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.
Nope, if the confederates had really exercised the power of a sovereign nation, there would be a csa sitting in the United Nations today.
Then it also follows that Prussia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Czarist Russia (to name only a few) were not nations since they no longer exist and never had a seat in the UN.
__________________ 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."
Then it also follows that Prussia, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Czarist Russia (to name only a few) were not nations since they no longer exist and never had a seat in the UN.
Mixing tenses here. They were, now they are not. Are you saying that the CSA was and now it is not? That might be the crux of the debate: you say the CSA was a nation and others say it was not?
I'll vote on the not side. Saying that a group is a nation is not exactly like actually being one. But I'll concede that the argument is mostly semantics. The CSA considered itself a nation. Unfortunately, only one or two minor German states agreed with it. (Was Saxe-Coburg one nation or two?)
It remains that, although the CSA considered itself a soverign nation, the rest of the world was not on the same page. So you can write your name on the page that says it was a soverign nation. Nothing lost. Nothing gained.
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
With what foreign nation did they make a treaty of alliance or commerce?
In truth, none.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Baggage Handler #2
I knew they bought some boats and other stuff, but wasn't aware of any treaty. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, though.
Realistically, no other nation recognized them. The claims come down to things like:
1) the Papal States wrote them a nice letter, but never said they recognized them as a nation.
2) Saxe-Coburg, a small pricipality in the Germanies might have recognized them because one of their representatives in the United States asked the government in Richmond for some diplomatic papers. Of course, that representative doesn't seem to have been back to Saxe-Coburg in 30+ years (where he had been a bookbinder, IIRR), had lived in Texas as a citizen of the Republic of Texas, and then become an American citizen when Texas was annexed, and then a resident of the Confederacy when Texas seceded. No one has ever found an actual document from Saxe-Coburg recognizing the existence of the Confederacy and none of the other Saxe-Coburg representatives did anything similar.
3) Britain recognized them as a belligerent, which is a step well short of diplomatic recognition in international law and diplomacy.
Normally, nations that want to diplomatically recognize another nation send them a formal document that says so clearly and unmistakably. No one can point to any nation recognizing the Confederacy in such a fashion.
Added later: However, one nation did send a representative to Montgomery to discuss official recognition of the Confederacy in early 1861: Mexico. But Jefferson Davis refused to meet with the man, because he felt it might be embarassing to accept the recognition when he might be invading Mexico in a year or two.
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.
Added later: However, one nation did send a representative to Montgomery to discuss official recognition of the Confederacy in early 1861: Mexico. But Jefferson Davis refused to meet with the man, because he felt it might be embarassing to accept the recognition when he might be invading Mexico in a year or two.
Tim
Am I the only one finding that funny?
__________________ 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
From the book, Lincoln And The Court, by Brian McGinty, chapter 1, pg. 16-17:
"...(Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) Taney's views about the secession crisis were expressed more privately. Like President Buchanan, he believed that secession was constitutionally impermissible but that the federal government had no authority to "coerce" a seceding state to remain in the Union. Buchanan's views on the subject had been expressed in his last annual message to Congress, delivered on December 3, 1860. The outgoing executive rejected the idea that the federal government was "a mere voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties." "If this be so," he argued, "the Confederacy is a rope of sand, to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States...By this process a Union might be entirely broken into fragments in a few weeks which cost our forefathers many years of toil, privation, and blood to establish." But Buchanan searched the Constitution for any language that would give the president or Congress power to keep a state in the Union against its will and, "after much serious reflection," concluded that there was none. Taney's own views on secession were expressed in an unpublished memorandum probably written in February 1861, about a month before he was to administer the presidential oath to Lincoln. In that memorandum, he said that the Confederate states were wrong to claim a constitutional right to secede. But, he wrote, federal laws could be enforced within a state only by its own citizens, and the federal military could enter a state only at the call of state officials. Thus it was impermissible for the federal government, against the will of a seceding state, to subject it to military action to prevent it from severing its ties with the Union. It was thus wrong, in the view of both Buchanan and Taney, for a state to break the bonds that tied it to other states, but also wrong for the federal government to attempt to stop it."
From chapter 7 of the same book, The Old Lion, pg. 194-195:
"Since the constitutionality of secession never came before Taney in an official capacity, he did not have an opportunity to publicly record his opinions on the issue. But opinions he did have. In an upublished, eight-page memorandum, apparently prepared late in January 1861 for use in a court decision, if and when the issue should come before him, he addressed secession head-on. In the memorandum, Taney reiterated his support for slavery and argued that Northern states were obligated to respect the institution, because they "bound themselves by the social compact of the Constitution to uphold it." Then he wrote: "The South contends that a state has a constitutional right to secede from the Union formed with her sister states. In this I submit the South errs. No power or right is constitutional but what can be exercised in a form or mode provided in the constitution for its exercise. Secession is therefore not constitutional, but revolutionary; and is only morally competent, like war, upon failure of justice..."
(Source: See "Fragment of a Manuscript Relating to Slavery in the United States," Robert B. Taney Papers, Library of Congress. Fehrenbacher, Dred Scott Case, 553-554, describes this memorandum in detail.)
Submitted for your consideration.
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
If you do leave the Union, there's nothing the government can do about it.
So, what does it matter if it is illegal or not other than as an abstract trivality, Taney? That makes no sense.
Secession is however revolution. So...
Does the government have the right to suppress "revolution" as well as "rebellion"? Is there a fundemental difference in the legal sense those words are used?
Interesting, when all is said and done. Or...all that we have said now and done now at least.
__________________ 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
But, from what I understand from others on this forum, tim has stated such, I believe, this attitude was pretty much the norm in the Northern states. Secession wasn't allowed by the Constitution, but nowhere could it be found you could compell a state to stay by force.
Here is where I think the South had a chance at peaceable secession, and then blew it by firing on Ft. Sumter.
Rebellion/unilateral secession, once initiated by violence, COULD be put down by force.
But still, Taney's opinion on secession makes me question how does anyone think that the idea of secession was ALWAYS a right somehow?
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
That would make more sense. Though it does bring up the question what, if the South had peacefully seceded and just ignored Fort Sumpter, was supposed to happen.
If it is illegal, obviously there should be consequences.
As for regarding it as a right: I don't know. "Not specifically prohibited!" might have some actual reasoning behind it. "A right" is based on wishful thinking.
__________________ 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
It does seem a bit strange that Taney spoke of the federal government to be powerless to take action against a state when he considered the act of secession unsupportable by way of the Constitution.
Especially when you view another case he ruled on years earlier.
From the book, Lincoln's Constitution, by Daniel Farber, chapter 7, Individual Rights, pg. 148-149:
"...In a third pre-Civil War instance of martial law, the issue ultimately reached the Supreme Court. In Luther v. Borden, the Supreme Court resoundingly upheld the use of martial law, in an opinion by none other than Chief Justice Taney. The case involved a dispute over the legitimacy of the state government in Rhode Island, a dispute that had been resolved by the president in favor of the existing government. In putting down an effort to displace this government by a rival group, the governor had declared martial law: "Unquestionably," Taney pronounced, "a State may use its military power to put down an armed insurrection, too strong to be controlled by the civil authority." The power to do so "is essential to the existence o every government, essential to the preservation of order and free institutions, and is as necessary to the State of this Union as to any other government." Thus, "If the government of Rhode Island deemed the armed opposition so formidable, and so ramified throughout the State, as to require the use of its military force and the declaration of martial law, we see no ground upon which this court can question its authority." The case involved "a state of war; and the established government resorted to the rights and usages of war to maintain itself, and to overcome unlawful opposition." Hence, the military could arrest suspected supporters of the insurrection and could break into houses where such individuals might be hidden, all without a warrent. "Without the power to do this, martial law and the military array of the government would be mere parade, and rather encourage attack than repel it.""
Sounds like justification for use of force against secession and the states indulging in such during the Civil War, but Taney seems to have forgotten his earlier ruling.
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
So let me get this straight.
It is not permissable to leave the Union.
If you do leave the Union, there's nothing the government can do about it.
So, what does it matter if it is illegal or not other than as an abstract trivality, Taney? That makes no sense.
Taney did not believe a "right of secession" existed under the Constitution (neither did Robert E. Lee, and many others). However, from other writings, it seems Taney might have favored allowing secession as a means to avoid civil war (much as Lee joined the Confederacy even though he though secession wrong). Given his rather clear overstepping in Dred Scott, it seems likely Taney might have gone in that direction.
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.
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Linear Mode
