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.
Then why all the Southern states coming down so hard on New England for advocating secession? Why the editorial in the Richmond press being so point-blank about no state being able to secede from the Union, calling such an act treason?
If this was done in response to the Hartford Convention why so?
Sincerely,
Unionblue
So I guess it was only ok if THEY wanted to do it, but nobody else could??
__________________ "In mortal combat, a man may and will become so infuriated by the din and dangers of a bloody fight that his heart will turn to stone and his every de sire [be] for blood."
John Hadley, 7th Indiana after the battle at Port Republic
Then why all the Southern states coming down so hard on New England for advocating secession? Why the editorial in the Richmond press being so point-blank about no state being able to secede from the Union, calling such an act treason?
If this was done in response to the Hartford Convention why so?
Sincerely,
Unionblue
Neil,
The Hartford Convention's proceedings were held in secret. As politicians do, their political opponents took advantage of the opportunity to denouce the Federalists with the most politically debilitating charge they could think of in order to gain support and poison the audience against whatever the convention would come up with. The worst charge at the time was to be disunionist. It worked. The charges hastened the demise of the Federalist Party.
Is that belief consistent with the Supremacy Clause and the sworn duty of the President to faithfully execute the laws?
Ordinary folks don't usually try to reconcile their beliefs against conflicting claims that way<g>
Seriously, the Supreme Court held for the no-Federal-power-to-compel side in 1859, and didn't overturn it for about 125 years. They also held that the state had a duty to obey the Constitution and law.
If the worry is a dictatorial Federal government, the opinion makes sense. Since the Civil War there has been a steady shift in the center of gravity towards the Federal side as states traded things off for money. Attitudes now are less concerned with concentration of power in the hands of the Federal government.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Historically, all gov'ts gravitate either to greater centralization Or towards dissolution.
Nature abhors a vacuum, as does politics. The decision by the courts to declare a law valid but unenforceable, is throwing the question of enforcement back into the political arena.
Buchanan could not work his way out of such a conundrum because he did not want to work his way out of it. Preferring to leave the solution up to his successor and Congress.
IMO the CW only speeded up the process of centralization that had already long been in progress in the USA.
As I have noted many times before, Secession had always been resisted by the Central Gov't whether the Presidency or Congress were controlled by southerners or not. Secession was never viewed by the the President's or Congress' as an unencumbered right.
Well that proved one great mistake, upheld neither by battle nor the U.S. Supreme Court.
As any good lawyer will tell you, it's not what the "view" of the law is, it's what the written law says, and what the court says.
If you sign a document, it matters little what you thought it said; what the document says is what one agrees to when signing the document.
In the U.S. Constitution, representatives of the 13 original colonies accepted what was written, by signing that document. States were no longer sovereign, because they passed certain rights and duties onto the federal government. The states had given up sole power over their militias and they gave up the right of sovereign nations, the right to coin money, among others.
The Confederacy took the course of rebellion; it possessed no written right to rebel. It lost and lost all views of what they thought the U.S. Constitution said.
"...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; which the gentlemen from New Jersey would be among the last to admit. If we consider the Federal Union as analogous, not to the social compacts among individual men, but to the conventions among individual states, what is the doctrine resulting from these conventions? Clearly, according to the expositors of the law of nations, that a breach of any one article, by any one party, leaves all the other parties at liberty, to consider the whole convention as dissolved, unless they choose rather to compel the delinquent party to repair the breach...."
James Madison, 19 June 1787.
Debates on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, pp.206-207.
__________________ POWER & MONEY
"Your New-York bankers and merchants are shrewd people, but I never gave them credit for so much sagacity as when they took the Government Loan. It was not merely patriotism, it was a high stroke of policy. It has saved the Government, and what they will regard as equally important, saved them from a great financial disaster."
"...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; .
Isn't this the very definition of a democracy?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Battalion
Clearly, according to the expositors of the law of nations, that a breach of any one article, by any one party, leaves all the other parties at liberty, to consider the whole convention as dissolved, unless they choose rather to compel the delinquent party to repair the breach...."
.
And hence the war.... so what is the point here? I'm missing something I think.
__________________ "In mortal combat, a man may and will become so infuriated by the din and dangers of a bloody fight that his heart will turn to stone and his every de sire [be] for blood."
John Hadley, 7th Indiana after the battle at Port Republic
Please, set the context of your snippet, Battalion. From the post it is difficult (impossible?) to discern, what you are trying to say.
Is Madison talking about the gov't under the Article's of Confederation or the new constitutional gov't he (Madison) wants in its place. (either, neither, Both?)
Battalion is quite brilliant, gentlemen. He sets us up with a tantalizing tidbit and, no doubt, sits back and lets us stew while trying to figure out what he only hints at.
Note the date. And that Madison equivocated considerably. Or was that Adams?
Essentially, we have a snippet of a snippet of what Madison was thinking on that date. In a discussion, we often think out loud. Madison thought out loud on paper. It remains that the Document was accepted and ratified. Madison's day-by-day musings are important, as were the musings of the other Founders. The upshot is that an agreement was reached, and not one of the Founders prepared for dissolution; it was unthinkable.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Linear Mode
