Posted on 06/14/2004 5:16:34 AM PDT by Theodore R.
They Aren’t What They Used to Be
May 27, 2004
If I had to sum up American history in one sentence, I’d put it this way: The United States aren’t what they used to be.
That’s not nostalgia. That’s literal fact. Before the Civil War, the United States was a plural noun. The U.S. Constitution uses the plural form when, for example, it refers to enemies of the United States as “their” enemies. And this was the usage of everyone who understood that the union was a voluntary federation of sovereign states, delegating only a few specified powers, and not the monolithic, “consolidated,” all-powerful government it has since become.
Maybe Americans prefer the present megastate to the one the Constitution describes. But they ought to know the difference. They shouldn’t assume that the plural United States were essentially the same thing as today’s United State, or that the one naturally “evolved” into the other.
The change was violent, not natural. Lincoln waged war on states that tried to withdraw from the Union, denying their right to do so. This was a denial of the Declaration of Independence, which called the 13 former colonies “Free and Independent States.”
Washington and Jefferson at times expressed their fear that some states might secede, but they took for granted that this was the right of any free and independent state. They advised against exercising that right except under serious provocation, but they assumed it was a legitimate option against the threat of a centralized government that exceeded its constitutional powers.
Before the Civil War, several states considered leaving the Union, and abolitionists urged Northern states to do so in order to end their association with slave states. Congressman John Quincy Adams, a former president, wanted Massachusetts to secede if Texas was admitted to the Union. Nobody suggested that Adams didn’t understand the Constitution he was sworn to uphold.
But the danger to the states’ independence was already growing. Andrew Jackson had threatened to invade South Carolina if it seceded, shocking even so ardent a Unionist as Daniel Webster. Jackson didn’t explain where he got the power to prevent secession, a power not assigned to the president in the Constitution. Why not? For the simple reason that the Constitution doesn’t forbid secession; it presupposes that the United States are, each of them, free and independent.
Still, Lincoln used Jackson’s threat as a precedent for equating secession with “rebellion” and using force to crush it. This required him to do violence to the Constitution in several ways. He destroyed the freedoms of speech and press in the North; he arbitrarily arrested thousands, including elected officials who opposed him; he not only invaded the seceding states, but deposed their governments and imposed military dictatorships in their place.
In essence, Lincoln made it a crime — “treason,” in fact — to agree with Jefferson. Northerners who held that free and independent states had the right to leave the Union — and who therefore thought Lincoln’s war was wrong — became, in Lincoln’s mind, the enemy within. In order to win the war, and reelection, he had to shut them up. But his reign of terror in the North has received little attention.
He may have “saved the Union,” after a fashion, but the Union he saved was radically different from the one described in the Constitution. Even his defenders admit that when they praise him for creating “a new Constitution” and forging “a second American Revolution.” Lincoln would have been embarrassed by these compliments: He always insisted he was only enforcing and conserving the Constitution as it was written, though the U.S. Supreme Court, including his own appointees, later ruled many of his acts unconstitutional.
The Civil War completely changed the basic relation between the states, including the Northern states, and the Federal Government. For all practical purposes, the states ceased to be free and independent.
Sentimental myths about Lincoln and the war still obscure the nature of the fundamental rupture they brought to American history. The old federal Union was transformed into the kind of “consolidated” system the Constitution was meant to avoid. The former plurality of states became a single unit. Even our grammar reflects the change.
So the United States were no longer a “they”; they’d become an “it.” Few Americans realize the immense cost in blood, liberty, and even logic that lies behind this simple change of pronouns.
Joseph Sobran
Prior to FDR, there were different currencies. To print notes, one needed to be a member of the National Association and have sufficient reserves in legal tender.
http://www.friesian.com/notes.htm
Maybe Americans prefer the present megastate to the one the Constitution describes>>
Because the one the Constitution describes allowed human beings to be sold as slaves.
Sobran is not a conservative and should be vomited out of the mouth of the Right.
Sobran ping
FACT of the matter is that Mr. Snodgrass, like everyone of us, lost his individual rights to Lincoln's concept of union.>>>
And thanks be to the Risen Jesus Christ therefore, as we no longer think that black people are the moral equivalent of xerox machines.
Does that mean the United States is a nation of rapists and murderers?>>
That has to be stupid as hell. Rape and murder was illegal on the state level. Slavery was encouraged--in fact 11 states decided to burn themselves to the ground rather than give it up.
The evil stupidity of the true sons of the slave rapers never ceases to amaze me.
You need to divorce secession and slavery, then the piece will make sense.
So, you agree with those who hold that your rights are the few listed in the Constitution? Here I thought that the Constitution enumerated certain specific powers granted to the Federal government.
So, how do you feel about the genocide and ethnic cleansing committed against the native Americans?
So, how do you feel about the genocide and ethnic cleansing committed against the native Americans?
>>
1) All those that committed that crime against humanity are dead.
2) Nobody around here is advocating wiping out the Indians any more.
3) I've never met an anti-Indian racist, much less one that hides his race hate behind an anti-Lincoln stance.
Abortion is another moral question that was resolved at the state level previous to Roe v. Wade.>>
Bullspit. The inherent equality before the law of all men (which predates the Constitution and is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence) REQUIRES that no man be allowed to kill, or enslave, or abort, another.
Abortion will be destroyed nationwide the same way that slavery was, through constitutional amendment and enforcement of the Constitution throughout the land.
Sadly, this is all too true.
2) Nobody around here is advocating wiping out the Indians any more.>>>
That is, until they become Muslims.
Sadly, this is all too true.
>>
It is also irrelevant. Any state that sells human beings as slaves DESERVES to meet its Sherman.
Truer words have never been spoken [or written]!
The Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves over what the Nation they gave us morphed into.
We still are united, despite what Dan Rather, CNN and John Kerry say..
2 posted on 06/14/2004 5:19:54 AM PDT by cardinal4
I am not united with,nor do I want to be united with the sociaists, one worlders, communists, democrats,Bush haters,u.n. worshippers, and others whose sole purpose for living is the complete and total destruction of the United States.
So are the slaves and slavers. Thanks for making my point for me. You did good.
2) Nobody around here is advocating wiping out the Indians any more.
That's probably because we as a nation have already wiped them out, for the most part.
3) I've never met an anti-Indian racist, much less one that hides his race hate behind an anti-Lincoln stance.
Refer to answer number 2.
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