Posted on 08/05/2010 6:01:30 AM PDT by Michael Zak
[by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine, CA), re-published with his permission]
For years I have admired Congressman Ron Paul’s principled stance on spending and the Constitution. That said, he really damaged himself when he blamed President Lincoln for the Civil War, saying, “Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war… [President Abraham Lincoln] did this just to enhance and get rid of the original intent of the republic.”
This is historical revisionism of the worst order, and it must be addressed.
For Congressman Paul’s benefit – and for his supporters who may not know – seven states illegally declared their “independence” from the United States before Lincoln was sworn in as President. After South Carolina fired the first shot at Fort Sumter, four additional states declared independence...
(Excerpt) Read more at grandoldpartisan.typepad.com ...
by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore (R-Irvine, CA)
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| Secession Timeline various sources |
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| [Although very late in the war Lee wanted freedom offered to any of the slaves who would agree to fight for the Confederacy, practically no one was stupid enough to fall for that. In any case, Lee was definitely not fighting to end slavery, instead writing that black folks are better off in bondage than they were free in Africa, and regardless, slavery will be around until Providence decides, and who are we to second guess that? And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists.] Robert E. Lee letter -- "...There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right not the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master..." |
December 27, 1856 |
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| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
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| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
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| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
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| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
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| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
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| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
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| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
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| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
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| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
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| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
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| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
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| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
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| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
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| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
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| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
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| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
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| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
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| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
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| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
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| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
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“A supposed constitutional right for a state to secede did not occur to people until the 1820s. It never even came up during the convention or ratification.”
Absolutely not true.
“The Constitution did not abolish the Articles of Confederation, it amended and improved the political arrangements.”
The Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation.
A warning shot is not “hostilities.”
The notion that the Constitution acknowledged a state’s right to secede was invented by Vice President John Calhoun and other pro-slavery “fire-eaters” during the Jackson administration.
“It is precluded by the nature of the term “constitution” which was the FOUNDATION of the Union and could only be changed by the amendment process.”
The Constitution is not a suicide pact. By your logic, if a constitutional amendment to make, say, Louisiana a toxic waste dump was introduced, and 40 states ratified it, Louisiana would just have to grin and bear it, and would not have the right to withdraw from the Union. I call bullshit. Seems to me that you are confusing the United States with the former Soviet Union.
“The notion that the Constitution acknowledged a state’s right to secede was invented by Vice President John Calhoun and other pro-slavery ‘fire-eaters’ during the Jackson administration.”
Nope. You should read St. George Tucker’s 1803 treatise on the Constitution. He summarizes the purpose and intent of the Constitution, and says: “The federal government, then, appears to be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign nations, and with each other. Their submission to its operation is voluntary: its councils, its sovereignty is an emanation from theirs, not a flame by which they have been consumed, nor a vortex in which they are swallowed up. Each is still a perfect state, still sovereign, still independent, and still capable, should the occasion require, to resume the exercise of its functions, as such, in the most unlimited extent. But until the time shall arive when the occasion requires a resumption of the rights of sovereignty by the several states (and far be that period removed when it should happen) the exercise of the rights of sovereignty by the states, individually, is wholly suspended, or discontinued, in the cases before mentioned: nor can that suspension ever be removed, so long as the present constitution remains unchanged, but by the dissolution of the bonds of union. An event which no good citizen can wish, and which no good, or wise administration will ever hazard.”
Not exactly.The referendum, held 23 May 1861, confirmed the convention's Ordinance of Secession by a vote of 132,201 to 37,451. Most other referenda had similar or wider margins.
Of course, that was on 23 May, and VA had already been at war with the Union for more than a month. Had the vote been held in early April or before, the results would have been quite different.
states where whites were strongly desirous of secession, like Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina, whites were a minority of the population.
Partially true. I believe slaves were a majority only in MS and SC, although the numbers were close in most of the Deep South states. Given the large numbers of free blacks in LA, it may have had a black, though not slave, majority.
http://www.sonofthesouth.net/slavery/slave-maps/slave-census.htm
Dr. Paul is CORRECT. State’s rights were what the Founding Fathers planned for America. Yes slavery is wrong but denying states the right to secede is the reason socialism has finally come to America’s shores.
“If you wrote a legally binding business agreement between two parties and there was nothing in the original agreement that allowed for one or the other party to opt out of the agreement. Would one party be allowed to simply opt out? No, it would have to go to court, be adjudicated and a settlement arranged.”
In most jurisdictions breach of contract (i.e., breaking a contract) can void that contract. Oh, the aggrieved party can sue for specific performance, but he can also walk away from it if the other party has broken the contract by some action or inaction, taking the argument that the breach voided the contract.
It’s funny, but all you “no right to secede” folks always overlook one thing: If Lincoln were so sure secession was illegal, why didn’t he just seek a ruling from the Supreme Court to put the stamp of law to it? He didn’t, because he was probably terrified to find out what that ruling would be (especially with Taney on the court).
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Reread your history. Slavery was indeed in the midst of a slow decline when the cotton gin came along and made it wildly profitable. Slave prices, the best market indicator of the economic value of the institution, reached their peak in 1860.
The cotton gin saved slavery by making upland short fiber, and therefore harder to gin, cotton economically viable for the first time.
In an extremely bizarre coincidence, the song was actually originally about an entirely different and totally non-famous John Brown, although when it became popular as a marching song during the early days of the war doubtless few of the singers realized this.
http://www.shrewsburychorale.org/Past/Battle%20Hymn%20of%20the%20Republic.html
LOL. See Texas v. White
It’s funny, but all you “right to secede” folks always overlook one thing: If the south was so sure secession was legal, why didn’t they just seek a ruling from the Supreme Court to put the stamp of law to it?
“It’s funny, but all you ‘right to secede’ folks always overlook one thing: If the south was so sure secession was legal, why didn’t they just seek a ruling from the Supreme Court to put the stamp of law to it?”
They didn’t have to. They had already seceded, and thus were not under the jurisdiction of SCOTUS, and therefore any SCOTUS ruling would be inapplicable to the Confederate States of America. Besides, they believed that while they were still part of the Union, the 10th Amendment allowed for secession; and afterwards (i.e., after secession), it didn’t matter.
“LOL. See Texas v. White.”
Oh, I am very aware of Texas v. White, and that was a ruling that came several years AFTER the War (it was handed down in 1869). Thus, it is wholly inapplicable to the events of 1860-1865, except as an after-the-fact opinion.
That’s right - instead of seeking the rule of law they cut & ran. Look how that worked out...
“That’s right - instead of seeking the rule of law they cut & ran. Look how that worked out...”
I see. So, if a woman is in an abusive marriage, and is threatened on a regular basis by her husband, if the court does not grant her a divorce she must stay with her husband until he maims or kills her. I don’t think so.
The south is an abused woman now?! There’s some Lost Causers that are gonna be upset to know that ;-)
The constitution is the supreme law of the land. You can play “what if” all you want but it won’t change that fact.\
Any human institution can become fallible that is why the means of changing it is included in the instrument.
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