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.
Patrick Henry, true to form, was the bluntest of all as he led the charge against the Constitution in Virginia. "The fate...of America may depend on this...Have they made a proposal of a compact between the states? If they had, this would be a confederation. It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated, national government. The question turns, sir, on that poor little thing--the expression, WE, the people, instead of the states, of America." If "the states be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great, consolidate, national government, of the people of all the states." This difference, Henry warned, would profoundly limit the rights of future Virginians to act on their own. "Suppose the people of Virginia should wish to alter their government; can a majority of them do it? No; because they are connected with other men, or, in other words, consolidated with other states...This government is not a Virginian, but an American government." Because the American Revolution of 1776--in which he had played no small part--had ultimately made Virginia free and independent, the proposed Constitution was "a resolution as radical as that which separated us from Great Britain.
In response, the Federalists refined their critics' terminology while confirming that the new union would indeed be indivisible. The Constitution, Federalists stressed, hardly annihilated the states or melted thirteen peoples into one mass for all purposes. State lines would continue to configure the politico-legal map, and state governments would continue to wield important powers. In fact, states would form the basic building blocks of the new government. State borders and state-law electoral qualifications would shape the House of Representatives; state legislatures would elect a Senate in which each state would have equal weight; state-chosen electors would ballot for president; a Senate sensitive to states' rights would confirm federal judges; each state's borders and republican form of government would be guaranteed; and states could help propose and ratify federal constitutional amendments. Thus the new Constitution was not wholly national but partly federal, argued the Constitution's supporters, who cleverly called themselves "Federalists" rather than "Nationalists."
But on the fateful question of whether states would continue to be truly sovereign, with rights of unilateral exit, the Federalists agreed that the Anti-Federalists had not exaggerated. The difference of opinion on this question was not over what the document meant, but over whether the impermissibility of future secession was reason to commend or condemn the proposed "more perfect Union." Madison at Philadelphia stressed that one of the essential differences between a "league" and a "Constitution" was that the latter would prevent subunits from unilaterally bolting whenever they became dissatisfied.
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[Akhil Reed Amar, _America's Constitution: A Biography,_ pp. 33-36]
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Even more striking than what the Constitution's friends said is what they did not say. No leading Federalist ever publicly sought to win over states' rightists by conceding that a state could unilaterally nullify or secede in the event it later became dissatisfied. The Federalists' silence here was deafening, given how reassuring to states' rightists such a response would have been in all the places where Philadelphia proposal hung precariously in the balance. Responding to the fears voiced by Anti-Federalist "men of little faith," Federalists stressed many specific protections, including bicameralism, separation of powers, enumerated powers, refinements in representation, the amendment process, and the states' status as building blocks in the national government. But never did Federalists float the right of an individual state to secede or nullify. Never did they say, "Give the new plan a try, and if you don't like it, your state may always leave."
Alongside what various people said and did not say in constitutional debates, we must attend to what the American people themselves did and did not do in the act of constitution itself. No state conventions, in its ratification instrument, purported to reserve the right of its state populace to unilateral secession. Notably, Virginia's convention spoke of the right the people of the United States, not the people of Virginia, to reassume power through future acts of popular sovereignty. Nor did any state convention impose any condition on its act of ratification.
The secession question arose most dramatically in the New York ratification convention, where Anti-Federalists held a strong majority when discussion began. At one point, Federalist Alexander Hamilton despairingly described "our chance of success here" as "infinitely slender." After extensive debate, and upon receiving word that New Hampshire and Virginia had recently ratified the Constitution as the decisive ninth and tenth states--thus ensuring that the Constitution would go into effect in these ten states--Anti-Federalist leaders proposed a compromise under which the convention would ratify the Constitution "upon condition" that the new Congress make way for certain constitutional amendments. With the ultimate prospects for New York ratification still in grave doubt, the offer tantalized Hamilton and his allies, but in the end the refused to take the bait. Instead, the Federalists insisted on replacing the words "upon condition" with language expressing the convention's "full confidence" that Congress would take up the suggested amendments--a factual expectation rather that a binding legal condition. The convention then beat back a proposal from Anti-Federalist John Lansing that "there should be reserved to the state of New York a right to withdraw herself from the Union after a certain number of years, unless the amendments proposed" were taken up. In this sharply focused debate, no one supposed that the Constitution already contained a general right of state secession. Had such a right been thought to exist, Lansing's proposal would have limited it (to "a certain number of years" and a small set of triggers) and thus states' rightists should have opposed Lansing, while continentalists should have favored him.
In actual fact, the exact opposite occurred. At the risk of alienating swing voters and losing on the ultimate ratification vote, New York's Federalists rose up to oppose the Lansing compromise. In doing so, they made clear to all observers--both in New York itself and in the many other places across the continent where men were following the New York contest with interest--that the Constitution did not permit unilateral state secession. In a letter to Hamilton, Madison had emphasized that "the Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever. It has been so adopted by the other States" (including Madison's own Virginia). Hamilton read the letter aloud to the Convention and then added his own words. The "terms of the constitution import a perpetual compact between the different states...The [Article VI] oath to be taken stands in the way" of any subsequent right of unilateral secession. According to the contemporaneous account published in New York's Daily Advertiser, both Hamilton and his fellow delegate John Jay insisted that "a reservation of a right to withdraw...was inconsistent with the Constitution, and was no ratification."
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[Akhil Reed Amar, _America's Constitution: A Biography,_ pp. 37-38]
Alexander Hamilton said in the New York Ratification Convention that the "'terms of the constitution import a perpetual compact between the different states. ... The [Article VI] oath to be taken stands in the way' of any subsequent right of unilateral secession." [Alexander Hamilton, "New York Ratifying Convention. First Speech of July 24," in the Hamilton Papers, Vol 5, pp. 193-195, quoted in Akhil Reed Amar, _America's Constitution: A Biography,_ p. 38]
"Like the Founders, Lincoln worried about militarily defensible borders and the need to prevent the emergence of two powerful and hostile regimes, side by side, generating an arms race or a trade war that might lead to the permanent militarization or impoverishment of the continent. From the Founding to the outbreak of the Civil War, the United States flourished as a remarkable free- trade and demilitarized zone. As Lincoln saw it, those Americans in any given state who disliked Union policies were free to leave, but they had no right to take the land with them, or to impose their secessionist beliefs on their pro-Union neighbors both within their states and beyond. All Americans had invested in Fort Sumter and had a stake in the Mississippi River, and no single state or region could unilaterally take its land or waters and go home.
"America as a whole, however, might decide to divide. Neither Lincoln nor his Federalist predecessors meant to prevent national reconsideration when they insisted that the more perfect union must be 'indivisible' or 'indissoluble.' Lincoln elsewhere hinted at several ways that a national alteration of borders might properly occur, via constitutional amendments (perhaps informed by nonbinding referenda or national conventions), federal statutes and treaties, and regular presidential elections. The right of the entire American people to rethink national boundaries was part of the continental people's inalienable right to alter or abolish; and Lincoln, as a proud pupil of the Preamble, emphatically affirmed government of, by, and for the people.
"Thus what we the American people did in 1788, we were free to undo in 1861, and are free to undo today, for that matter. But the Preamble's words and underlying vision gave earlier generations—and continue to give Americans in the twenty-first century—strong reasons to embrace union as liberty's best hope."
[Akhil Reed Amar, _America's Constitution: A Biography,_ pp. 52-53]
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In a pair of _Federalist_ essays penned separately by Hamilton and Madison, Publius elaborated the argument that, in the highly improbable scenario of a national military despotism run amok, states could ride to the rescue. In a wholly national regime lacking independent state governments, "if the persons entrusted with supreme power become usurpers, the different parcels, subdivisions, or districts of which it consists, having no distinct government in each, can take no regular measures for defense. The citizens must rush tumultuously to arms, without concert, without system, without resource." But in the United States, a very different scenario could unfold. Should tyrannous national leaders attempt a military coup d'état, "the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. ... [The standing army] would be opposed [by] a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. ... Local governments ... could collect the national will and direct the national force." The chief advantage of this latent force was that it would probably never be put to the test. The very existence of small but expandable militias organized by state governments could deter a large professional standing army organized by the national government from acting abusively--much as a would-be monopolist must take into account not only current competitors but also others poised to enter the market if prices rise too high.
By balancing military power between two levels of government, the American people would in theory retain greater control over both. The national government could put down any local coup or insurrection menacing the republican government of a single state or region, but any scheme of national tyranny could be thwarted by an alliance of local militias led by state governments, in the spirit of 1776. Thus, wrote Hamilton/Publius, "the people, without exaggeration, may be said to be entirely the masters of their own fate. Power being almost always the rival of power, the general government will at all times stand ready to check the usurpations of the state governments, and these will have the same disposition towards the general government. The people, by throwing themselves into either scale, will infallibly make it preponderate. If their rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress."
To be clear: Publius did not argue for a general right of state militias, or anyone else, to engage in armed resistance merely because they sincerely believed that national authorities were acting unwisely or even unconstitutionally. Ordinarily, the people's remedies for allegedly improper or unconstitutional conduct would be political and legal--speeches, petitions, assemblies, elections, and lawsuits--with the ultimate decisions over good-faith disagreements to be rendered by the nation's duly constituted civilian authorities in Congress, the executive branch, and the federal courts. The scenario painted by Publius as the occasion for militia opposition was, by hypothesis, anything but ordinary. Rather, it was the extraordinary case of an attempted national coup. No political or legal remedy would exist in this situation. Presumably, national courts would have been shut down or, at best, their judgments would be unenforceable. Ballot boxes would be shut (or stuffed), critics muzzled (or worse). Whatever law existed would be martial law, enforced only by gun and sword. In such an extreme scenario of open usurpation--and only in such a scenario--the sole practicable remedy left to the people would involve recourse to arms.
Of course, this was hardly the situation faced by secessionists in early 1861. The national political channels remained open: Lincoln had won the presidency fairly and promised to hold honest elections on schedule--as he would in fact later do. So, too, the national courts in 1861 remained open. (If anything, the Taney Court stood as a shameless apologist for Southern interests.) Nor had the national military taken aggressive steps to threaten civilians. On the contrary, Southern insurrectionists struck first in attacking Fort Sumter. Confederate moderates defended secession by asserting that each state's people retained the right to decide for themselves whether the federal compact had been breached, regardless of what the federal courts, Congress as a whole, a duly elected president, or the voters of the other states sincerely believed. Other Confederates went even further, resting secession not on claims of federal wrongdoing, but rather on the sovereign right of each state populace to alter its government at any time for any reason—to withdraw from the Constitution as a nation might withdraw from a treaty it no longer deemed suitable. Both Confederate theories rested on a view of state sovereignty plainly inconsistent with the federal Constitution as explained by its supporters and understood by its skeptics in the great ratification debates of the late 1780s.
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[Akhil Reed Amar, _America's Constitution: A Biography,_ pp. 117-118]
In Cohens v. Virginia (1821), the US Supreme Court ruled, "That the United States form, for many, and for most important purposes, a single nation, has not yet been denied. In war, we are one people. In making peace, we are one people. In all commercial regulations, we are one and the same people. . .. America has chosen to be, in many respects, and to many purposes, a nation; and for all these purposes, her government is complete; to all these objects it is competent. The people have declared, that in the exercise of all the powers given for these objects, it is supreme. . . . The constitution and laws of a State, so far as they are repugnant to the constitution and laws of the United States, are absolutely void. These States are constituent parts of the United States. They are members of one great empire." [19 U.S. 264, 413-414]
"The people made the constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will. But this supreme and irresistible power to make or to unmake, resides only in the whole body of the people; not in any sub-division of them. The attempt of any of the parts to exercise it is usurpation, and ought to be repelled by those to whom the people have delegated their power of repelling it." [19 US 264, 389]
In Fletcher v. Peck, the Court ruled, "But Georgia cannot be veiwed as a single, unconnected, sovereign power, on whose legislature no other restrictions are imposed than may be found in its own constitution. She is a part of a large empire; she is a member of the American union; and that union has a constitution the supremacy of which all acknowledge, and which imposes limits to the legislatures of the several states, which none claim a right to pass." [10 U.S. 87, 136]
In McCullough v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote: "In discusing this question, the counsel for the state of Maryland have deemed it of some importance, in the construction of the constitution, to consider that instrument, not as emanating from the people, but as the act of sovereign and independent states. The powers of the general government, it has been said, are delegated by the states, who alone are truly sovereign; and must be exercised in subordination to the states, who alone possess supreme dominion. It would be difficult to sustain this proposition. The convention which framed the constitution was indeed elected by the state legislatures. But the instrument, when it came from their hands, was a mere proposal, without obligations, or pretenses to it. It was reported to the then existing congress of the United States, with a request that it might 'be submitted to a convention of delegates, chosen in each state by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, for their assent and ratification.' this mode of proceeding was adopted; and by the convention, by congress, and by the state legislatures, the instrument was submitted to the people. They acted upon it in the only manner in which they can act savely, effectively and wisely, on such a subject, by assembling in convention. It is true, they assembled in their several states--and where else should they have assembled? No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the states, and of compounding the American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act in their states. But the measures they adopt do not, on that account, cease to be the measures of the people themselves, or become the measures of the state governments.
"From these conventions, the constitution derives its whole authority. The government proceeds directly from the people. . . . The constitution, when thus adopted, was of complete obligation, and bound the state sovereignties." [17 U.S. 316, 402-404]
In Gibbons v. Ogden, the Court ruled, "When these allied sovereigns converted their league into a government, when they converted their Congress of Ambassadors, deputed to deliberate on their common concerns, the whole character in which the States appear, underwent a change." [22 U.S. 1, 187]
In Dodge v. Woolsey, (1855), the Court ruled, "Further, the constitution is not only supreme in the sense we have said it was, for the people in the ratification of it have chosen to add that 'this constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.' And, in that connection, to make its supremacy more complete, impressive, and practical, THAT THERE SHOULD BE NO ESCAPE FROM ITS OPERATION [my emphasis], and that is binding force upon the States and the members of congress should be unmistakable, it is declared that 'the senators and representatives, before mentioned, and the members of the state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by an oath or affirmation to support this constitution." [59 US 331, 348-349]
"But if on a temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no federal government can ever exist. If to rid ourselves of the present rule of Massachusets & Connecticut we break the Union, will the evil stop there? Suppose the N. England States alone cut off, will our natures be changed? are we not men still to the south of that, & with all the passions of men? Immediately we shall see a Pennsylvania & a Virginia party arise in the residuary confederacy, and the public mind will be distracted with the same party spirit. What a game, too, will the one party have in their hands by eternally threatening the other that unless they do so & so, they will join their Northern neighbors. If we reduce our Union to Virginia & N. Carolina, immediately the conflict will be established between the representatives of these two States, and they will end by breaking into their simple units. Seeing, therefore, that an association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry, seeing that we must have somebody to quarrel with, I had rather keep our New England associates for that purpose than to see our bickerings transferred to others." [Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 4 Jun 1798]
The unconstitutionality of secession may not have been settled law in 1860, but it is settled law today, and as Cass R. Sunstein, Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago School of Law, wrote, "In any case, no serious scholar or politician now argues that a right to secede exists under American constitutional law. It is generally agreed that such a right would undermine the Madisonian spirit of the original document, one that encourages the development of constitutional provisions that prevent the defeat of the basic enterprise." [Cass R. Sunstein, "Constitutionalism and Secession," _University of Chicago Law Review,_ Vol 58, No. 2, Spring, 1991, p. 633]
I have often heard that Washington was a Federalist, who flirted with the idea of consolidation, and so... yet he would not be king, as such... and managed to be everyone's choice. The master stroke of a politician; something neither our Jefferson nor your Lincoln could ever do, despite their desires to placate the other side...
Interesting.
Remember, you are talking to the Third Story, here, not one of the two sides. I can step out of my Southern-ness for a few moments, and have an out-of-body experience, to see what is happening.
So, in light of this, kindly tell me the difference between Old England and New England. What, exactly, did we get so upset over, in the first place?
Three cents on a pound of tea, and a half penny stamp tax?
I was always taught that we were something other than an empire. You go to great lengths to tell me that we are an empire. Definition: a collection of states under a single authority. An empire.
Worse, we are run not by divine right, but by the secular humanists who were left in the North when the moral compass of the Tories was extracted from us, when they left and fled into Canada , and back to England, during the Revolution!
The Federal Empire of North America, which deceives itself into calling itself, jokingly, "United", or "States"? I have been witness to two very strong and very different ideologies in this study, and one thing is obvious to me. You people seem to absolutely hate each other!
Passionately! Calling each other LIARS?
Can you give me a reason why this thought is wrong? Remember, what I speak is neither treason, nor heresy.
I was not raised in the North! I am not a Northerner.
I am a Celtic Southron, much hated and despised, historically, by the Anglo-Saxons (Londoners) who first did us in during the days of BRAVEHEART, and then again, under the same Rebel X of the Scots (white on a blue field), as Confederates (under that same flag, as a red, white and blue flag with stars)!
We believe in CLANS. Not KINGS.
And we are not you, nor have we ever been you. Nor have we ever desired to be... you.
This is why, when I travel around the world, everyone says, "Oh! You are from the United States! Your people this, and your people that..."
Your people. Suddenly, they are all quoting Robert E. Lee.
And they all accuse me of being a self-righteous hypocrite. Or, that word we in the South just love to be called... YANKEE! There are at least three definitions of that word. New Englander. Northern states in the Civil War. North American.
This must be the reason, then. We are only as free as the next political party which comes to power? A Mob Rules Democracy instead of a representative Republic?
Were not the founding fathers terrified of a democracy for this reason?
You can see what I have been taught, and you are less than generous if you can hold it against me that I do not
believe as you do!
But as conciliatory as I can be in this regard, I find no common ground for us. We speak of the same men, and the same ideas, and yet get two very different outcomes.
Result: You didn't get your Union with us.
We have never seceded from you, because we never were you!
What do you suggest, then, as a means of dealing with your plight? With our plight?
Beowulf
PS - As I was finishing this, the majority of this massive tome you just wrote appeared in my screen. Please give me time to digest it, but everything I said in here, previous to that, still applies!
PPS - What the hey?! I'll go ahead and start the bidding... I'll speak for myself, and see how many other modern Confederate Southern people agree with me, Huckabee and/ or Ron Paul, notwithstanding...
I am a Southerner who believes the war was not black and white, nor North and South, but Liberal and Conservative. (In some views, Secular Humanist and Christian, even!) And it still is... To this moment.
Notice something: Modern-day Southern Confederates do not speak of Slavery, nor of desiring a return to the institution. Ever. We did not start Slavery, and while we were, some few of us, involved in it during the rise of Lincoln, and the Republican Liberals,
we did not think we were fighting for it, to preserve it, when the war was going on all around us. (I don't think you'll find a single Southern post who says we did!).
We do not speak of Secession from the Union, today. It was an unfortunate necessity then, and even Davis did not "assert to its exercise. I recognize the war showed it to be impracticable, but this did not prove it to be wrong."
But Secession and Slavery? Not on the modern-day Southerner's agenda, unless I miss my mark, very much. Again, I speak only for myself, in my views.
What does the modern-day Confederate Southerner want?
His flag, and the right to have it returned to him, void of all the racist nonsense that has been attached to it, erroneously. The original South did not want its own country; it wanted the country like the yankees had, up North. The considerations, and the concessions. Equality. Consideration.
His beliefs, however "wrong", in the views he has held since the Revolution, concerning
those elements of Jefferson which made a revolution worthwhile, initially.
His right to have ended the stigma placed upon him by Hollywood and the Liberal media.
The right not to have to become Northerners while in the act of being citizens of the United States.
I thought we were gathered at this forum to discuss the Civil War and if secession was ALWAYS viewed as a right on this thread specifically, or are we?
Secular humanists? Christians? Celtic Southrons? CLANS not KINGS? Liberal or Conservative?
Beowulf, you want to preach a sermon or give a modern-day speech on the perils of Liberal politics, either build a church or rent a hall.
Some of us would like to discuss the history of the war via actual source documents and historical fact, not the misty smoke and mirrors of personal beliefs.
We're willing to wait for some of that consideration you've mentioned, but I think you'll have to earn it from the members here.
You've referred to a band playing and fading to black on another of your posts.
Your entire post above reminds me of a line from a song of another famous band.
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
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
For what it's worth, secession is not addressed in the Constitution. To extrapolate from the Constitution that secession, since it was not expressly forbidden in that document, should automatically be permitted for any state who wishes to leave the Union, places the burden of proof on those who think the Constitution allows it. The founding fathers did not include any provisions in that document which would facilitate the dissolution/destruction of the very government they wanted to establish, to endure and to sustain itself through its most perilous moments. And as of yet I've heard no arguments worth considering which would cause me to believe otherwise. Secession was and is illegal and unconstitutional. That is my opinion.
Terry
__________________ "In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed. There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one." Abraham Lincoln - August 18, 1864 Speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment
I thought we were gathered at this forum to discuss the Civil War and if secession was ALWAYS viewed as a right on this thread specifically, or are we?
Secular humanists? Christians? Celtic Southrons? CLANS not KINGS? Liberal or Conservative?
Beowulf, you want to preach a sermon or give a modern-day speech on the perils of Liberal politics, either build a church or rent a hall.
Some of us would like to discuss the history of the war via actual source documents and historical fact, not the misty smoke and mirrors of personal beliefs.
We're willing to wait for some of that consideration you've mentioned, but I think you'll have to earn it from the members here.
You've referred to a band playing and fading to black on another of your posts.
Your entire post above reminds me of a line from a song of another famous band.
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Unionblue
I tend to ramble in the wee hours. And yet, these points of consideration have been posited as Cause, and Effect, of the Secession Crisis, and ultimately, the Invasion of the South, to establish, initially, this New World Order.
Clearly the South did view Secession as a right. And still does.
Sorry, I just don't have time to read all of some of the longer posts with my new job, but I do scan them and try to keep up. Here is my two cents (no cents sign on a keayboard I still think its dumb)
US constitution Vs State laws.
In Rhode Island, it is legal, with a waiver from the State government, to carry marijuana on your person for "medicinal purposes". They can also assign a caretaker to grow marijuana plants for them , and that keeper with a waiver can have up to ten plants, legaly.. legaly in RI that is. The state or county or city police cannot touch you. But, as Marijuana is Federaly ilegal, you can still get busted by the FBI. Take that to the bank, its a fact. The USC reigns supreme and always has.
__________________ "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
For what it's worth, secession is not addressed in the Constitution. To extrapolate from the Constitution that secession, since it was not expressly forbidden in that document, should automatically be permitted for any state who wishes to leave the Union, places the burden of proof on those who think the Constitution allows it. The founding fathers did not include any provisions in that document which would facilitate the dissolution/destruction of the very government they wanted to establish, to endure and to sustain itself through its most perilous moments. And as of yet I've heard no arguments worth considering which would cause me to believe otherwise. Secession was and is illegal and unconstitutional. That is my opinion.
Terry
You have said that Secession is not addressed in the Constitution. I am... gratified... that you think so.
Yet, your subsequent attitude shows me your line of thought. You speak of the Constitution as a trap. A
type of a Hotel California, where you can "never leave".
My thought is that the founding fathers were not car salesmen, tricking the several states into signing away their hard-won autonomy. This would make them the most reprehensible men who ever lived, on par with a Hitler, or a Saddam.
The states were never joined as interstate entities during their time with England, hence the various colonies ...and if we can commit absolute treason against the British Crown, and form this country, does it not stand to reason that the we are not to be taken lightly in our individual processes?
Did any state give up its name, or its governorship, and say, unequivocally, that we had pledged allegiance to
a piece of brown paper?
No, the reason the Constitution was signed was that it seemed to offer a freedom that England did not; the right to leave. I see it as a peace treaty.
Does your father speak for you, now? Or your grandfather? Do you vote his ticket, and continue his every ideology? Were you expected to do that?
Why, then, was the Constitution so great, if not to be a fraternal order, with freedoms not to be held in any sort of political irons?
Apparently, you now think we 'misunderstood' the rules of engagement with you. Secession is illegal by the 1860's but you didn't think so in the Jeffersonian days. Your people (those in the North of whom you speak) have held various views on the subject, based always upon commerce, and not goodwill, it seems to me.
This is the very heart of Lincolnian legalese. And it 'won't scour', as Lincoln, himself, said of the Gettysburg Address.
Sorry, I just don't have time to read all of some of the longer posts with my new job, but I do scan them and try to keep up. Here is my two cents (no cents sign on a keayboard I still think its dumb)
US constitution Vs State laws.
In Rhode Island, it is legal, with a waiver from the State government, to carry marijuana on your person for "medicinal purposes". They can also assign a caretaker to grow marijuana plants for them , and that keeper with a waiver can have up to ten plants, legaly.. legaly in RI that is. The state or county or city police cannot touch you. But, as Marijuana is Federaly ilegal, you can still get busted by the FBI. Take that to the bank, its a fact. The USC reigns supreme and always has.
Okay. Take your charge to court.
Charged under the Federal law, there would have to be some additional circumstance for this, no? Was the charged party attempting to TRAFFICK the substance, take it across state lines, and was caught in RI? Was something other than simple possession charged? What amounts are actually allowed in RI? TEN PLANTS is a nebulous term...
Why is the FBI interested in this? Is your defendant a kingpin of narcotic activity, elsewhere?
Why are the Feds wasting their time here?
We don't get enough of the story to decide, I fear...
But I don't see the Federal government superseding the state laws here, and making a case based on simple possession, based upon the desire to show their national supremacy. There are 49 other states to worry about.
Resolutions: Use of Force Against a "Delinquent" State Not Adopted
"The last clause of the sixth resolution, authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole against a delinquent state, came next into consideration.
Mr. Madison, observed, that the more he reflected on the use of force, the more he doubted the practicability, the justice, and the efficacy of it, when applied to people collectively and not individually. A union of the states containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound. He hoped that such a system would be framed as might render this recourse unecessary, and moved that the clause be postponed. This motion was agreed to, nem. con. [without dissent]"
Debates in the Federal Convention, p.140
__________________ 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."
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