slavery is at the bottom of everything they were worried about

[JohnTaylor]

Originally Posted by trice

Quote:
Originally Posted by trice
John, you begin by NOT claiming you are acted legally or constitutionally.

No. If there was no such "right of secession" and they were acting illegally, why would the Federal government have to let them go?

Tim, you are engaging in circular logic here. You seem to be saying that secession is illegal, so only the natural right of revolution remains. Yet, that natural right is also somehow illegal, so even that right doesn't exist, so secession is illegal.
If a natural right is inalienable, how does one active that right?

[JohnTaylor]

Originally Posted by trice

"the seceding states ... denied that they were in revolt. They insisted they were acting constitutionally and legally and peacefully ...

There was considerable debate in the State Conventions of 1860-61 as to whether resuming delegated powers amounted to revolution. Some said it did, some said it didn’t.

At the South Carolina Convention on December 20th 1860, William Porcher Miles, spoke in favor of retaining the Federal tariff laws and Customs Officers as an interim measure until some deliberate legal change could be arranged. Miles said, “It is not possible, sir, in a great revolution like this, which we have inaugurated, suddenly, by a stroke, in an instant of time, to change, absolutely and utterly, every previous existing relation. The thing cannot be done.” (Charleston Mercury, 20 December 1860, pg. 4, col. 2-5.)
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[JohnTaylor]

Mr. Goggin (of Bedford) quoted Madison: “And in the event of the failure of every constitutional resort, and an accumulation of usurpations and abuses, rendering passive obedience and non-resistance a greater evil than resistance and revolution, there can remain but one resort, the last of all; an appeal from the cancelled obligations of the constitutional compact to original rights and the law of self-preservation. This is the ultima ratio under all governments, whether consolidated, confederated, or a compound of both; and it cannot be doubted that a single member of the Union, in the extremity supposed, and in that only, would have a right, and extra and ultra-constitutional right to make the appeal.” (Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, vol. 1, Pg. 204)
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[JohnTaylor]

Mr. Carlile, quoting Madison, “But this dodges the blow of confounding the right to secede at all, with the right to secede from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation without a cause of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name for revolution, about which there is no rhetorical controversy.” (Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, vol. 1, Pg. 482)

[JohnTaylor]

Mr. Conrad said, “I hold that the people of a State, acting as a State, acting unanimously, therefore, so far as the rest of the world is concerned, are neither in a condition of revolution, nor are they rebels, traitors or insurgents, when they undertake, for just causes, to withdraw from this Federal authority.” (Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, vol. 1, Pg. 709)
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[JohnTaylor]

Mr. Wilson of Harrison said, It is unquestionably true that the people have a revolutionary right; but it is not fair to infer that the framers of our State papers intended to confer upon the people another and additional right? One of the grand objects of the Government was to vest the people with rights they did not possess in a natural state; hence it would have been idle to have stopped with the guarantee of natural rights alone. The revolutionary right is natural, unalienable, and inherent. As well might they have guaranteed to us any other natural, unalienable, and inherent right; such as the right to breathe the air of Heaven or drink the waters of the earth.
To my mind it is clear that the right to resume rests in each State to be exercised by its Convention possessing sovereign powers subject only to the action of the people. That right being thus exercised, and the State thereby placed in an abnormal condition, the remaining States have a right to demand an adjustment or settlement of any obligation that may rest upon the withdrawn State growing out of national obligation, public property. And for this, among other purposes, the right of treaty is interposed. If this mode prove insufficient the ultima ratio regum will have been attained, and war is the last resort.
If this were not so, and the right to resume depended upon the will of a majority of all the people, as argued upon this floor, it would place it in the power of a majority to “pervert the Government to the injury and oppression” of a minority, and give to that minority no other right but that of revolution, which, from the balance of power against it, would reduce it to a state of vassalage to the majority. The right of a State to judge of its grievances and act for itself as manifest from the fact that at the formation of the Government each Sate was independent and sovereign, and only delegated to that Government limited powers that did not divest it of its sovereignty.” (Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, vol. 2, Pg. 355-369)
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[JohnTaylor]

Mr. Wise directs the attention of the committee to the 8th paragraph of the Committee on Federal Relations (CFR) report, “the right of the people of the several States of this Union, for just causes, to withdraw from” the Union and “erect new governments.” The CFR had stricken the word “revolutionary” before the word “right” because they felt the right was not revolutionary. It was the “Virginian principle.” “Virginia was the founder and finisher” of this principle.
“Now do the committee mean to the State right of secession here, or do they mean to assert the mere revolutionary right of the individual people, which was the only right that George Mason declared? James Madison and Thomas Jefferson declared the right of a State to withdraw when the Federal compact should become intolerable – in 1798 and 1799 – and the victory of the principle was consummated in 1801. But the principle declared by George Mason in 1776 was simply the revolutionary principle, the right of the individual people, or the people in their individual capacity to revolutionize their Government, to run the risk of the halter, to run the risk of the charge of treason, all the risks of civil war, all the risks of criminal prosecution, in order to overturn a Government which should pervert its end, aim, and object, and which should destroy the happiness of the people.”
“Now, sir, is it not a serious inquiry what the report means in this paragraph? Does it mean the mere revolutionary right, the right to seize arms? Yes, sir, this is the doctrine of my friend, the Chairman of the Committee. That is what the Committee mean – the mere revolutionary right, uncovered by the ægis and panoply of States sovereignty, of State independence, having the sovereignty and independent power to command citizens, willing or unwilling, to take up arms in defence of the rights and dignity of the States and their own rights of property.”
“The gentleman from Norfolk means to deny any but the revolutionary right. But, ‘when all reasonable efforts may have failed, and then we will have to count the time of the old Union as no more.’ What then? Are we to resort to revolution then, to the right to rise up and seize arms, without a shield over us, without a sovereignty to stand by us, without an independent power to say ‘these are my citizens, and I have commanded them to them to obey their own sovereign’? Are we to be left only to the individual right of revolution, or are we not? If we are to be left to that naked right, if we are to be left bare, not only to the sword, but with necks bare to the halter, then I ask who is protect your people and my people from the consequences of their action? What else is there but the independence and sovereignty of the State of Virginia? Nothing else under Heaven, except the red right arm of war.”
(Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, vol. 2, Pg. 467-468)
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[JohnTaylor]

Mr. Wise then moves on to the 11th section of the CFR report (which Wise wrote and proposed), on the resumption of powers. “This means something, a little more than the revolutionary right – does it not? The revolutionary right is put in the eighth clause; and if the eleventh clause means anything, if I meant anything by that amendment, it is that the people should have not only the revolutionary right, but that they should have over them, covering them like the Heavens, the shield of the sovereignty and independence – of what? Of the individual people? No, no! the independence of the Commonwealth – the most holy, the most ancient, the proudest, the grandest name that Virginia ever took for her sobriquet. Not “State.” That is not commensurate with it. Not “community of people.” That is not equal to it. A community of people may be a mere neighborhood, maybe a city, maybe a corporation. But a Commonwealth! What is a Commonwealth? In the view of any man who has read international law or political history, or a political vocabulary, does Commonwealth mean anything short of independence and sovereignty?”
Mr. MacFarland asks whether resumption does not imply prior delegation? Mr. Wise answers, “Can he (MacFarland) conceive of a Commonwealth with the power of resuming at any moment sovereignty and independence, without attributing that Commonwealth with sovereignty and independence? If you grant me she is sovereign enough, and independent enough, whenever she dares to choose or chooses to dare, to resume all the power she has delegated, and to bring them home to her immediate exercise and unite them with the powers she has reserved, then you admit all that I wish to demonstrate.”
“If Virginia be a Commonwealth now, if she has the power to shield her people and say to the agent “you have maltreated my people, you have wronged them, and I will take affairs into my own hands,” that is all I want to make out for her. Let her now … say “I, the Commonwealth of Virginia resume my powers – the powers which I had delegated to an agent in trust for my people, and which have been abused. I now take them into my own hands.” Let her say that, and her people are safe. Then, if any United States attorney can be found to prosecute me for treason, I may put in my plea that I was commanded by my sovereign, who, when this federal compact was formed, reserved to herself all sovereign powers in the very fact of her reserving the right of resuming those she had delegated. Is that not so? Ought not the people of Virginia to be protected to that extent? Grant me this, and, if your people are oppressed, this protection is over them, and you might as well attempt to
“Fetter the flame with flaxen band,
To stop the ocean with the sand,”
as to stop secession by all the powers of tyranny. I would ask my friend from Richmond, how he would feel, if after revolution had commenced, he should be prosecuted for treason on the ground that the States was not sovereign and not independent; and if, when he should plead sovereignty and independence, the US attorney should cite the debates in this Hall and quote the gentleman himself for the doctrine that Virginia did give away her sovereignty? Why? Because if she had not given it away, she would not have to take it back.”
(Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, vol. 2, Pg. 470-472)
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[JohnTaylor]

Mr. Scott said, “It is true, sir, that I deny the right of a State to secede. There is, I admit, a sovereign right to throw off allegiance to the Federal government – a revolutionary remedy. Does that make a difference? I would as soon walk out of this Union, if I had a cause to do so – although I think it is only a revolutionary remedy – as if the power were recognized in the Constitution of the United States. But, … a State ought not to withdraw except for sufficient case. If it be a revolutionary remedy, she ought not to withdraw except for good cause; but she ought to withdraw if she has good cause to do so. And I say, sir, that whenever the State of Virginia shall think proper to withdraw from the Union, although it is a revolutionary remedy, and although a person who raises his arm against the United States would be considered guilty of treason, yet I am one of those who intends to be guilty of that treason. Treason is a crime of glory, according to the notion of those who commit it. It was a crime in Cataline; it was a glory in Washington; and I hold that every man who commits treason in the last sense, does it in obedience to his State and his people.”
(Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, vol. 2, Pg. 517-518)
Respectfully,
John Taylor

[JohnTaylor]

Mr. Richardson says, “The aim of my argument has been to show that our oppressions do give us the right of resistance – in other words, of revolution. That we have not exercised it, is because we choose not to do so. We have suffered, not consented to our wrongs. What, then, is the right of revolution? If unorganized bodies, in the existing state of things, have the right of resistance, a fortiori, and, as a conclusion of logic and common sense, organized and sovereign Commonwealths, free from anarchy, have the same right.” (Proceedings of the Virginia Convention of 1861, vol. III, Pg. 102).
Respectfully,
John Taylor