, do solemnly swear or affirm (as the case may be) that I will support the Constitution of the United States’.
That was the oath. The obligation was to support the Constitution. It created no new obligation, for the citizen already owed allegiance to his respective State, and through her to the Union of which she was a member. The conclusion is unavoidable that those that did not support, but did not violate the Constitution, were they who broke their official oaths. The General Government had only the powers delegated to it by the States. The power to coerce a State was not given, but emphatically refused. Therefore, to invade a State, to overthrow its government by force of arms, was a palpable violation of the Constitution, which officers had sworn to support, and thus to levy war against States which the Federal officers claimed to be, notwithstanding their ordinances of secession, still in the Union, was the treason defined in the third section of the third article of the Constitution, the only treason recognized by the fundamental law of the United States.”
Documentation:
U.S Constitution, Article II, Section1, Clause 8:
“Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--‘I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States’.”
From the oath of all U.S. Army noncommissioned officers and privates, approved by Act of Congress on September 29, 1789 (unchanged until 1950):
“I, A.B., do solemnly swear or affirm (as the case may be) that I will support the constitution of the United States.”
From the oath of all U.S. Army officers, enacted July 2, 1862:
“And I do further swear (or affirm) that, to the best of my knowledge and ability, I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter, so help me God”
U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3, Clause 1:
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”
In conclusion, I believe he makes a strong argument that shows another case of the hypocrisy of Lincoln whom, out of ignorance (doubtful) or by design, was determined to ignore the U.S. Constitution and establish the dominance of the General Government over the States forever.
(I have put on my fire-resistant suit, so flame away, gentlemen!)
__________________ Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans
Davis' disingenuous statement would be correct if you accept that secession was permitted by the constitution and that the US made war on the basis of coercing seceding states back into the Union.
The constitution does provide for using force to put down a rebellion. Whether secession is legal or rebellion becomes moot in the presence of multiple acts of seizing federal property and, in two glaring instances, firing on the US flag.
Today we can say it was a war to preserve the union, and it may well have been. But it quite plainly started as a rebellion. To argue, as Davis did, that it was the US that committed treason by making war against legally seceding states completly ignores the obvious fact that a shooting war was instigated by Confederate forces under Beauregard and ordered by Davis -- supposed manipulation notwithstanding.
Davis was not arguing that it was treason to make war against legally seceding States (that would be one nation invading another), he was making the point that if you accept the U.S. view that the States had not seceded and were still States in the Union, then it was treason under the Constitution to levy war against them.
__________________ Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans
"He still ignored that armed rebellion justifies making war on the rebels, states or not."
I don't believe that Davis would agree with your statement, as he makes clear in this February 18, 1851 speech to the U.S. Senate:
"The Government of the United States has the power to suppress insurection and to repel invasion. What insurrection do you suppose is contemplated? Only insurrection against the authority of a State, in which civil government shall be paralyzed by physical power. The occasion, too, must be sudden and ephemeral. If the masses of any State choose, they have the power, and it is undeniable, to change their whole form of government. An insurrection, then, must be one against a State, and a State may seek the aid of the Federal Government to justify it to introducing its power in the State for the purpose of suppressing insurrection. In the better days of the Republic, may I not say the purer days of the Republic, the militia of the States were relied upon for the enforcement of the laws against those who resisted them within the borders of the States. Thus General Washington's Secretary of War called on the militia of Pennsylvania to put down the whiskey insurrection. He did not call on the Army and Navy of the United States"
I would only disagree with his statement in that if a State wished to change it's form of government and remain in the United States, that government would still have to be republican in nature as stipulated in the Constitution.
__________________ Member, Sons of Confederate Veterans
Secesh,
That is an interesting play on words is it not?I see your point.My friend playing by the rules was never a Lincoln strength or a Union war aim.Ole is correct also in that the President could Constitutionally put down a rebellion.I'll leave out all the unconstitutional acts of Lincoln because I'll get angry and start whistling "Dixie."
Ashley
"If the masses of any State choose, they have the power, and it is undeniable, to change their whole form of government."
Unfortunately, our Northern friends find it all too easy to deny this self-evident truth. Therein lies the rub.
Bill- As one of your Northern friends, I have never denied this 'self- evident truth.' Having the power and making it stick are two completely different things. The American colonists, having that same power, made it stick- by the grace of God, and with arms! For it was not going to happen any other way! Any peoples can change their government, peacefully hopefully, or by force if they are willing to take up arms. And if they wish to make it stick, they had better be prepared to do just that. Saying, wait a minute, we don't like this king, or The Constitution says you can't do that, nyaah, nyaah, probably isn't going to be enough power to see you through. Cheerio, ed
__________________ 'It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag'
Bill- As one of your Northern friends, I have never denied this 'self- evident truth.'
If you don't deny it, I am genuinely puzzled as to why you would support military activity aimed at stopping it happening. And if the only difference between the revolutionaries of 1776 and those of 1861 is that the latter just happened to fail, why is so much invective poured on them? Could it be that failure is the one unforgivable crime in American culture?
How is it you can see step one, skip step two, and go directly to step three and then decry those who stop step two?
You don't deny, but you are upset, when those who try cannot meet the conditions of a successful revolution, those having the will and the power.
Here is where the South truly failed and where any revolution will fail when resorting to force. You must convince a majority of the people in your nation, not just your region of it, that your cause is just and worth dying for. If you do not have the resources or the manpower, then you had better make a tremendous effort to make your minority the majority by convincing the rest of your nation that your cause is just.
Failure by just skipping steps one and two is not only unforgivable crime in American culture, it unforgivable to the persons you drag down with you.
Sincerely,
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
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