True. The fact there were no provisions in place did not supersede the slave-holding State from voluntarily leaving a voluntary compact.
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It puts a whole Orwellian 'all states are equal but some states are more equal than others' spin on your arguement.
No, the Orwellian spin comes from thinking rights can cancel rights. Every State entering the compact did so with the full realization that some properties owned by the collective States would be located inside the sovereign boundaries of other States.
It's a risk they chose to take.
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And while I agree with you that Congress couldn't touch it in states that still chose to legalize it, there is no reason why Congress couldn't regulate it or outlaw it in the territories they directly controlled.
Your agreement is immaterial. Up until the change in government, Supreme Court decisions said otherwise.
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If true, then with the exception of the original 13 Congress created every state that was admitted post 1787. So they have the right to control them?
No. The general government OWNED nothing. Everything was held and operated under the delegated trust given by the authority of the States.
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Why not? Article IV says "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States."
Again, NO ability to exercise an authority concerning slavery as that was to be left to the respective States. The federal government is not a State, it is a municipal entity inside areas of enumerated jurisdiction and an administrative one in the other areas given to it by the Constitution.
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So you can be assured that had the rebellion not broken out, legal challenges to Scott v. Sanford would have been forthcoming from many directions.
No argument there, but we're not dealing in 'what ifs'.
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Lincoln could have raged against slaver and I can't see where he could have forced the South into an involuntary anything.
Lincoln, being a lawyer, knew exactly what he was doing....using an emotional concept concerning a moral issue to alter an established legal concept. I can't make it any plainer than that.
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Which you do so love to lay at Lincoln's feet
Oh, good grief. Lighten up, Nancy.
That statement was a look-how-far-we've-fallen statement, not an attempt to solely blame Lincoln.
There's plenty of 'blame' to go around.
Aren't there? The 10th Amendment says, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." A clear reading of Article I, Section 10 and Article IV, Section 3 shows that the power to admit a state and to approve any change in its status once it was allowed to join are clearly powers reserved to the United States. By implication this would include the power to approve a state's leaving as well.
No, the Orwellian spin comes from thinking rights can cancel rights.
But that is exactly what you are saying. The rights of the seceding states overrule the rights of the remaining states. Only those states leaving have any protections. Only those leaving have any rights. Those remaining have none, so you are telling us that rights of the leaving states cancel the rights of the remaining states. When the spinning stops, the Orwellian arguement lies in your court.
Your agreement is immaterial. Up until the change in government, Supreme Court decisions said otherwise.
True, though it's arguable that the bulk of Chief Justice Taney's bizarre decision was actually made in dicta. And that is no doubt an arguement that would have been used to challenge the Scott decision in future legal cases. There can be no doubt that a Lincoln Attorney General would do everything possible to aid such challenges as well. So the Scott decision would have been under attack from day one. Something the South could not stomach. So they rebelled.
No. The general government OWNED nothing. Everything was held and operated under the delegated trust given by the authority of the States.
With the original 13, no, the government owned nothing that had not been deeded to them by the states themselves. But for those states created out of territory purchased or acquired by the government through other means then the federal government owned a great deal. And in many states they still do.
But my statement was in response to your remark "that which you create you have the right to control." Since that Congress has created 27 out of the 50 states through the powers given them by Article IV then does it control them as well?
Again, NO ability to exercise an authority concerning slavery as that was to be left to the respective States. The federal government is not a State, it is a municipal entity inside areas of enumerated jurisdiction and an administrative one in the other areas given to it by the Constitution.
And the territories were not states, either. They had no government, no representation in Congress. The Constitution gave Congress the power to make all needful rules and regulations for the territories in Article IV, Section 2. Now once Congress created a state out of any territory, then it also gave up the power to interfere in what that state chose to do, within the restrictions outlined in the Constitution. If the new state chose to legalize slavery then there wasn't anything Congress could do to prevent it. But before that, Congress had the full authority to ban slavery. Up until Taney's judicial activism, that is.
Lincoln, being a lawyer, knew exactly what he was doing....using an emotional concept concerning a moral issue to alter an established legal concept. I can't make it any plainer than that.
If Lincoln wanted to make a moral issue out of slavery then he was very late to the game. Slavery had been an emotional issue for decades prior to his election, and I'm at a loss to understand what he could possibly had said that hadn't been said before. There is nothing Lincoln could have done to interfere with slavery where it existed. I know that. You know that. Lincoln sure knew that. The South knew that. It was his threat to the expansion of slavery that caused their anger and which led to their decision to rebel.
There's plenty of 'blame' to go around.
Well, we agree on that at least.