Posted on 08/27/2007 1:37:39 PM PDT by BnBlFlag
Let us assume for a moment that a civil secession would not automatically be an act of treason or insurrection. This is not what occured. Rather, immediately uppon secedeing, Federal weaspons stores were sacked, an act of insurrection. virtually all reb3ell governments waged war upon citizens of those counties unwilling to secede, setting the precedent for a Federal Invasion to restore order.
“There is no provision for leaving the Union. Once the states agreed to join they were stuck for better or worse.”
That would make the states captives or even slaves. The Constitution is, fundamentally, a compact, or contract. Parties to a compact do not forever relinquish their rights. If a party to the compact breaches its obligations and responsibilities under that contract, the aggrieved party has the right to avoid the compact. The Southern states were the aggrieved party, and they withdrew from the compact.
“All judicial decisions are made after-the-fact. Courts cannot rule on something that hadn’t happened yet.”
I guess you’ve never heard of pre-emption.
Just curious, what part of the Constitution says that the Constitution can "imply" delegated powers to the federal government? Secession is not mentioned in the document, correct?
Therefore, secession is neither delegated (dictionary.com defines this as "committed") to the federal government, nor is it prohibited to the states. How does congressional approval fit into this, then? The congress, constitutionally, cannot self-delegate powers that are not already given them because such powers "are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people".
I'm afraid I fail to follow your leap of logic, FRiend.
Havin lived in the South a couple of times it never ceased to amaze me how obsessed some of the locals were with the Civil War. More importantly how they took issue with any from the “North” about how awful you were simply because you were from the “North”. After politely listening to their ramblings and rantings, I would remind of two things.
1. I could NOT possible care any less.
2. Just rember this (as jerked my thumb to my chest) WINNERS.
The first state to present Articles of Secesson to Congress was not a Southern state.
And that, my friend, is at the heart of the argument that the 14th amendment was never legally ratified.
The state of New Jersey originally voted to ratify the 14th, but when its representatives observed the methods that its proponents were using to coerce the Southern states into ratification, NJ rescinded its ratification (to no avail). Herewith, NJ's reasons for its rescission:
"That it being necessary by the Constitution that every amendment to the same should be proposed by two thirds of both houses of Congress, the authors of said proposition, for the purpose of securing the assent of the requisite majority, determined to, and did, exclude from the said two houses eighty representatives from eleven states of the union, upon the pretense that there were no such states in the Union; but, finding that two thirds of the remainder of the said houses could not be brought to assent to the said proposition, they deliberately formed and carried out the design of mutilating the integrity of the United States Senate, and without any pretext or justification, other than the possession of the power, without the right, and in the palpable violation of the constitution, ejected a member of their own body, representing this state, and thus practically denied to New Jersey its equal suffrage in the senate, and thereby nominally secured the vote of two thirds of the said houses."
Hence, the U.S. Congress considered the southern states as having never left the Union only until such time as it became politically expedient to declare that that they had.
But wasn’t firing on Ft Sumter kind of a bad thing (requiring a response?)
The north didn't do away with it actually. It was still legal in several states after Lincoln took office. The Civil War was a war about which oligarchy was to control industry in the U.S. The northern industrialist or the southern.
Slavery was dying in the south. Another 20 or so years and it would have been a major liability to most people even plantation owners due to automation.
Slavery did not by any means die after the Civil War it prospered in the south but the difference was Northern business interest owned the Company Stores in a lot of places. Slavery existed in the mountains of Appalachia into the early 1960's. Nobody called it that but indeed when hard working men owed the company store more per week than they made the company owned them and the laws of the day backed up the company. The workers had a choice. Continue to work enslaved to the company in locations where company owned town lock, stock, and barrel, or go to debtors prison.
Another form of slavery was parents were allowed as were adults to sign persons into apprenticeship programs serving a Master and the person was called just that. The person worked so many years in exchange for food and shelter under a company owner. Many who tried to escape this arrangement were dealt with in a harsh manner.
The industrialist in the north had Honest Abe's sympathy and ear.
The industrialized south was rising fast and the south help major seaports which gave a clear advantage all year. Secession was the very foundation of this nation as it was founded on the very act. I do not think any of the founders would have looked kindly on Abe for starting a war over Secession as they saw it as a states right. Personally I think the U.S. would be better off if some states exercised that sovereign right even today. All Abe Lincoln did about slavery was extend is existence by nearly 100 years at the expense of all living south of the Mason Dixon.
The living and working conditions for all living in the south were lowered. Many of the former slaves had no place to turn to but their former owners who were also broke. Slavery was not a black vs white as many blacks were owners or traders themselves.
Exactly! Throughout human history, a portion of a country had a right to secede. Concurrently, a country had a right to resist such secession. The Framers understood this and that's why they didn't include a clause dealing with secession from the Union. The proof that the issue didn't slip the Framer's minds is that secession is mentioned when it's from a State (see Article IV, Section 3, Clause 1). The 13 Colonies had a right to secede from the British Empire and the British Empire had a right to resist that secession. The Southern States had a right to secede and the United States had a right to resist.
Correction: The north didn’t do away with it actually. It was still legal in several states after Lincoln took office. The Civil War was a war about which oligarchy was to control industry in the SOUTHERN U.S. The northern industrialist or the southern who at that time ran their own companies.
Trial for treason.
--The first treason case consequent upon the late rebellion is now being tried in the United States District Court of Tennessee before Judge Trigg. The case is the United States vs. John S. Gamble, who was an enrolling officer under the Confederate Government in Blount county, East Tennessee. This is the first treason trial since the memorable Aaron Burr case.
Gamble was acquitted.
Whoops. December 18, 1865.
The position State agents to enforce the State CODE CHANGES...
Also the State can and should attach all federal lands to State lands.. and limit any taxes going to the federal government to support state project to take their place..
It should be legal and would be legal to DEPORT any federal employees or assigns that did not sign a non compete agreement..
You listening TEXAS?.... Don't succeed just TAKE OVER and BE a State.. Taxes left over after running the State can go the Feds, if any.. If they don't like it.. Print your OWN MONEY.. Let the federal reserve talk to your HAND..
You’d better be glad your side won, because I hate to even think what America would be like without us.
Socialized medicine, nationwide same-sex marriage, Chuck Schumer as chief justice, Code Pink foreign policy.....
States cannot, without consent of Congress, lay duties on imports from states.
If they cannot do them unilaterally while a part of the U.S. then implied in that is that they lack the power to do so merely by leaving as well.
You lost me. A State leaves the nation. Now as an independent country it cannot lay duties on imports from other countries?
Anyways wasn’t New Orleans part of the South? How about Atlanta or Durham? Yes, real bastions of conservative thought. Oh yes and how about Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? Unfortunately the dividing line is not so much north and south but urban versus rural.
The Constitution. You know that Chief Justice Chase who Benson quoted? Look up what he had to say on the matter. Texas v White, 1869.
As somebody whose ancestors had no dog in the Great Unpleasantness and as somebody that tries to see the issues as contemporaries on both sides saw it at the time, namely, in 1861 ......
Would it not have carried more weight for the Supreme Court to have made a ruling on the legality of secession BEFORE 600,000 Americans had died rather than AFTER 600,000 Americans had died and a retroactive legal justification was needed for the bloodbath?
How can the men living in 1861 be blamed for not following the reasoning of a Supreme Court ruling made in 1869?
Just wondering.
If the issue of the legality of secession was so black and white, could not the Supreme Court have ruled on the matter in 1861 before the rivers of blood started flowing?
There is no doubt in my mind that it was best that the Union was preserved.
However, prior to the time that the Parrott shells started flying and for four years after they stopped flying, nothing in the U.S. Constitution and nothing in any Supreme Court ruling stated in plain English that secession was illegal.
It seems to me that the entire issue of secession was one of those issues that the Founding Fathers simply forgot or neglected to address.
Sh!t happens.
Even to the Founding Fathers.
The reasoning of Texas v. White went like this:
The Articles of Confederation's described the American Union as "perpetual". The Constitution stated that it wanted to create "a more perfect Union" thereby suggesting that the United States was now more perfectly perpetual.
That is word play right up there with the "penumbras" of Roe v. Wade.
It can just as easily be argued that nobody but God is "perpetual" and that a "more perfect" Union would be a Union less blasphemous to God and therefore not claiming the Godly power of perpetuity. A nation cannot be "perfect" if you are blaspheming God by engaging in the ultimate hubris of claiming the Godly power of being "perpetual", can it?
How is the reasoning of Texas v. White or my reasoning or the reasoning of Roe v. Wade not wading waaayyy deep into "penumbra" territory?
In my view, if the Constitution is supposed to "say" something, I want to see it in plain English and not have a Supreme Court Justice playing word games with the Constitution as if he were a High Priest at the Oracle of Delphi reading chicken entrails or Justice Douglas divining "penumbras and emanations".
Is plain English too much of a bother to avoid the loss of 600,000 American lives between 1861 and 1865?
Is plain English too much of a bother to avoid the loss of the lives of millions America's unborn children in the past 34 years?
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