Posted on 04/03/2002 9:52:50 AM PST by r9etb
Last week, Walter Williams published a column called The Real Lincoln, in which he mostly quoted editorialists to support his claim that "virtually every political leader of the time and earlier believed that states had a right of secession."
If that were really true, of course, the Civil War would never have been fought. "Virtually every" political leader in Washington would have let the secessionist states go their own ways. But of course they didn't do that. Instead, they prosecuted a long, bloody war to prevent it. So that part of Williams' case simply fails.
The question remains as to the legality of secession: does the Constitution grant power to the Federal Government to prevent it? Oddly, Williams does not refer to the Constitution itself, to see whether it has something to say about the matter. Rather, Williams (quoting author Thomas DiLorenzo) only provides several quotations about the Constitution, and peoples' opinions about secession.
One can see why: the Constitution itself does not support his case.
Article 1, Section 8 gives Congress the power To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.
Thus, the Constitution recognizes the possibility of rebellion (armed secession would seem to qualify), and gives Congress the power to suppress it.
The next question is: does secession represent a rebellion or insurrection? Webster's defines insurrection as "an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government." So if secession is a revolt against the defined powers and authority of the Federal Government, as defined in the Constitution, then the Federal Government is granted the power to prevent it.
The rights and restrictions on the States are defined in Section 10:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Control of the Congress.
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
The secessionist states clearly violated almost every part of Section 10 -- especially that last clause -- and would by any standard be considered in a state of insurrection.
Article III, Section 3 states that Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The actions of the people in secessionist states fit this definition of treason, and it is within the powers of the Federal Government to deal with them.
Article VI says, in part:
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.
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.
Section VI clearly states that, since the Constitution is the "supreme Law of the Land," the interests of individual states are inferior to those of the United States -- even if their state Constitutions say otherwise. The individual states are bound to remain part of the United States, both by their ratification of the Constitution, and also by their Oath of Affirmation to support the Constitution.
A plain reading of the Constitution not only does not support DiLorenzo's (and thus Williams's) argument, it flat-out refutes it. The powers of the Federal Government do in fact include the power to prevent secession, and Lincoln was properly discharging his duties as President when he acted against the Confederacy.
DiLorenzo's argument thus reduces to whether or not Congress and Lincoln should have allowed the seceeding states to violate the supreme Law of the Land with impunity -- which puts DiLorenzo in the awkward position of having to argue against the rule of Law.
Finally, the pro-secession case simply ignores history: a war between North and South was inevitable. It had been brewing for decades. Even had the secession been allowed to proceed, war would undoubtedly have occurred anyway, following the pattern of Kansas in the 1850s.
Williams is a smart fellow, and he says a lot of good things. But he also says some dumb things -- his "Lincoln" column being exhibit A.
Therefore, in your opinion, the right to MURDER is reserved to the states, or to the people.
Cockeyed, as usual.
Can you imagine a civil war today - with nukes & all...
I think you need to tell me what you think this actually means. I just hate defining what "is" is! BTW, I don't think the "world" listens to me very much.
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
That being the case, the fact that secession is nowhere specifically permitted in the Constitution means exactly NOTHING! It is merely one of those indefinite powers CLEARLY remaining with the states.
The federal government was formed by the states to act as their agent in certain, strictly defined, matters and for NO other purpose. Those forming that government certainly retained the right to fire that agent if they so chose.
As well as the preferred means of death also, unless the Linclonites should stick their nose into it.
Well, let's see. Great Britain did it within 6-7 years, no bloodshed, Mexico by 1829, and France and her colonies by the early 1850s. Guess what? No bloodshed either. To quote from DiLorenzo's book
Dozens of countries, including the possessions of the British, French, and Spanish empires ended slavery peacefully during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. ONLY in the United StateS was warfare associated with emancipation
That's amazing isn't it. Within 6 years in Great Britain AND colonies without any bloodshed. Yet lincoln uses it as an excuse to put the nation $600 million+ in debt, spends 4 years, has the blood of 300,000 of his own citizens and 300,000 citizens of another nation on his hands, and achieves the exact same thing. Surely you would imagine that lincoln was not ignorant to what had occurred a scant decade earlier in the world. Of course it was over slavery < /sarcasm>
Now that is another can of worms.
Isn't it though.
If the union was perpetual, how did the present Constitution come about?
Apparently, the States saw that the "general government" they had established was not working that well, and their delegates convened to come up with "a different organization". Note the following: The friends of our country have long seen and desired, that the power of making war, peace, and treaties, that of levying money and regulating commerce, and the correspondent executive and judicial authorities should be fully and effectually vested in the general government of the Union: But the impropriety of delegating such extensive trust to one body of men is evident-Hence results the necessity of a different organization. (Letter of the President of the Federal Convention, Dated September 17, 1787, to the President of Congress, Transmitting the Constitution.) They appear to have not been talking about dissolution, but about a new "arrangement" among them.
Some States ratified the new Constitution readily. Others under some political pressure.
True enough as far as I know. Arguably, the States imposing political pressure could have felt justified in doing so because they were applying pressure to get compliance with a previous agreement (Perpetual Union). Maybe not quite the same but similar to your spouse pressuring you to stop fooling around because you agreed to be faithful. (I don't know if I'll stand by that analogy. It just popped out.)
Did not those States which first ratify the Constitution simultaenously secede from the perpetual union.
I believe ratification by 9 states was necessary before the Constitution took effect upon the states that had ratified. Nine being the majority, I assume they would have thought that those nine were the true heirs of the Perpetual Union.
When did Jefferson say that?
The stated purpose of the convention was to amend our first constitution and provide for a different organization of that constitution.
Instead they through out the entire Constitution and created an entirely different government.
They obviously did not feel bound to remain in the perpetual union. If the individual States had the right to withdraw from the first Constitution, why not the second?
I have already answered that narrow question (see my post #127). Moreover, the opinions of Walter Williams on the issue of the Constitutionality of secession are just one component of his (and the other Confederate glorifiers') demonization campaign against Abraham Lincoln. (Note Walter's comment that "DiLorenzo does a yeoman's job in documenting Lincoln's ruthlessness and hypocrisy"). That's why my question to the Confederate glorifiers about what they would have done had they been in Lincoln's position is so pertinent. It is not intellectually honest to criticize the course of action Lincoln chose without coming up with a better strategy.
Can you put aside your ad hominem attacks and emotion-based rhetoric, and show me where it says Texas cannot secede if I can convince the legislature to pass an article of secession?
I have never taken a position on the legality of secession other than to say that the Constitution is quite ambiguous on the issue and that the Confederates really didn't care if secession was legal, since they rejected the U.S. Constitution and chose to draft their own in an attempt to preserve their precious institution of slavery. They didn't file a petition with Congress or the federal courts to recognize the legality of their secession, they just did it and took up arms to confiscate U.S. property.
The main point of r9etb's essay was that there was little support for the thesis of Williams that "virtually every political leader of the time and earlier believed that states had a right of secession". r9etb is correct. Moreover, what is clear is that the U.S. Constitution never included a secession provision. If the people of the Southern states really wanted to preserve a Constitutional right to secession, they were foolish for not demanding a Constitutional provision on the issue. Any half decent partnership agreement, for example, contains a dissolution clause which sets forth the procedures for winding up the partnership should one or more of the partners choose to go their separate way which specifies how the assets and liabilities will be distributed. The absence of such a provision in the U.S. Constitution strongly suggests that peaceful secession was never seriously considered by any state entering into the Union.
Williams also makes the ridiculous argument that the framers "saw secession as the ultimate protection against Washington tyranny." The framers obviously considered armed rebellion to be the ultimate protection against tyranny, as revealed by their decision to rebel against the Brits.
You Confederate glorifiers are obviously just trying to come up with some justification for the moral depravity of the people with whom you have chosen to identify. Why not just admit that their healthy rebellious spirit was greatly overshadowed by the cause they chose to rally around?
this is a nice attempt to spread utter bulls**t about the thoughts and honor of the Southern fighting man. It also ignores plenty of Northern racism.
You're wrong on both assertions. Here's a sample of what the Confederate leaders were saying to rally Southerners to their perverse cause:
"[Slavery] is the poor man's best Government... Among us the poor white laborer ... does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal... He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men. [Thus, yeoman farmers] will never consent to submit to abolition rule, [for they] know that in the event of the abolition of slavery, they would be greater sufferers than the rich, who would be able to protect themselves... When it becomes necessary to defend our rights against so foul a domination, I would call upon the mountain boys as well as the people of the lowlands, and they would come down like an avalanche and swarm around the flag of Georgia." (Stated by Governor Brown on Georgia.)
"Do you love your mother, your wife, your sister, your daughter? [If Georgia remained in a Union] ruled by Lincoln and his crew ... in TEN years or less our CHILDREN will be slaves of negroes." (Stated by a Georgia secessionist to nonslaveholders.)
"If you are tame enough to submit, Abolition preachers will be at hand to consummate the marriage of your daughters to black husbands." (Stated by a South Carolina clergyman.)
"Submit to have our wives and daughters choose between death and gratifying the hellish lust of the negro... Better ten thousand deaths than submission to Black Republicanism."
"Our Abolition enemies [are] pledged to prostrate the white freement of the South down to equality with negroes... democratic liberty exists solely because we have black slaves [whose presence] promotes equality among the free... freedom is not possible without slavery." See McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pp 242-244.
And I am in no way ignoring racism in the Northern states. There was plenty of racism up north among Democrats. That is why Lincoln was elected by a narrow margin and couldn't move fast enough on abolition to avoid the criticism of the modern day Confederate glorifiers who cynically seek to demonize him. Had the slaveholders not been so savagely zealous (eg. "bloody Kansas") in protecting their cherished institution, the Republican Party might have never gotten off the ground. By resorting to abject ruthlessness, the slaveholders pushed Northerners toward the Republicans and the realization that slavery was a societal cancer that only a suppression of the slaveholders' rebellion would cure.
I guarantee you that if you were here you would not be so insolent or so disingenuous. Now once and for all; do you agree Pink?
My compliments.
Witness the writhings of an "rdf".
I used the Kansas war (between pro- and anti-slavery forces) to support my claim that a war between North and South was probably inevitable, regardless of whether the secession were allowed to proceed.
Indeed, the acceptance of secession would undoubtedly have made a western war much more likely, as there would be no means for a federal government to mediate violent disagreements between states.
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