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.
I thank you for your post #441 above and would like to submit the following concerning the subject of State Sovereignty per our ongoing conversation.
This post consists mainly from an article by one James Hall from a website I cannot recall or seem to find with the notes I currently have rediscovered.
Still, what I have seems to have much bearing on the topic, so I will post what I have and let the chips fall where they may.
The Myth of State Sovereignty
James Hall
"...Myths like state sovereignty are simply grist for the mill of ideological minorities. Finding themselves deeply out in the cold, they warm themselves by burning the Constitution and would love to declare a sovereign republic out of some flyover piece of land whose politics faintly resembles their own. But their arguments are no more credible now than they were in 1861.
Or 1775 for that matter. For the colonies never were independent sovereign states making treaties with foreign powers or exercising self-government. The Declaration of Independence was made by the First Continental Congress and the war prosecuted by a Continental Army. Most of the original colonies didn't even set up state governments until after the Declaration of Independence, making the national government predate the majority of state governments.
Even the Articles of Confederation, drawn up by a committee of the Second Continental Congress at a time when people strongly feared a central government--their experience with the British creating that fear--never granted more than a limited role to the states. States could not create their own foreign policy, form their own armies and navies, coin their money, set qualifications for citizenship, or run their own post office. They could not refuse to join in any war or agree to any treaty that a majority of other states wanted to support, they could not refuse rulings from another state's jurisdiction, and they could not seced from the Confederacy (described by its founders as a "perpetual union") without the approval of all twelve of the other states.
Does anyone...really consider any state governed by all these restrictions to be a sovereign entity?
And that was under the anti-Federalist Articles of Confederation. The Confederacy proved so ungovernable that it was gone in eight years, replaced by a stronger central government, whose Constitution specifically defines "powers" for the states, but which yields no sovereignty to them.
Besides the sovereign powers accorded to nations that it kept to itself--the armies and navies, the foreign policy, the coinage, etc.--our Constitution gave the federal government the power to tax and to regulate interstate commerce, things lacking under the Articles of Confederation. It provided an executive branch to make laws and fund executive offices, and a judicial branch to rule on the constitutionality of state and federal laws.
To perform these offices people have been constitutionally elected and appointed. (Some) can criticize their performance any way they like, but as far as the majority of the people of this nation are concerned--and it is in the people that real sovereignty exists--the federal government has performed its responsibilities in a constitutional manner. Today the federal government's responsibilities ebb and flow as the people require them or put them aside.
The myth of states' rights and state sovereignty is increasingly identified with the defense of minority opinions at odds with the will of the majority. These bogus "rights" have been cited to defend slavery, white slavery, child labor, and segregation among other things--all positions at odds with the people's will. While our Constitution gives the minorities defending these positions the right to express their opinions and the right to participate in the marketplace of ideas, it never granted them the right to withdraw in order to flout the people's decisions."
Final Word:
(Some) can attempt to redefine government and reshape history all he likes, but it's clear that our founding fathers knew the difference between federalism and anti-federalism and took sides accordingly--one side in favor of a strong national government, the other in fear of it. Our nation's political climate continues to be shaped by this debate, though the momentum is now with the federalists.
The myth of "state sovereignty," the antifederalists' bedtime story, has nothing to do with actual history. The Declaration of Independence and our Constitution make it plain that we declared our independence from Great Britain as "one people"--a nation, not as a collection of states. Our Constitution also makes it plain that its origin and legitimacy stem from "we the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...do establish this Constituion..." The 10th Amendment is clearly a grant of powers from the people's constitution.
These statements make plain the Lockean philosophy that motivated our founders, that place the nation's sovereignty directly in the hands of it's people, not it's states, the people who "established and ordained" the Constitution and its government. (Some) would have us believe that the 10th Amendment states that all powers not expressly designated federal accrue to the states--only the founders specifically rejected the word "expressly," leaving the people and their representatives the flexibility to choose a weaker or stronger form of national government as they wish.
Historically Americans have chosen a stronger federal government, one capable of looking after the general welfare of its citizens, of maintaining a standing professional army in their defense, one with the power to intervene against states who oppress the civil rights of their citizens, a nation vigorous enough to withstand the competition from other nation states abroad. The people are quite capable of deciding if this kind of government suits them--and they have answered with a vigorous "Yes." Anti-federalists... can cringe at this choice, but the people, the only legitimate sovereigns in this debate, have spoken."
Submitted for your consideration,
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
I thank you for your post #441 above and would like to submit the following concerning the subject of State Sovereignty per our ongoing conversation.
This post consists mainly from an article by one James Hall from a website I cannot recall or seem to find with the notes I currently have rediscovered.
Still, what I have seems to have much bearing on the topic, so I will post what I have and let the chips fall where they may.
The Myth of State Sovereignty
James Hall
"...Myths like state sovereignty are simply grist for the mill of ideological minorities. Finding themselves deeply out in the cold, they warm themselves by burning the Constitution and would love to declare a sovereign republic out of some flyover piece of land whose politics faintly resembles their own. But their arguments are no more credible now than they were in 1861.
Or 1775 for that matter. For the colonies never were independent sovereign states making treaties with foreign powers or exercising self-government. The Declaration of Independence was made by the First Continental Congress and the war prosecuted by a Continental Army. Most of the original colonies didn't even set up state governments until after the Declaration of Independence, making the national government predate the majority of state governments.
Even the Articles of Confederation, drawn up by a committee of the Second Continental Congress at a time when people strongly feared a central government--their experience with the British creating that fear--never granted more than a limited role to the states. States could not create their own foreign policy, form their own armies and navies, coin their money, set qualifications for citizenship, or run their own post office. They could not refuse to join in any war or agree to any treaty that a majority of other states wanted to support, they could not refuse rulings from another state's jurisdiction, and they could not seced from the Confederacy (described by its founders as a "perpetual union") without the approval of all twelve of the other states.
Does anyone...really consider any state governed by all these restrictions to be a sovereign entity?
And that was under the anti-Federalist Articles of Confederation. The Confederacy proved so ungovernable that it was gone in eight years, replaced by a stronger central government, whose Constitution specifically defines "powers" for the states, but which yields no sovereignty to them.
Besides the sovereign powers accorded to nations that it kept to itself--the armies and navies, the foreign policy, the coinage, etc.--our Constitution gave the federal government the power to tax and to regulate interstate commerce, things lacking under the Articles of Confederation. It provided an executive branch to make laws and fund executive offices, and a judicial branch to rule on the constitutionality of state and federal laws.
To perform these offices people have been constitutionally elected and appointed. (Some) can criticize their performance any way they like, but as far as the majority of the people of this nation are concerned--and it is in the people that real sovereignty exists--the federal government has performed its responsibilities in a constitutional manner. Today the federal government's responsibilities ebb and flow as the people require them or put them aside.
The myth of states' rights and state sovereignty is increasingly identified with the defense of minority opinions at odds with the will of the majority. These bogus "rights" have been cited to defend slavery, white slavery, child labor, and segregation among other things--all positions at odds with the people's will. While our Constitution gives the minorities defending these positions the right to express their opinions and the right to participate in the marketplace of ideas, it never granted them the right to withdraw in order to flout the people's decisions."
Final Word:
(Some) can attempt to redefine government and reshape history all he likes, but it's clear that our founding fathers knew the difference between federalism and anti-federalism and took sides accordingly--one side in favor of a strong national government, the other in fear of it. Our nation's political climate continues to be shaped by this debate, though the momentum is now with the federalists.
The myth of "state sovereignty," the antifederalists' bedtime story, has nothing to do with actual history. The Declaration of Independence and our Constitution make it plain that we declared our independence from Great Britain as "one people"--a nation, not as a collection of states. Our Constitution also makes it plain that its origin and legitimacy stem from "we the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...do establish this Constituion..." The 10th Amendment is clearly a grant of powers from the people's constitution.
These statements make plain the Lockean philosophy that motivated our founders, that place the nation's sovereignty directly in the hands of it's people, not it's states, the people who "established and ordained" the Constitution and its government. (Some) would have us believe that the 10th Amendment states that all powers not expressly designated federal accrue to the states--only the founders specifically rejected the word "expressly," leaving the people and their representatives the flexibility to choose a weaker or stronger form of national government as they wish.
Historically Americans have chosen a stronger federal government, one capable of looking after the general welfare of its citizens, of maintaining a standing professional army in their defense, one with the power to intervene against states who oppress the civil rights of their citizens, a nation vigorous enough to withstand the competition from other nation states abroad. The people are quite capable of deciding if this kind of government suits them--and they have answered with a vigorous "Yes." Anti-federalists... can cringe at this choice, but the people, the only legitimate sovereigns in this debate, have spoken."
__________________ "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)
__________________ "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
__________________ "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
Recognition from other nations is not necessary to be a sovereign nation.
All that is necessary is to exercise sovereign powers.
__________________ 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."
Recognition from other nations is not necessary to be a sovereign nation.
All that is necessary is to exercise sovereign powers.
Actually, if you want to partcipate in the international community as a "sovereign nation", it is necessary. If you just want to make believe you are a "sovereign nation", it isn't.
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.
And while it may be something of a formality (recognition is acknowleding something demonstrated to be true, not making something true)...it is a very important one.
Nations have specific and clear rights in the International Game. Non-nations simply do not.
__________________ Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more, you should never wish to do less. - Robert E. Lee
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. - Abraham Lincoln
And while it may be something of a formality (recognition is acknowleding something demonstrated to be true, not making something true)...it is a very important one.
Nations have specific and clear rights in the International Game. Non-nations simply do not.
It also matters to the individual. If you are a citizen of a nation no one recognizes, you would technically be "stateless" under international law these days. That puts you at the whim of whatever jurisdiction you happen to be in, with no outside nation to come to your aid and protect you.
BTW, this is what you become if you give up your citizenship in whatever nation you currently belong to without first finding another nation to accept you as a citizen. It is a truly lousy condition of existence in international law.
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.
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