Posted on 12/21/2004 7:01:52 AM PST by cougar_mccxxi
Parting Company Is An Option
by Walter E. Williams
My last essay in Ideas On Liberty, "How Did We Get Here?", provided clear evidence that Congress, the White House, as well as the Courts, had vastly exceeded powers delegated to them by our Constitution. To have an appreciation for the magnitude of the usurpation, one need only read Federalist Paper 45, where James Madison the acknowledged father of our Constitution explained, "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. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects, which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties and properties of the people; and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State."
Short of some kind of cataclysmic event liberties lost are seldom regained but there is an outside chance to regain them if enough liberty-minded Americans were to pursue Free State Project's proposal to set up New Hampshire as a free state. Free State Project (www.freestateproject.org) intends to get 20,000 or so Americans to become residents of New Hampshire. Through a peaceful political process they hope to assume leadership in the state's legislature and executive offices and reduce burdensome taxation and regulation, reform state and local law, end federal mandates that violate the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and restore constitutional federalism as envisioned by the nation's Founders.
Since there is only a remote possibility of successful negotiation with Congress, the Courts and White House to obey the U.S. Constitution, it is my guess that liberty could only realized by a unilateral declaration of independence - namely, part company - in a word secede. While our Constitution is silent about secession, there is clear evidence that our Founders saw it as an option.
On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration, Senator James R. Doolittle (WI) proposed a constitutional amendment that said, "No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States." Several months earlier Representatives Daniel E. Sickles (NY), Thomas B. Florence (PA) and Otis S. Ferry (CT) proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. One is immediately faced with the question: would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional? There's more evidence. The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers.
There's more evidence. At the 1787 constitutional convention a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison rejected it saying, "A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."
Professor Thomas DiLorenzo, in his revised The Real Lincoln, provides abundant evidence in the forms of quotations from our Founders and numerous newspaper accounts that prove that Americans always took the right of secession for granted. Plus, secession was not an idea that had its origins in the South. Infuriated by Thomas Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, in 1803, the first secessionist movement started in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and other New England states.
The preponderance of evidence shows that states have a right to secede. The Constitution probably would have never been ratified if the states, sovereign nations as per the 1783 Treaty of Paris that ended the war of independence with Great Britain, did not believe they had a right to secede. The only barrier to secession is the brute force of the federal government as witnessed by the costly War of 1861 that produced only one decent result - the elimination of slavery. Since the issue of secession was brutally settled, it left a devastating legacy for future generations of Americans. The federal government is free to run roughshod over the restrictions and safeguards the Framers imposed on the federal government.
Self-determination is a human right we all should respect. If some people want socialism that is their right but it is not their right to use force to make others who wish to be left alone be part of it. By the same token, liberty-minded Americans have no right to impose their will on socialist-minded Americans. A far more peaceful method is for each to simply part company.
One wonders whether the brutality witnessed in 1861 would be repeated if New Hampshire seceded - massive troops along with today's deadly modern military equipment and Americans killing Americans.
Walter E. Williams Ideas on Liberty #25 February 26, 2004
The former (powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government, few and defined) will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will for the most part be connected.
I'm afraid that WW is focusing too much on one aspect without regard to the fact that the nation changes with time. That even Madison and the Anti-federalists recognised one unescapable fact about the Constitution as opposed to the federation of state under the Articles of Confederation.
For there is more to the national government than the administration of "external objects".
- "The change relating to taxation may be regarded as the most important; and yet the present [Continental] sic Congress have as complete authority to REQUIRE of the States indefinite supplies of money for the common defense and general welfare, as the future [Constitutional] Congress will have to require them of individual citizens;
- "The difference between a federal and national government, as it relates to the OPERATION OF THE GOVERNMENT, is supposed to consist in this, that in the former the powers operate on the political bodies composing the Confederacy, in their political capacities; in the latter, on the individual citizens composing the nation, in their individual capacities. On trying the Constitution by this criterion, it falls under the NATIONAL, not the FEDERAL character;"
A point of which even the Anti-federalists concurred:
Anti-Federalist Papers #3 NEW CONSTITUTION CREATES A NATIONAL GOVERNMENT;
- There are but two modes by which men are connected in society, the one which operates on individuals, this always has been, and ought still to be called, national government; the other which binds States and governments together (not corporations, for there is no considerable nation on earth, despotic, monarchical, or republican, that does not contain many subordinate corporations with various constitutions) this last has heretofore been denominated a league or confederacy. The term federalists is therefore improperly applied to themselves, by the friends and supporters of the proposed constitution.
For by no means was the national government expected to restrict itself to "EXTERNAL" sources of revenue:
- "The more intelligent adversaries of the new Constitution ...qualify ... by a distinction between what they call INTERNAL and EXTERNAL taxation. The former they would reserve to the State governments; the latter, which they explain into commercial imposts, or rather duties on imported articles, they declare themselves willing to concede to the federal head. This distinction, however, would violate the maxim of good sense and sound policy, which dictates that every POWER ought to be in proportion to its OBJECT; and would still leave the general government in a kind of tutelage to the State governments, inconsistent with every idea of vigor or efficiency. Who can pretend that commercial imposts are, or would be, alone equal to the present and future exigencies of the Union? Taking into the account the existing debt, foreign and domestic, upon any plan of extinguishment which a man moderately impressed with the importance of public justice and public credit could approve, in addition to the establishments which all parties will acknowledge to be necessary, we could not reasonably flatter ourselves, that this resource alone, upon the most improved scale, would even suffice for its present necessities.
- "The maxim that the consumer is the payer, is so much oftener true than the reverse of the proposition, that it is far more equitable that the duties on imports should go into a common stock, than that they should redound to the exclusive benefit of the importing States. But it is not so generally true as to render it equitable, that those duties should form the only national fund. When they are paid by the merchant they operate as an additional tax upon the importing State, whose citizens pay their proportion of them in the character of consumers. In this view they are productive of inequality among the States; which inequality would be increased with the increased extent of the duties. The confinement of the national revenues to this species of imposts would be attended with inequality, from a different cause, between the manufacturing and the non-manufacturing States."
- To form a more precise judgment of the true merits of this question, it will be well to advert to the proportion between the objects that will require a federal provision in respect to revenue, and those which will require a State provision. We shall discover that the former are altogether unlimited, and that the latter are circumscribed within very moderate bounds. In pursuing this inquiry, we must bear in mind that we are not to confine our view to the present period, but to look forward to remote futurity. Constitutions of civil government are not to be framed upon a calculation of existing exigencies, but upon a combination of these with the probable exigencies of ages, according to the natural and tried course of human affairs. Nothing, therefore, can be more fallacious than to infer the extent of any power, proper to be lodged in the national government, from an estimate of its immediate necessities. There ought to be a CAPACITY to provide for future contingencies as they may happen; and as these are illimitable in their nature, it is impossible safely to limit that capacity.
- ``A CONCURRENT JURISDICTION in the article of taxation was the only admissible substitute for an entire subordination, in respect to this branch of power, of State authority to that of the Union.'' Any separation of the objects of revenue that could have been fallen upon, would have amounted to a sacrifice of the great INTERESTS of the Union to the POWER of the individual States. The convention thought the concurrent jurisdiction preferable to that subordination; and it is evident that it has at least the merit of reconciling an indefinite constitutional power of taxation in the Federal government with an adequate and independent power in the States to provide for their own necessities.
I love it when you do that...lol :)
Merry Christmas FRiend and a safe, blessed New Year...
The blame lies with the Northern Yankees for interfering in Southern States' internal affairs. I haven't ever heard of the Southern States trying to tell the Northern States how to run their internal affairs. But the reverse wasn't true, the Yankees were always meddling in Southern Affairs. So when the Southern States asserted their soveriegn rights as guaranteed under the 9th and 10th Amendments, all of a sudden its "Why you can't do that." So then the Southern States defend themselves, and they are labeled the culprits. No sir Mr. Non-Sequential, the North and you have no high ground. So much for the Bill of Rights, and the American Ideology. Lincoln would've made Joseph Dugashvili proud.
In what way?
First through shifting of taxes owed from the War For Independence. Secondly through abolitionists attempts to incite slave insurrections. Thirdly through Northern merchants putting all of their money behind getting certain trade laws inimicable to Southern economic interests passed through Congress. Lastly through illegal invasion of the Southern States by military force.
How did they do that?
The government didn't support that. They sent troops to put down Brown and let Virginia try him on those ridiculous treason charges.
Thirdly through Northern merchants putting all of their money behind getting certain trade laws inimicable to Southern economic interests passed through Congress.
For example?
Lastly through illegal invasion of the Southern States by military force.
There was nothing illegal and there was no invasion. One does not invade ones own country.
New Hampshire was a poor choice for the FreeState project because it is in the midst of the socialist states of New England. Indeeed, New Hampshire voted for Kerry. It is lost, do not look back nor waste any time on it. Pick a state in the Red Zone.
As for your other viewpoint about the South starting the war, I offer this as proof of Lincoln's perfidity and badgering of the South into war.
"It was his Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Wells, who wrote: " It was very inmportant that the Rebels strike the first blow in the conflict."
Lincoln assembled the squadron of warships and tugs, as recommended by Captain G.V. Fox. He placed Fox in command and sent the fleet to Charleston.
The reinforcement had been outlined by Fox: "I simply propose three tugs convoyed by light-draft men of war ... The first tug to lead in empty, to open their fire"
Before Fox could carry out the plan, the Southerners bombarded and captured the fort.
Did the failure of the expedition distress Lincoln? Not at all. On May 1, 1861, he wrote Fox: " I sincerely regret that the failure of the attempt to provision Fort Sumter should be a source of annoyance to you ...
You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result."
So if you were to have asked a Confederate Soldier why they seceeded, he would have told you these reasons:
1. Our States entered the Union with the understanding that they had the right to withdraw when membership proved unhappy.
2. We were tired of being gypped by unfair tariff laws.
3> we were fed up with insane abuse from South-hating fanatics.
4. We bought our slaves from the North, only to learn later that it proposed to free them without a penny of compensation.
5. Northern fanatics had inspired murderous slave uprisings. Why wait for more?
6. A rabidly-sectional party was in control at Washington.
We had no idea of making war. We planned to relieve the North from further association with us.
Sorry but your tired assed old arguments won't wash here. I know who the real culprits were - and they weren't from the Southern States!
Specifically?
As for your other viewpoint about the South starting the war, I offer this as proof of Lincoln's perfidity and badgering of the South into war.
So the gist of your arguement is that there was a war because the southern leadership was too stupid to see through Lincoln's plot? Doesn't say much about them, does it?
So if you were to have asked a Confederate Soldier why they seceeded, he would have told you these reasons...
If you asked the southern leadership why they sent those soldiers into war they would have told you this:
"But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other -- though 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."
Sorry but your tired assed old arguments won't wash here. I know who the real culprits were - and they weren't from the Southern States!
According to your lame-ass old southron myths.
Says you. Same old yadda-yadda! Nothing new to see here folks, time to move along.
Says Alexander Stephens, vice president of your confederate states. Don't you think he would know?
There was no insurrection. The South never attempted to conquor the central government, only to peacefully leave it. Davis would not even allow Stonewall to attack Washington following Manassas I, because, "all we wish is to be left alone."
As for slavery:
On March 2, 1861, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (which passed the House of Representatives on February 28) that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery in the Southern states. (See U.S. House of Representatives, 106th Congress, 2nd Session, The Constitution of the United States of America: Unratified Amendments, Document No. 106-214, presented by Congressman Henry Hyde (Washington, D.C. U.S. Government Printing Office, January 31, 2000). The proposed amendment read as follows:
ARTICLE THIRTEEN
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”
Two days later, in his First Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln promised to support the amendment even though he believed that the Constitution already prohibited the federal government from interfering with Southern slavery. As he stated:
“I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution . . . has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
This of course was consistent with one of the opening statements of the First Inaugural, where Lincoln quoted himself as saying: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."
That’s what Lincoln said his invasion of the Southern states was not about. In an August 22, 1862, letter to New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley he explained to the world what the war was about:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union.”
Of course, many Americans at the time, North and South, believed that a military invasion of the Southern states would destroy the union by destroying its voluntary nature. To Lincoln, "saving the Union" meant
destroying the secession movement and with it the Jeffersonian political tradition of states’ rights as a check on the tyrannical proclivities of the central government. His war might have "saved" the union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically as the country became a consolidated empire as opposed to a constitutional republic of sovereign states.
On July 22, 1861, the US Congress issued a "Joint Resolution on the War" that echoed Lincoln’s reasons for the invasion of the Southern states:
“Resolved: . . . That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought
to cease.”
By "the established institutions of those states" the Congress was referring to slavery. As with Lincoln, destroying the secession movement took precedence over doing anything about slavery.
Actually, another state has been picked in the Red Zone. Check out www.christianexodus.org
South Carolina leads again.
In all this there is no mention of purging or expelling a state. How doe the nation rid itsself of a state that is no longer fit for the union?
Sure there was. A insurrection is defined as 'an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government." That is an accurate description of what happened.
Davis would not even allow Stonewall to attack Washington following Manassas I, because, "all we wish is to be left alone."
You should read your history. In his biography "Jefferson Davis, American", Davis is described as being very insistent that the troops move on Washington from Masassas. His two commanding generals, Beauregard and Johnston, finally convinced him that is was impossible because the confederate army was just as disorganized after the battle as the Union army was.
As for slavery...
Slavery was never the primary reason why the Lincoln administration pursued the war that the south had forced on them. The single overriding goal was preserving the Union, and neither Lincoln or any other Northern leader pretended otherwise. Steps taken against the institution of slavery were taken because they supported the war effort. The Emancipation Proclamation, for example, overruled the various fugitive slave laws and allowed slaves fleeing confederate territory to remain in Union territory. Free blacks didn't need to be returned to their owners, and it removed hundreds of thousands of slaves from supporting confederate war efforts. There was nothing altruistic about it. Most Union soldiers thought no more of blacks than did confederate soldiers, and were no less racist in many ways that the southerners.
The 'nation' cannot expel a State. Conversely, a State CAN expel---secede--- from the nation.
The States created these united States. They can un-create it if they wish. The federal government is the servant of the States, not the other way around.
Wrong again. There was no rebellion at all. There was completely peaceful secession -- unitil Lincoln notified the South that he would reinforce Sumter (the tax collection house), and he refused to meet with Confederate emmisaries.
All after many federal properties had peacefully been returned to Southern states under Lincoln's predecessor, who sought a PEACEFUL resolution....
Your previous quotes by Stephens mean nothing. What politicians have to say (in general) means very little, and Southern politicians were not above saying what was required to get the response they wanted at the time any more than their northern counterparts. What matters is ACTIONS:
1) The Southern States seceded (using slavery as one of their excuses
2) The (now northern-controlled Congress) passed a Constitutional Amendment GUARRANTEEING SLAVERY FOREVER---it could have NEVER been revoked--- and Lincoln PUBLICLY STATED that he AGREED with it. The northern Declaration of War also stated that slavery was NOT the reason for the war.
Non-Sequitur, you make the same error as so many others. To you, secession must necessarily = war.
But if Lincoln had followed the concept of the Declaration, the Southern states could have, and WOULD have, left in peace.
Instead, like every other tyrant, he used force to FORCE a government on Southerners that they no longer wanted.
Much like a marriage, where the husband has been abusing his wife. She tries to escape, but he captures her, ties her to the bed, and beats her almost to death. But HURRAH! The union is SAVED!
Same concept.
Considering that the southern actions were illegal, then they did indeed initiate a rebellion or insurrection, take your pick.
... unitil Lincoln notified the South that he would reinforce Sumter (the tax collection house)...
Sumter was a fort, not a customs house. And it was also the property of the U.S. government and not the state of South Carolina. Lincoln had every right to resupply it.
... and he refused to meet with Confederate emmisaries.
The emissaries were sent to obtain recognition of confederate independence, something that Lincoln was not about to do. In any event, it took the south a matter of a few weeks to turn from alleged attempts at a negotiated settlement to war.
All after many federal properties had peacefully been returned to Southern states under Lincoln's predecessor, who sought a PEACEFUL resolution....
Not a single federal facility was 'returned' to the southern states. They had been illegally seized by the southern states. Legal ownership remained with the U.S. government.
The northern Declaration of War also stated that slavery was NOT the reason for the war.
What Northern Declaration of War?
Non-Sequitur, you make the same error as so many others. To you, secession must necessarily = war.
Had the southern states negotiated a peaceful withdrawl from the Union, ensuring that all issues of concern to all the parties affected by their actions were settled prior to the separation, then we would no doubt be in separate countries today. Instead the southern states attempted to unilaterally leave the Union, walking away from financial obligations that were incurred by the United States, and seizing anything that caught their fancy. Every action on the part of the southern states screamed 'war' and dared the North to respond. The southern military fired at ships flying the U.S. flag on more than one occasion. There was nothing 'peaceful' about their actions.
Much like a marriage, where the husband has been abusing his wife. She tries to escape, but he captures her, ties her to the bed, and beats her almost to death. But HURRAH! The union is SAVED!
A more accurate analogy would be the spoiled wife walking out on the husband, taking whatever community property she wanted to, and firing a shot at his head on her way out the door.
Why can't a state be expelled? Where is that forbidden by the Constitution?
Food for thought bump.
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