Walter Williams: Wrong on Secession

vanity ^ | 4/3/02 | Self

[Non-Sequitur]

Tell me, what kind of idiots would elect a government that had more power over them than then the founding states themselves?

The idiots who agreed to Article VI, Clause 2:

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.

[Non-Sequitur]

True or false, the FedGov has expanded outside its Constitutional limits (whether the Supremes say its OK or not).

And who decides if they have or not? You?

[r9etb]

The constitution does not give Congress the power to decide anything at all concerning the status of a state.

How very incorrect you are. Congress is explicitly granted power over many aspects of the status of a state -- just read the document.

[Eagle Eye]

Either you beleive that people are endowed by our creator with certain inalienble rights, which includes the right to self government, or you don't. I do. You don't.

Right. Either one supports the suppostitions of the Declaration of Indepenence or one does not.

I do not see a contradiction between state secceeding and supporting the Constitution. Considering that the federal government isn't supposed to 'rule' the States, it is hard for the states to rebel against the fed. When the fed gets too big for its britches, the 2A is supposed to kick in.

Federal oppression was forseen and planned for with the RKBA. Either secession wasn't foreseen, or it wasn't considered a problem.

[Non-Sequitur]

The constitution does not give Congress the power to decide anything at all concerning the status of a state.

I suggest you reread your Constitution. A territory cannot become a state without the approval of Congress. It cannot split into two or more states without the approval of Congress. It cannot combine with another state or change it's borders a fraction of an inch without the approval of Congress. Congress is charged with ensuring that a state maintains a republican form of government. In short, rather than having no power over a state, there isn't a thing that a state can do without Congressional approval where the interests of other states may be affected. Why would arbitrary secession be the one act that would be allowed?

[r9etb]

if the Constitution does not make it explicit (and it does not make forbidding secession explicit), then the feds are powerless.

First: the Constitution explicitly gives the Federal Government the right to suppress an insurrection. The southern states engaged in an insurrection. As Lee's quote makes quite clear, they fully recognized that they were engaged in an insurrection.

Second: If a state and its legislature agree to be bound by the Constitution, then they are bound to it. They have entered into a contract with the United States. Secession without the assent of the United States is an explicit breach of that contract, and is thus insurrection.

[4CJ]

There is nothing in the Constitution which prohibits a State from peacefully withdrawing from the compact. The Supreme Court decided otherwise in 1862.

They didn't say that secession was illegal, they said "[t]heir right to do so is now being decided by wager of battle."

[r9etb]

They didn't say that secession was illegal, they said "[t]heir right to do so is now being decided by wager of battle."

Which is another way of declaring that "wager of battle" is a valid way for the Federal Government to deal with secessionists.

[one2many]

Someone has probably asked you this already but here goes:

Why did you fail to mention that Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island specifically reserved the right to withdraw from the compact? (secede) And I think Texas may have done the same. In contracts, and I am sure that you know this, if a set of parties to the contract accepts a new party to the contract with qualifications set by the incoming new party, in this case the states I mentioned, then they accept the qualifications.

It follows then, that, at least in Virginia's case, the United States was guilty of invading a sovereign nation.

[r9etb]

It follows then, that, at least in Virginia's case, the United States was guilty of invading a sovereign nation.

A sovereign nation that had taken up arms in support of states that were in armed rebellion against the United States. The U.S. was guilty of nothing more than fighting against a sovereign nation that had voluntarily placed itself in a state of war against it.

[one2many]

Excuse me but I believe a check will show that Virginia was INVADED.
This after Maryland was put into shackles by the Apester and Co.

[one2many]

And I believe you dodged my earlier question; exactly why
didn't you mention these salient facts? Hmmmm?

[x]

If the FedGov steps one foot outside its Constitutionally delegated boundaries, the states are no longer bound (a contract that has been violated is not enforcable on the other party).

How did such a situation apply in 1860? What real federal transgression could South Carolina point to in that year, as opposed to fears and bluster?

It seems to me mistaken to regard the Constitution as primary a contract between the states and the federal government, but let's consider your example. Let's say that President Bush takes steps against terrorism which he regards as constitutional. Massachusetts, California, Minnesota, Hawaii and South Carolina regard these steps as unconstitutional and assert that the contract has been broken. They declare themselves independent and lay claim to all federal property in their territories. Bush is at a loss, as is the rest of the country. Taking steps within the Constitution to preserve the Constitution and protect the nation, he is told that he has broken the Constitution and thereby voided it. This looks like a strange way to run a country. More like anarchy than responsible government.

It looks like secessionist theory takes the understandable and necessary right of rebellion to tyrants and distorts it to underpin a theory of state supremacy that limits federal power but allows the states to behave in arbitrary and absolutist ways. It is no wonder that such theories were found to be unworkable and unjust.

[ravinson]

I know this will appall you, but I don't really care about this argument, because it's irrelevant. That means it has no bearing on Constitutional questions, other than as a side note about how that Constitution allowed slavery to begin with.

Your ignorance is astounding. The Confederates seceded because they opposed a Constitution that permitted the abolition of white supremacy and their cherished institution. Here's how Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens put it when explaining why he thought the signers of the Declaration of Independence were wrong if they meant to include Negroes among `all men':

"Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery ... is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Bringing it up is simply a means of covering your backside when logic and a clear reading of the document in question has sent you Unlimited Government Supporters scurrying for cover.

As a responsible libertarian, I'm hardly a supporter of "unlimited government", but you're not going to promote liberty by distorting history and demonizing the man who was largely responsible for the most libertarian provision in the U.S. Constitution (i.e. the 13th Amendment). If anyone in the Civil War era is responsible for promoting a big federal government it is the Confederates, who demonstrated quite adeptly how tyrannical state governments can be.

If you still think that Lincoln put America on the path of big central government, take a look at this revealing chart:

Real Per Capita Expenditures: 1800-1990 (In Constant 1990 Dollars)

Source.

Note how federal government outlays dropped drastically after the Civil War and stayed very low for many decades thereafter. The explosive growth of the federal government is a 20th Century phenomenon. It is obscenely preposterous to blame Abraham Lincoln for what happened 65 years after he was murdered by a Confederate sympathizer.

the Constitution places limits on what can be done to the citizens and in their name.

Not really. The Constitution is so ambiguous and contradictory that it can be used to support practically any agenda if the Supreme Court approves. What really places limits on tyranny is human will to resist it. It was not the Constitution that abolished slavery, it was the wiil of the Union soldiers to oppose the insidiuos slaveholder mentality of the Confederates.

You may be passionate about your Yankee heritage, but your ancestors trampled the U.S. Constitution, and doing so has led us to this point.

Yes, I'm sure that you'd much prefer that those damned Yankees had been as cowardly as the Confederates assumed they were and just looked the other way when the Confederates you glorify kept Negro men, women, and children underfoot with whips and chains.

... for only 15% of Southerners owned slaves...

Actually, about 1/3 of Southern families owned slaves, and the slaveholders conned most of the nonslaveholding Southerners into supporting the Confederacy by extolling the benefits to them of white supremacy and frightening them with the prospect of free black men raping or marrying their daughters.

All of your ancestors fought to partially free the Black slaves, but in doing so made slaves of us all!

Even with taxes eating up 50% of our incomes, that's a far cry from slavery, and blaming Civil War era people for what happened in the 20th and 21st Centuries is ridiculous. Moreover, were the 13th Amendment's prohibition of "involuntary servitude" to be literally enforced, there would be no taxation. You can't blame Abe Lincoln for the Supreme Court justices who refuse to follow the key Constitutional Amendments he pushed through. (As a matter of fact, Lincoln appointee Stephen J. Fields was arguably the most libertarian Supreme Court Justice of all time and was very instrumental in keeping tyranny at bay during his long court by citing the 13th and 14th Amendments).

You do the tree of liberty little service by hacking away at its healthier branches.

[4CJ]

The point being made was that they did NOT declare it to illegal to secede. They just stated that the right to do so was not being determined in the courts, since war had begun. 4 of the justices considered the actions of Lincoln illegal.

"In order to ascertain the real character of the government, it may be considered in relation to the foundation on which it is to be established; to the sources from which its ordinary powers are to be drawn; to the operation of those powers; to the extent of them; and to the authority by which future changes in the government are to be introduced. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority, in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States as evidence of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these rules have been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act."
James Madison, Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 39, "The Conformity of the Plan to Republican Principles", 16 Jan 1788.

Madison and Hamilton thought the compact temporary, as they described the government (federal and state, old and new) as experiments in 34 of the 85 FederalistPapers. What was John Marshall's opinion?

"[I]t was neither necessary nor proper to define the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, not from the people of America, but from the people of the several States; and remain, after the adoption of the constitution, what they were before, except so far as they may be abridged by that instrument."
Sturges v Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122, 193 (1819).

How about the words of Hamilton?

"An entire consolidation of the States into one complete national sovereignty would imply an entire subordination of the parts; and whatever powers might remain in them, would be altogether dependent on the general will. But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, EXCLUSIVELY delegated to the United States. This exclusive delegation, or rather this alienation, of State sovereignty, would only exist in three cases: where the Constitution in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the Union; where it granted in one instance an authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the Union, to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally CONTRADICTORY and REPUGNANT."
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, Federalist No. 32, "The Same Subject Continued: Concerning the General Power of Taxation", 3 Jan 1788.

Justice Thomas?

And where the Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or the people.

Our system of government rests on one overriding principle: all power stems from the consent of the people. To phrase the principle in this way, however, is to be imprecise about something important to the notion of "reserved" powers. The ultimate source of the Constitution's authority is the consent of the people of each individual State, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole.

The ratification procedure erected by Article VII makes this point clear. The Constitution took effect once it had been ratified by the people gathered in convention in nine different States. But the Constitution went into effect only "between the States so ratifying the same," Art. VII; it did not bind the people of North Carolina until they had accepted it. In Madison's words, the popular consent upon which the Constitution's authority rests was "given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong." (citations ommitted)
Justice Thomas, US Term Limits, Inc. v Thornton, (93-1456), 514 U.S. 779 (1995).