Posted on 02/17/2006 5:47:19 PM PST by Mobile Vulgus
What makes you think the former is not being affected by the latter?
Only with distortions of the record. DiLorenzo is a propagandist for the radical libertarian movement, not a historian.
Since I never claimed jthe Constitution "augmented" the Articles you should take that up with another. The Constitution INCORPORATED some of the articles and grew out of them. Part of what was incorporated was the view that our Union was perpetual and the realization that "united we stand divided we fall" EVERY Founder believed that. NONE believed in a right to secession and you cannot find a word from any indicating that they did.
Our constitution is a FOUNDATION from which bricks cannot be removed willy-nilly or the whole edifice falls.
There were NO "unconstitutional actions" taken by the fedgov against the South. NOT one. But you don't like facts.
As do I. Lincoln knew he couldn't win a legal fight in his contemporary political arena for a couple of reasons:
1) Being a lawyer, he KNEW what powers were and were NOT given to the federal government by the Constitution
2)The country was almost equally divided with no clear majority either way. This made a legal victory questionable.
He violated his oath of office when he forced the states to his will instead of using the outlined Constituional process.
Walter Williams is neither a political scientist nor a philosopher nor a historian. I would give his opinions in these areas as much credence as I would practictioners in those subjects opinions about economics.
Correct. We would have been no different than the Balkans if not for Lincoln. An independent South, with it's slave population doubling every 20 years and offering little attraction for white immigrants or even in retaining the yeomen class would have been forced to expand to diffuse there slave "property" over a wider market area or face the certain collapse of the "peculiar institution" and the likelihood of death at the hands of their slaves who would have vastly outnumbered them.
The very root of the conflict stretching back to the founding was over expansion of slavery to the west. Southern independence would not have changed the fundamental economic fact that slavery had to either continually expand or face complete ruin. It was the ugliest of Ponzi schemes.
An interesting comment coming from someone who recently accused me of 'trying to overthrow the government' and using 'irrelevant sources' when I used court precedents and the writings of the Founders to prove my point.
Also interesting that you deride the 'facts' of other posters without giving any sources OF YOUR OWN!
Guess your own puerile opinion is supposed to be taken as gospel by others, eh?
The government is given the power under the Constitution to suppress insurrections which is exactly what Lincoln was dealing with. Armed bands of terrorists attacking US installations is an "insurrection" and Lincoln put that one down. No one need pay any attention to those attempting to defend and justify such insurrections even when glorified by the cockamamie concocted concept of secession.
There was no mention of this in the body of the Constitution because the concept was so unthinkable that the Founders NEVER once discussed it during the Convention. They ALL believed the Union to be perpetual.
If you believe the Constitution is a mere contract your further reasoning will be flawed.
But even if it were a mere contract then secession was even less defensible since it would amount to a unilateral abrogation of that "contract."
So either way the Slavers were in the wrong.
I find it highly ironic that any publication or group calling itself "Federalist" would condemn Lincoln in such a fashion. If anything, Lincoln was simply the logical development of Federalist/Whig thought (Hamilton, Washington, Adams, Henry Clay, etc.). Many of our "federalists" today are actually Jeffersonian anti-Federalists. People tend to forget that the original Federalist party (which was the anti-Jacobin and conservative party of its day and the forerunner of the Republican party) was the party of federal supremacy, loose construction, and implied powers. Ironically none other than Pat Buchanan in his The Great Betrayal makes it clear that none other than George Washington was closer to Lincoln than to Jefferson in his ideology of union.
Meanwhile these same "states' rights" palaeos pee in their pants with excitement at the thought of strong centralist rightwing governments in Spain or Portugal or elsewhere in the world.
Not only was there no "long train of abuses" against the South there wasn't even a SHORT train. How could there have been when the government had been controlled by Southerners almost the entire time since the founding. Anyone believing such a lie is not familiar with American history which clearly shows the tendency to surrender to the Slavers on almost every issue.
What do you think the constitutional power to suppress insurrection meant?
Why don't you show me where that alleged quote from me came from?
You have every right to consult and take to heart all the crackpots and eccentrics you wish and to use the canned misinterpretations they post but don't expect to convince anyone capable of rational thought. Selective quotation from documents which frequently do not convey the conclusions as a whole is the method used by deceptive people. If you cannot see through them because of your ideological blindness I cannot help it.
"Shall not be infringed" is an absolute. That means NO ONE can infringe. The Constitution is set up to limit and apportion the various powers of the government among the branches of the Federal government and the States. So, how could the phrase "shall not be infringed" NOT apply to the government in its entirety.
The first amendment is the ONLY one which specifically makes reference to restricting only the powers of the Federal government. Why would the 1st Amendment be structured the way it is if the rest of the Bill of Rights was also intended to restrict only the powers of the Federal government? "Congress shall make no law..." would be redundant and unnecessary in that Amendment if the REST of the Bill of Rights also applied only to the Federal government.
I see: history and our Constitution may only be interpreted by "experts". Especially those "experts" who agree with YOU, right?
The "view" which you argue was incorporated into the Constitution was NOT incorporated into it because it was not WRITTEN into it. What is in there is in there. What is NOT in there is not in there, no matter how badly YOU want it to be.
Well then they made a mistake. If they wanted to assure it was "perpetual" they should have included a prohibition of secession in the document.
And they DID discuss it.
Yeah, OK tough guy. Is your manhood THAT threatened, tiny?
LOL! Like it or not, that's exactly what it was. Brilliantly written by extraordinary men, but a contract nonetheless.
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But even if it were a mere contract then secession was even less defensible since it would amount to a unilateral abrogation of that "contract."
The entire purpose of a contract is to state the terms of the contract IN the contract its self.
It's called "full disclosure".
If you try to add to or subtract anything to a contract that isn't expressly there after it's been agreed to and signed, it's a breach of contract.
Please show me the part of the Constitution that expressly forbids a state to secede.
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So either way the Slavers were in the wrong.
Amazing how the moral issue of slavery is immediately injected into a LEGAL discussion when the opposition lacks any rational or Constitutional argument.
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