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.
Benjamin Franklin: Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can.
Which of these natural rights do you think carry conditions which must be met in order to exercise them?
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All of them. For example, if you don't meet the criterion of abstaining from criminal activity you can justly be deprived of your liberty, your property, and your life.
So, the only obligations you are referring to are those that presuppose the Hotel California theory of union?
No. I used an example. Other obligations included mutual defense. And your "Hotel California" metaphor doesn't apply. There is a way to constitutionally secede. It requires the consent of the other parties to the Constitution. So you can leave, once you have consent.
Actually, “they” – the people who signed the ordinances of secession in the various states – had done nothing of the kind. Their grandfathers or great-grandfathers may or may not have done. Do you feel bound by the whims and preferences of your long mouldering ancestors? I confess that I don’t.
If your father dies owing a debt and all his assets are inherited by you, who pays the debt?
In any event, they continued to participate in constitutional elections and in the national government, so they continued to show their consent to be governed by the Constitution. The Constitution provides a means for altering the government by amendment. They never suggested amendments to change the way the government operated, so they continued to show their consent to be governed as the Constitution laid it out.
Hal,
With all due respect, the portion of my post quoted in post # 45 is hardly baseless. Cooperation between the states preceded the constitution by 20 years. The committee's of correspondence and the fight against the stamp act would be perfect examples. The continental congresses in Philidelphia, and by whose authority, the continental army was raised. This is what the phrase so aptly stated by Ben Franklin meant "Join or Die" referring in it is the illustration of a snake broken in several pieces with the name of a colony above each except for New England being lumped together and put over one section of that snake.
In your post #41, you reply to my question, "What is self-government? What is the lowest common denominator of what you would call self-government?" with the following statement:
"One. One person would be the absolute smallest number I can think of."
I am then to assume that you consider one individual to be the perfect number for your concept of self-government? Or at least, the most desirable?
I wish to be perfectly clear on your meaning. Not a country, not a state or county, district, city, town, village or tribe, but just one person deciding for themselves what is right and what is wrong?
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
In your post #59, you answer my question, "Bill, what is liberty? Your own, personal view, if you would." with the following:
"...I take it to mean the liberty to determine one's own nationality and the form of government to which one gives consent. If anyone else gets to make either of these decisions for you, you aren't remotely free..."
Then I take it, you support Hal in his theory that the perfect number for self-government is one, the individual, and that liberty can only be achieved on an individual basis? That a group cannot achieve liberty?
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
Then I take it, you support Hal in his theory that the perfect number for self-government is one, the individual, and that liberty can only be achieved on an individual basis? That a group cannot achieve liberty?
My interpretation of Hal's words is somewhat different to yours. I certainly don't understand him to be saying that a group cannot achieve liberty. And I certainly don't believe it myself.
Obviously Hal can speak for himself, but my understanding of what he said is that you cannot say to a group of people: "I'm sorry. You're not entitled to self-determination because there are too few of you. You come below the cut-off point which determines whether a group is entitled to such things." And so, theoretically, this right applies to groups down to the solitary individual.
I emphasise the word "theoretically". Because, in practice, there obviously could never be a Republic of Neil Hamilton or a Kingdom of Bill Torrens (which is a shame; I'd have asked Led Zeppelin to write the national anthem).
Nobody disputes that there is strength and security in numbers. Where we part company is that you believe that, if a group start out with a common accord but come to the point where their interests diverge, the larger element can force the smaller to stay with them. Dress it up as you may, it boils down to one region putting a bayonet to the throat of the other for no better reason than its own convenience. What was it that a Northerner said to "Bull Run" Russell in July 1861? "We must possess the entire control of the Mississippi." In other words, "our business interests are more important than Southern liberty."
Regards,
Bill
Last edited by bill_torrens; 12-17-2005 at 05:49 AM.
I am simply trying to determine the lowest common denominator at which liberty and self-government can be successfully achieved, according to Hal.
If I can infer from his past posts on the subject, the proposed Confederacy of eleven states would have been the upper most level liberty and self government that could be safely attained before becoming a dictatorship of the majority.
In his post above (#41), he states that the individual would be the lowest common denominator of liberty and self-government. I simply wish to understand his criteria for liberty and self-government.
I agree with you that hardly anyone disputes the idea of strength and security in numbers. My dispute is at what level of numbers does a minority have a right to dictate it's version of strength and security to a majority of a nation's citizens?
In other words, when the divergence occurs, what reasons could a minority give that would justify it's version triumph over the majority?
And if the minority does not occupy the moral high ground, as it were, but if it's wishes were carried out, they would be wrong and do harm to the majority? What if the minority was the one holding the bayonet to the throat of the body politic, instead of the other way round?
Should the minority hold sway in such an instance?
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
If liberty is the 'state of having freedom,' then it seems to me that in destroying state's rights, Southern people were left without liberty or individual rights. And if you force your ideals on another person, are you not determining your own definition of opportunity and freedom, which is also, in essence, censoring freedom of thought.
Liberty ceases to exist when 'Union' is no longer a matter of choice, and I'm of the firm belief that freedom to choose is the only real freedom that we have. Which makes liberty worth everything.
I've repeatedly asked myself why, and what was so sacred about the Union cause that it had to be preserved at all costs. Could God and the rest of America really not have managed without the Southern states? I'm intrigued and chagrined by a concept that embraces liberty and opportunity, but then pulls up the drawbridge once you're in.
I'm of the opinion that liberty is proportional to accountability/responsibillity; and that the greatness of liberty is determined by a people's ability to hold their government accountable to its' inherent principles.
"[T]he same principles that oblige us to submit to civil government do also equally oblige us to , where we have power and ability, to resist and oppose tyranny; and that where tyranny begins government ends. For, if magistrates have no authority but what they derive from the people; if they are properly of human creation; if the whole end and design of their institution is to promote the general good, and to secure to men their just rights, it will follow, that when they act contrary to the end and design of their creation they cease being magistrates, and the people which gave them their authority have the right to take it from them again.
If it be asked, Who are the proper judges to determine when rulers are guilty of tyranny and oppression? I answer, the public. Not a few disaffected individuals, but the collective body of the state, must decide this question; for, as it is the collective body that invests rulers with their power and authority, so it is the collective body that has the sole right of judging whether rulers act up to the end if their institution or not." (The Right to Rebel Against Governors: Reverend Samuel West, Boston, 1776)
How can you tallyho freedom whilst shoving it down the throats of another at the point of a bayonet; and which emphasis do you put on the United States..."United " or "States"?
"I saw in States Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy.... I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo." (Lord Acton)
Was the justice of the Union cause greater than that of the South, and if not, how can you possibly claim to promote freedom while at the same time ignoring justice?
"By physical liberty I mean the right to do anything which does not interfere with the happiness of another. By intellectual liberty I mean the right to think and the right to think wrong." (Robert G. Ingersoll)
The scope of inspiration is lost at the height of liberty's denial.
I've repeatedly asked myself why, and what was so sacred about the Union cause that it had to be preserved at all costs. Could God and the rest of America really not have managed without the Southern states?
Dawna,
In order to answer this, look 50 years after the war. As it was our ability to stay out of WWI was tenuous at best. If we let the south go, who's to say that Zimmerman telegram in 1915 wouldn't have been directed at Richmond, promising Wash DC instead of the SW as was promised historically when directed at Mexico?
Bill,
The south had a legal alternative if it wanted to leave, to seceede and rebel against a government because you cannot leave legally due to the lack of votes is what I would call hubris.
Respectfully,
Matt
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