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DOOMED FROM THE START?
Tenth Amendment Center ^ | Mar. 18, 2010 | Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Posted on 03/19/2010 8:36:22 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake

After spending a lifetime in politics John C. Calhoun (U.S. Senator, Vice President of the United States, Secretary of War) wrote his brilliant treatise, A Disquisition on Government, which was published posthumously shortly after his death in 1850. In it Calhoun warned that it is an error to believe that a written constitution alone is “sufficient, of itself, without the aid of any organism except such as is necessary to separate its several departments, and render them independent of each other to counteract the tendency of the numerical majority to oppression and abuse of power” (p. 26). The separation of powers is fine as far as it goes, in other words, but it would never be a sufficient defense against governmental tyranny, said Calhoun.

Moreover, it is a “great mistake,” Calhoun wrote, to suppose that “the mere insertion of provisions to restrict and limit the powers of the government, without investing those for whose protection they are inserted, with the means of enforcing their observance, will be sufficient to prevent the major and dominant party from abusing its powers” (emphasis added). The party “in possession of the government” will always be opposed to any and all restrictions on its powers. They “will have no need of these restrictions” and “would come, in time, to regard these limitations as unnecessary and improper restraints and endeavor to elude them . . .”

The “part in favor of the restrictions” (i.e., strict constructionists) would inevitably be overpowered. It is sheer folly, Calhoun argued, to suppose that “the party in possession of the ballot box and the physical force of the country, could be successfully resisted by an appeal to reason, truth, justice, or the obligations imposed by the constitution” (emphasis added). He predicted that “the restrictions [of government power in the Constitution] would ultimately be annulled, and the government be converted into one of unlimited powers.” He was right, of course.

This is a classic statement of the Jeffersonian states’ rights position. The people of the free, independent and sovereign states must be empowered with the rights of nullification and secession, and a concurrent majority with veto power over unconstitutional federal laws, if their constitutional liberties are to have any chance of protection, Calhoun believed. The federal government itself can never, ever be trusted to limit its own powers.

How did Calhoun come to such conclusions? One answer to this question is that he was a serious student of politics, history, and political philosophy for his entire life, and understood the nature of government as much as anyone else alive during his time. He also witnessed first hand or quickly learned about the machinations of the sworn enemies of limited constitutional government in America: men such as Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, John Marshall, Joseph Story and Daniel Webster.

The Founding Fathers of Constitutional Subversion

America’s first constitution, the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, did a much better job of limiting the tyrannical proclivities of government than the U.S. Constitution ever did, and it did so while permitting enough governmental power to field an army that defeated the British Empire. The limits on government that the Articles contained outraged the advocates of unlimited governmental powers, such as Alexander Hamilton, which is why the “Perpetual Union” that was created by the Articles was abolished as all the states peacefully seceded from that union

The constitutional convention was Hamilton’s idea as much as anyone’s. Upon arriving at the convention Hamilton laid out the plan of his fellow nationalists: a permanent president or king, who would appoint all governors, who would have veto power over all state legislation. This monopoly government would then impose on the entire nation a British-style mercantilist empire without Great Britain, complete with massive corporate welfare subsidies, a large public debt, protectionist tariffs, and a central bank modeled after the Bank of England that would inflate the currency to finance the empire.

Hamilton did not get his way, of course, thanks to the Jeffersonians. When the Constitution was finally ratified, creating a federal instead of a national or monopolistic, monarchical government, Hamilton denounced the document as “a frail and worthless fabric.” He and his Federalist/nationalist colleagues immediately went to work destroying the limits on government contained in the Constitution. He invented the notion of “implied powers” of the Constitution, which allowed him and his political heirs to argue that the Constitution is not a set of limitations on governmental powers, as Jefferson believed it was, but rather a potential stamp of approval on anything the government ever wanted to do as long as it is “properly” interpreted by clever, statist lawyers like Alexander Hamilton or John Marshall. Hamilton “set out to remold the Constitution into an instrument of national supremacy,” wrote Clinton Rossiter in Alexander Hamilton and the Constitution.

One of the first subversive things Hamilton did was to rewrite the history of the American founding by saying in a public speech on June 29 1787, that the states were merely “artificial beings” and were never sovereign. The “nation,” not the states, was sovereign, he said. And he said this while the constitutional convention was busy crafting Article 7 of the Constitution, which holds that the Constitution would become the law of the land only when nine of the thirteen free and independent states ratified it. The states were to ratify the Constitution because, as everyone knew, they were sovereign and were delegating a few express powers to the central government for their mutual benefit.

It was Hamilton who first invented the expansive interpretations of the General Welfare and Commerce Clauses of the Constitution, which have been used for generations to grant totalitarian powers to the central state. He literally set the template for the destruction of constitutional liberty in America the moment it became apparent at the constitutional convention that he and his fellow nationalists would not get their way and create a “monarchy bottomed on corruption,” as Thomas Jefferson described the Hamiltonian system.

Hamilton’s devoted disciple, John Marshall, was appointed chief justice of the United States in 1801 and served in that post for more than three decades. His career was a crusade to rewrite the Constitution so that it would become a nationalist document that destroyed states’ rights and most other limitations on the powers of the centralized state. He essentially declared in Marbury vs. Madison that he, John Marshall, would be the arbiter of constitutionality via “judicial review.” The Jeffersonians, meanwhile, had always warned that if they day ever came when the federal government became the sole arbiter of the limits of its own powers, it would soon declare that there were, in fact, no limits on its powers. This of course is what the anti-Jeffersonians wanted – and what has happened.

In the case of Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee Marshall invented out of thin air the notion that the federal government had the “right” to veto state court decisions. Marshall also made up the theory that the so-called Supremacy Clause of the Constitution makes the federal government “supreme” in all matters. This is false: The federal government is only “supreme” with regard to those powers that were expressly delegated to it by the free and independent states, in Article 1, Section 8.

Marshall also repeated Hamilton’s bogus theory of the American founding, claiming that the “nation” somehow created the states. He amazingly argued that the federal government was somehow created by “the whole people” and not the citizens of the states through state political conventions, as was actually the case. In the name of “the people,” Marshall said, the federal government claimed the right to “legitimately control all individuals or governments within the American territory” (Edward S. Corwin, John Marshall and the Constitution, p. 131).

All of the Hamilton/Marshall nonsense about the founders having created a monopolistic, monarchical government and having abolished states rights or federalism was repeated for decades by the likes of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story and Daniel Webster. Story was “the most Hamiltonian of judges,” wrote Clinton Rossiter. His famous book, Commentaries on the Constitution, published in 1833, could have been entitled “Commentaries on Alexander Hamilton’s Commentaries on the Constitution,” says Rossiter. He “construed the powers of Congress liberally,” i.e., meaning there were virtually no limits to such powers; and “upheld the supremacy of the nation,” i.e., of monopolistic, monarchical, and unconstitutional government. Stories Commentaries provided a political roadmap for “the legal profession’s elite or at least among the part of it educated in the North during the middle years of the nineteenth century,” wrote Rossiter.

Story’s “famous” Commentaries are filled with phony history and illogic. On the Articles of Confederation, he wrote that “It is heresy to maintain, that a party to a compact has a right to revoke that compact.” But of course the Articles were revoked!

Secession of a single state would mean “dissolution of the government,” Story wrote. Nonsense. After eleven Southern states seceded in 1860–61 the U.S. government proceeded to field the largest and best-equipped army in the history of the world up to that point. It was hardly “dissolved.”

In a classic of doubletalk, Story admitted that “The original compact of society . . . in no instance . . . has ever been formally expressed at the first institution of a state.” That is, there was never any agreement by the citizens of any state to always and forever be obedient to those who would enforce what they proclaim to be “the general will.” Nevertheless, said Story, “every part should pay obedience to the will of the whole.” And who is to define “the will of the whole”? Why, nationalist Supreme Court justices like Joseph Story and John Marshall, of course.

Story admitted that social contract theories of “voluntary” state formation were mere theoretical fantasies. He also held the rather creepy and totalitarian, if not barbarian view that “The majority must have a right to accomplish that object by the means, which they deem adequate for the end . . . . The will of the majority of the people is absolute and sovereign, limited only by its means and power to make its will effectual.”

What Story is saying here is not that there should be a national plebescite on all policy issues that can express the “will of the majority.” No, as with Hamilton he adopted the French Jacobin philosophy that such a “will” was possessed in the minds of the ruling class, and that that class (the Storys, Hamiltons, Marshalls, etc.) somehow possessed “absolute” power as long as it has the military means to “make its will effectual.” Here we have the theoretical basis for Abe Lincoln’s waging of total war on his own citizens.

Contrary to the political truths expressed by Calhoun which have all proven to be true, by the way Story expressed the elementary-schoolish view that the appropriate response to governmental oppression should be only via “the proper tribunals constituted by the government” which would supposedly “appeal to the good sense, and integrity, and justice of the majority of the people.” Trust the politicians and lifetime-appointed federal judges to enforce their view of “justice,” in other words. That hasn’t really worked out during the succeeding 170 years.

Story also repeated John Marshall’s fable that the Supremacy Clause created a monopolistic government in Washington, D.C. and effectively abolished states’ rights, along with the equally ridiculous myth that the Constitution was magically ratified by “the whole people” (presumably not counting women, who could not vote, or slaves and free blacks).

Another famous and influential subverter of the Constitution was Daniel Webster, who repeated many of these same nationalist fables during his famous U.S. Senate debate with South Carolina’s Robert Hayne in January of 1830. This is a debate that Hayne clearly won according to their congressional colleagues, and the media of the day, although nationalist historians (a.k.a., distorians) have claimed otherwise.

The first Big Lie that Webster told was that “the Constitution of the United States confers on the government itself . . . the power of deciding ultimately and conclusively upon the extent of its own authority.” No, it does not. John Marshall may have wished that it did when he invented judicial review, but the document itself says no such thing. As Senator John Taylor once said, “The Constitution never could have designed to destroy [liberty], by investing five or six men, installed for life, with a power of regulating the constitutional rights of all political departments.”

Webster then presented a totally false scenario: “One of two things is true: either the laws of the Union are beyond the discretion and beyond the control of the States; or else we have no constitution of general government . . .” Huh? All the laws? Are the people to have no say whatsoever about laws they believe are clearly constitutional? Apparently so, said Daniel Webster.

The a-historical fairy tale about the Constitution being somehow ratified by “the whole people” was repeated over and over by Webster. His strategy was apparently to convince his audience not by historical facts but by repetition and bluster. “The Constitution creates a popular government, erected by the people . . . it is not a creature of the state governments,” he bellowed. Anyone who has ever read Article 7 of the U.S. Constitution knows that this is utterly false.

In fine French Jacobin fashion, Webster asked, “Who shall interpret their [the peoples’] will? Why “the government itself,” he said. Not through popular votes, mind you, but through the orders, mandates, and dictates of “the government itself.” The people themselves were to have nothing to do with “interpreting” their own “will.”

Article 3, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution clearly defines treason under the constitution: “Treason against the United States shall consist in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Thus, treason means levying war against “them,” the sovereign states. This is why Lincoln’s invasion of the Southern states was the very definition of treasonous behavior under the Constitution. Had the North lost the war, he could have been justifiably hanged.

Webster attempted to re-define treason under the Constitution by claiming that “To resist by force the execution of a [federal] law, generally, is treason.” Thus, if the federal government were to invade a sovereign state to enforce one of its laws, a clearly treasonous act under the plain language of the Constitution, resistance to the invasion is what constitutes treason according to Webster. He defined treason, in other words, to mean exactly the opposite of what it actually means in the Constitution.

Then there is the elementary-schoolish faith in democracy as the only necessary defense against governmental tyranny: “Trust in the efficacy of frequent elections,” “trust in the judicial power.” Well, we tried that for decades and decades, Daniel, and it didn’t work.

All of these false histories and logical fallacies were repeated by other nationalist politicians for decades. This includes Abraham Lincoln, who probably lifted his famous line in The Gettysburg Address from this statement by Webster during his debate with Hayne: “It is, Sir, the people’s Constitution, the people’s government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that this Constitution shall be the supreme law.” Of course, they did not.

As Lord Pete Bauer once said in commenting on the rhetoric of communism, whenever one hears of “the people’s republic” the “peoples’ government,” etc., it is a sure bet that the people have nothing whatsoever to do with, or control over that government.

Hamilton, Marshall, Webster, Story, and other nationalists kept up their rhetorical fog-horning for decades, trying to convince Americans that the founding fathers did, after all, adopt Hamilton’s plan of a dictatorial executive that abolished states rights and was devoted to building a mercantilist empire in America that would rival the British empire. But their rhetoric had little or no success during their lifetimes.

New Englanders plotted to secede for a decade after Thomas Jefferson was elected president in 1800; all states, North and South, made use of the Jeffersonian, states’ rights doctrine of nullification to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act, protectionist tariffs, the antics of the Bank of the United States, and other issues up until the 1860s. There was a secession movement in the Mid-Atlantic states in the 1850s, and in 1861 the majority of Northern newspaper editorialists were in support of peaceful secession (see Northern Editorials on Secession by Howard Perkins).

The false, nationalist theory of the American founding was repeated by Abraham Lincoln in his first inaugural address (and praised decades later by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, wherein Hitler mad his case for abolishing states’ rights and centralizing all political power in Germany). In the same speech Lincoln threatened “invasion” and “bloodshed” (his words) in any state that failed to collect the newly-doubled federal tariff tax. He then followed through with his threat.

The only group of Americans to ever seriously challenge this false nationalist theory, Southern secessionists, were mass murdered by the hundreds of thousands, including some 50,000 civilians according to James McPherson; their cities and towns were bombed and burned to the ground, tens of millions of dollars of private property was plundered by the U.S. Army; Southern women, white and black, were raped; and total war was waged on the civilian population. This is what finally cemented into place the false, Hamiltonian/nationalist theory of the American founding, for the victors always get to write the history in war. Government of the people, by the people, for the people, is “limited only” by the state’s “power to make its will effectual,” as Joseph Story proclaimed. The technology of mass murder in the hands of the state finally made this will “effectual” in the first half of the 1860s. Americans have been mis-educated and misinformed about their own political history ever since. It is this mis-education, this false theory of history, that serves to prop up the Hamiltonian empire that Americans now slave under.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.


TOPICS: Government; History; Politics; Reference
KEYWORDS: 10thamendment; founders; kkk; klan; racist; statesrights
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A worthwhile read IMHO.
1 posted on 03/19/2010 8:36:22 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake
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To: 17th Miss Regt; 2001convSVT; 2ndDivisionVet; A_Former_Democrat; A_Tradition_Continues; ...

Last ~~ping~~ of the night — probably.


2 posted on 03/19/2010 8:38:15 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (You have two choices and two choices only: SUBMIT or RESIST with everything you've got!)
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To: ForGod'sSake

Great read. Good to still have access to written history.


3 posted on 03/19/2010 8:50:30 PM PDT by ntnychik
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To: ForGod'sSake
When Obama said that the US Constitution was a " flawed document " was he nodding to the same sentiments as Hamilton ?

( Hamilton did not get his way, of course, thanks to the Jeffersonians. When the Constitution was finally ratified, creating a federal instead of a national or monopolistic, monarchical government, Hamilton denounced the document as “a frail and worthless fabric.” ) .....
4 posted on 03/19/2010 8:56:04 PM PDT by American Constitutionalist (There is no civility in the way the Communist/Marxist want to destroy the USA)
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To: heartwood

ping


5 posted on 03/19/2010 8:56:14 PM PDT by heartwood
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To: American Constitutionalist
When Obama said that the US Constitution was a " flawed document " was he nodding to the same sentiments as Hamilton ?

They were probably cut from the same piece of cloth; each believing in the almost absolute supremacy of a "national" government. I pray the States, encouraged by We The People, and the SCOTUS retain enough backbone to fight off the latter day Hamiltonians.

6 posted on 03/19/2010 9:05:24 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (You have two choices and two choices only: SUBMIT or RESIST with everything you've got!)
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To: ForGod'sSake
No wonder the progressives want to lie and tell the people that " the US Constitution is a living and breathing document " because it says whatever they " DEEM " it says....

( The first Big Lie that Webster told was that “the Constitution of the United States confers on the government itself . . . the power of deciding ultimately and conclusively upon the extent of its own authority.” ) ....
7 posted on 03/19/2010 9:15:49 PM PDT by American Constitutionalist (There is no civility in the way the Communist/Marxist want to destroy the USA)
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To: ForGod'sSake

As a sub-mediocre student of history, I find it remarkable...endlessly remarkable...that the Founders foresaw just about everything that could happen in their new nation; governed by their new Constitution; and wrote about and discussed and speculated about their concerns as to what would/might/could happen.

I am sure that if I were a far more diligent student than I am, my amazement would only grow. This is really one vile bunch of brazen sick scumbags we have running the place in DC.


8 posted on 03/19/2010 9:16:04 PM PDT by Attention Surplus Disorder (Voters who thought their ship came in with 0bama are on their own Titanic.)
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To: ForGod'sSake

Good article. My 2 cents:
The states preceded the federal government and created it, as the people created government in their own states from positive law. Preceding postive law was natural law, e.g. that government “gives us” no rights and possesses only those rights that we give it.
The Declaration of Independence preceded the framework given us by the first Americans, and it recognizes morality throughout, while the Constitution is a pure creature of positive or manmade law.
Presumed in the Constitution, however, is that citizens are—and must be—moral people. In a moral vacuum, tyranny results. A tyrant, whether a regent, aristocracy or oligarchy will take as much power as it is allowed. In a totalitarian state, members aid in their own subjugation and actually encourage it, while discouraging liberty, because they have actually returned to a state of nature in which they do not know the difference between freedom and slavery. http://www.free2pray.info/5founderquotes.html


9 posted on 03/19/2010 9:23:08 PM PDT by tumblindice (Americas Founding Fathers--armed conservatives)
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To: American Constitutionalist

Indeed. The point being of course, the ink wasn’t even dry on our Constitution before the attacks on it began. Had it not been for Patrick Henry and his fellow Federalists and patriots, we would probably have not even gotten our Bill of Rights. Factoid: Patrick Henry ALMOST didn’t attend the Consitutional Convention because he feared a railroad job from the “nationalists”. Good thing for us he changed his mind.


10 posted on 03/19/2010 9:26:55 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (You have two choices and two choices only: SUBMIT or RESIST with everything you've got!)
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To: Attention Surplus Disorder
As a sub-mediocre student of history, I find it remarkable...endlessly remarkable...that the Founders foresaw just about everything that could happen in their new nation; governed by their new Constitution; and wrote about and discussed and speculated about their concerns as to what would/might/could happen.

Not many people know just how well traveled and erudite most of our Founders were. And as was custom at the time, almost all spoke several languages. In addition, and should be obvious given their creation, most were also students of human nature and the human condition.

This is really one vile bunch of brazen sick scumbags we have running the place in DC.

Agreed, and thanks in no small part to the human condition. Tyrants never sleep; We The People did. We are paying the price for our lack of vigilance, no?

11 posted on 03/19/2010 9:36:29 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (You have two choices and two choices only: SUBMIT or RESIST with everything you've got!)
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To: ForGod'sSake
In essence, it all comes down to this:
The " THE PEOPLE " is not the possession, or property of the state or government, only the GOD of Israel reserves that right..... and once the government declares it's self as god, then, the GOD of Israel has to show who is boss......

THE PEOPLE, the CITIZENS is NOT !!!! the possession, or property of any state or government...

The all mighty GOD of Israel will have the last say and judgment.... not the state, or government....
12 posted on 03/19/2010 9:38:08 PM PDT by American Constitutionalist (There is no civility in the way the Communist/Marxist want to destroy the USA)
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To: ForGod'sSake

I’m sure we agree on darn-near everything but I don’t look to Calhoun for enlightenment. Not a good guy. An unrelenting advocate for slavery. He drove this nation apart. Andrew Jackson threatened to “hang from the highest tree” those who spoke of succession.


13 posted on 03/19/2010 9:41:02 PM PDT by rae4palin (islam is of the devil)
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To: tumblindice

Just so. Too many of our fellow countrymen prefer to be “kept” by their betters. I believe however, there will always be those amongst us who would rather not become involved in the daily struggle required to remain a free people. It’s when the government reduces itself to buying votes from these parasites the fall begins.


14 posted on 03/19/2010 9:49:35 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (You have two choices and two choices only: SUBMIT or RESIST with everything you've got!)
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To: American Constitutionalist
The all mighty GOD of Israel will have the last say and judgment.... not the state, or government....

Even so, come, Lord Jesus...

15 posted on 03/19/2010 9:52:21 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (You have two choices and two choices only: SUBMIT or RESIST with everything you've got!)
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To: rae4palin

I wouldn’t discount a man’s opinion soley because he coincidentally happened to support a common practice of his day. Is there anything in particular re his stated positions in the article you disagree with?


16 posted on 03/19/2010 9:58:45 PM PDT by ForGod'sSake (You have two choices and two choices only: SUBMIT or RESIST with everything you've got!)
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To: rae4palin
Andrew Jackson threatened to “hang from the highest tree” those who spoke of succession...

And we sent 25,000 solders down to Charlestown to meet his challenge..Jackson backed down and shut the h-ll up..

17 posted on 03/20/2010 12:15:37 AM PDT by triSranch (Live from the Birthplace and Deathbed of the Confederacy)
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To: triSranch

Never happened.


18 posted on 03/20/2010 12:27:50 AM PDT by rae4palin (islam is of the devil)
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I might add that because Jackson pushed to hard John C's wife set up Jackson's demise..Jackson's wife had a tea party of her own..which cause Jackson to end up being shot..
Jackson couldn't control his temper and she knew it..

Pay back served up cold..

19 posted on 03/20/2010 12:34:24 AM PDT by triSranch (Live from the Birthplace and Deathbed of the Confederacy)
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To: rae4palin

In November 1832 the Nullification Convention met. The convention declared that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and unenforceable within the state of South Carolina after February 1, 1833. Furthermore, attempts to use force to collect the taxes would lead to the state’s secession. Robert Hayne, who followed Hamilton as governor in 1833, established a 2,000 man group of mounted minutemen and 25,000 infantry who would immediately march to Charleston in the event of a military conflict. These troops were to be armed with $100,000 in arms purchased in the North

Governor Hayne in his inaugural address made it clear where South Carolina stood:

“ If the sacred soil of Carolina should be polluted by the footsteps of an invader, or be stained with the blood of her citizens, shed in defense, I trust in Almighty God that no son of hers … who has been nourished at her bosom … will be found raising a parricidal arm against our common mother. And even should she stand ALONE in this great struggle for constitutional liberty … that there will not be found, in the wider limits of the state, one recreant son who will not fly to the rescue, and be ready to lay down his life in her defense.[


20 posted on 03/20/2010 12:42:36 AM PDT by triSranch (Live from the Birthplace and Deathbed of the Confederacy)
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