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.
Location: Baltimore, Charm City, Mobtown, "a foul nest of secessionist vipers" - take your pick.
Posts: 14
I'll restrict my comments to saying that I am not an "unconditional unionist". I firmly believe any state has the right to petition the Union to allow it to secede. Where the South erred was in skipping the Constitutional part and subjecting the question to the ultimate test, which the Confederacy failed.
Vous pouvez voir par mes vêtements que je ne suis pas un cowboy.
"The people of the free states have defended, encouraged, and participated; and are more guilty for it, before God, than the South, in that they have not the apology of education or custom." - Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin", on the North and slavery
I'll restrict my comments to saying that I am not an "unconditional unionist". I firmly believe any state has the right to petition the Union to allow it to secede. Where the South erred was in skipping the Constitutional part and subjecting the question to the ultimate test, which the Confederacy failed.
There is no provision in the Constitution for such a petition. The only way I can see for a legal secession would be a Constitutional amendment on the order of: "A state may dissolve the bands of Union and leave the United States when..."
And here would come a list of requirements for secession. The first being a vote favoring secession by a majority, 3/5, 2/3, whatever of the voters of that state. Others, IMO, would include that the seceding state assume its share of the national debt, pay its share of the cost of the federal infrastructure in that state, provide for fair compensation for the property and moving expenses of people wishing to leave the seceding states and move into the remainign United States, and many, many others. If, for example, Louisiana were to be the seceding state there would have to be some provision for free navigation of the Mississippi River to the Gulf. The list of provisos would necessarily be long and complex.
I'll restrict my comments to saying that I am not an "unconditional unionist". I firmly believe any state has the right to petition the Union to allow it to secede. Where the South erred was in skipping the Constitutional part and subjecting the question to the ultimate test, which the Confederacy failed.
GNLaFrance,
I concur.
There were other, legal methods, of secession that would not have clashed with the Constitution.
The South, in my opinion, bypassed them all and went directly to trial-by-combat, via unilateral secession.
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
What does "...would nullify the amendment....as contrary to natural law" mean?
"....but if a provision of the Constitution violates the Higher Law...then I believe one would have an obligation to oppose that law..." says what, exactly, about that Constitutional provision?
America did appeal to a Higher Law in it's revolution against the British Crown. Did the Confederacy?
As to the Constitutional provision, I would argue that a law, or even a constititional provision which violates the natural law is void and citizens would actually have a duty to resist. If a majority passed a constitutional amendment which stated that all redheads are to be killed and anyone harboring a redhead will suffer a similar penalty, I would still have a duty to aid and abet redheads seeking to avoid the consequences of the law. The Supreme Court is one of the checks on unrestrained majority power and I, were I a justice on the Court in the hypothetical, would believe that, indeed, a constitutional amendment could be unconstitutional. After all, that is exactly what some judges were charged with at Nuremburg: applying the supreme law of the land in contravention of the higher law.
As to the Confederacy, I think that some in the Confederacy believed that they did - those who saw it as a revolution. Those who were being dishonest and claimed some unilateral right of secession did not. This is, essentially, the natural right of revolution.
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
Where did timewalker state that a provision of the Constitution was unconstitutional?
Sincerely,
Unionblue
"I would nullify the Amendment outlawing New Jersey as contrary to the Natural Law to which the Founding Fathers appealed in the Declaration of Independance and throughout the Revolution." Timewalker's words.
The amendment in question is an amendment to the Constitution.
__________________ "In this Constitution, the citizens of the United States appear dispensing a part of their original power in what manner and what proportion they think fit. They never part with the whole; and they retain the right of recalling what they part with." James Wilson of Pennsylvania, October 28th, 1787
There is no provision in the Constitution for such a petition. The only way I can see for a legal secession would be a Constitutional amendment on the order of: "A state may dissolve the bands of Union and leave the United States when..."
Have you, by chance, read the proceedings of the state conventions of 1787-1790?
__________________ "In this Constitution, the citizens of the United States appear dispensing a part of their original power in what manner and what proportion they think fit. They never part with the whole; and they retain the right of recalling what they part with." James Wilson of Pennsylvania, October 28th, 1787
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