Posted on 11/04/2013 1:43:45 PM PST by AT7Saluki
My concern is if citizens were ever taught the Founding States' division of federal and state government powers the way that the Founding States had intended for those powers to be understood. In fact, the party system arguably indicates that most people did not understand why the Founding States made the Constitution.
I'm actually not addressing succession with the following note. Regarding any issue, regardless what the Constitution says or doesn't say about an issue, it remains that the Constitution is amendable and can be changed. In other words, regardless if succcession is not a right today, it can be a right tomorrow if that's what the Article V majority wants.
Yes, a historical fact, on May 6, 1861 always ignored or explained away by pro-Confedefate propagandists.
But that was only one action among many by which the Confederacy created a state of war with the United States.
Those included many seizures of federal properties, threats against and shootings at federal officials, the military assault on federal troops in Fort Sumter and supplies sent to secessionists in Union states.
The Confederate military assault on Fort Sumter was an act of war equivalent to the Japanese 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Today I’m away from my computer, but later will send you a link to Confederate congress actions, including its May 6, 1861 declaration of war on the United States.
It’s that sort of short-sighted thinking that got the slavers into trouble the last time around. Just because it isn’t enumerated (one way or the other) doesn’t mean that it is permitted. And with precedent established by virtue of the Whiskey Rebellion and the Nullification Crisis we know that unilateral secession wouldn’t be tolerated.
These facts should have been self-evident but the south decided to turn a blind eye to them and lurch forward anyway. What they got for their belligerence is a sound trouncing on the battlefield and in the courts.
I am not pro-Confederate. I am pro-Virginia. I know of no declaration of war that was issued by the CSA. In addition, Virginia was not even part of the CSA at this time.
Founding States?
In fact, as Lincoln pointed out, it was the Union Congress itself which first declared and established the old colonies to be new states, in 1776 Declaration of Independence, and in the process established the “perpetual” Articles of Confederation.
It was also the Union in 1787 which called for a new convention, to modify the old Articles of Confederation.
Instead, the Founders, not the states, wrote a whole new Constitution which it then presented to the states for ratification.
So states were themselves creatures of the Union, not visa versa.
Regardless, our Founders did consider “disunion” to be entirely legitemate, provided, provided it had “mutual consent” or some serious constitutional reason, such as oppression or usurpations.
Those conditions did not exist in 1860.
As for our political parties, they have been here since Day One, under various names and causes.
Our Founders themselves formed political parties, which must mean that despite the Founders’ well-known dislike for “factions” they were in fact essential to our constitutional form of government.
But if your general complaint here is that our government has grown bloated and powerful beyond all recognition of our Founding Fathers, that of course is true.
I say it all started with “progressivism” 100 years ago.
They were "creatures of a Union". But it wasn't Lincoln's Union.
If you know of no Confederate declaration of war (May 6, 1861), then you are poorly educated in your own history.
I will send you the link when I have the chance.
The historical fact is that when Virginia’s voters ratified secession (late May) they in effect also ratified joining the Confederacy and it’s declared war on the United States.
They also gave Western Virginians an excuse to seceed from Virginia, but that’s a different discussion.
I was going to stay out of this thread war and then you had to say something stupid like that.
The Union that Lincoln inherited from President Buchanan was certainly more like the Union of President Washington than President Obama.
With some small changes, it remained thus until the “Progressive” era 100 years ago.
Both were unmistakable acts of war against the United States.
Both resulted in the same outcome: unconditional surrender.
Both were also unprovoked and totally unwarranted as well.
The States predate the Union that Lincoln inherited. They created that Union, it did not create them.
Regardless that the delegates to the first ConCon tried to write the Constitution as carefully as they could, I'm questioning if the idea of division of federal and state powers was arguably so unexpected by citizens used to having a king that the Constitution simply went over most peoples' heads.
Evidence of this concern is President James Madison's veto of the public works act of 1817.
Veto of federal public works bill
More specifically, given that members of the 14th Congress were educated, they read the power to build canals into the "necessary proper clause," Clause 18 of Section 8 of Article I, not knowing that the delegates to the ConCon had rejected the idea of delegating to Congress the specific power to build canals.
So I question if it possibly started with a "radical" Constitution that was possibly confusing to former royal subjects, as opposed to starting with progressivism 100 years ago.
But the key point to remember is that Washington's federal government consumed around 2% of US GDP, about the same as President Teddy Roosevelt's government in the early 1900s.
After Progressivism took over circa 1913, the federal government soon doubled in size, then doubled again under FDR, doubled again under LBJ's “Great Society”, and is now trying to double yet again.
My point is: whatever minor government projects our Founders indulged in pale in comparison to the massive bloated programs of today.
So there was no founder, regardless of how “monarchical” they might have been, who could even imagine our present state of affairs.
Sorry, but Lincoln was right — it was the Continental Congress which first declared the old colonies to be new states and simultaneously formed the perpetual Articles of Confederation.
More importantly, it was Washington’s Continental Army which won the Revolutionary War, thus preventing the need for our Founders to, in Franklin’s famous words, “hang separately”.
So the Union first created the states out of colonies, then won the war to prevent states from again becoming colonies.
Of course! Such argument is like debating which came first: chicken or egg.
But the point of it is to demonstrate that our Founders were real leaders, not simply followers of whatever their states’ instructed them.
But the key point to remember is that Washington's federal government consumed around 2% of US GDP, ...
My reservation is the following. Thomas Jefferson had written that, in his time, all federal taxes came from taxes that the rich paid on imported goods.
"The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied (emphasis added). … Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.
So I question how import tarriffs got expressed as a percentage of GDP since federal taxes were not necessarily based on GDP in that era.
Also, given the remote possibiliy that you aren't aware of the following, you might find it interesting. Fortunately for rich people in Jefferson's time, the Supreme Court had indicated a limit on Congress's power to lay taxes. More specifically, Justice John Marshall had officially clarified that Congress is prohibited from laying taxes in the name of state power issues, basically anything that Congress could not justify under its Constitutional Article I, Section 8-limited powers.
"Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States." --Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Again, I question how import taxes which Jefferson claimed funded the federal government got translated to a percentage of GDP, and without note of Congress's limited power to lay taxes.
Now you hopefully have a better idea why I question how long the federal government's constitutionally limited powers, along with its limited power to lay taxes, have been forgotten in history.
Actually, the term “United States of America” was first used by General Washington’s army to describe the Union in early 1776.
It became official on July 4, 1776.
When I get the chance, I’ll post a link to a table which calculates historical US federal revenues as a percent of GDP.
For the earliest of years, of course, these are estimates, but reasonable, given what we know of population & economics of the age.
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