Posted on 12/20/2001 4:01:19 AM PST by shuckmaster
AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America." We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the "United States of America," is hereby dissolved. Done at Charleston the twentieth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty.
How many times was slavery mentioned? The fact is none. But what if it did?
On 4 April 1861, Colonel John B. Baldwin of Virginia arrived in Washington, D.C. at Lincoln's behest to discuss the Peace Conference then in session in that State. According to Baldwin's sworn testimony, Lincoln's words to him during the ensuing meeting were as follows: "Mr. Baldwin, I am afraid you have come too late.... I wish you could have been here three or four days ago.... Why do you not all adjourn the Virginia convention?... [I]t is a standing menace to me, which embarrasses me very much."
Too late? Simultaneous with the Peace Conference in Virginia, Lincoln was ordering the provisioning of the ships that were to leave for Charleston. Too late. They didn't leave for another 4 days!
The question which immediately comes to mind is: Why would a man who had pledged a specific policy in his Inaugural Address view as a standing menace and a source of embarrassment a conference of States which had been convened to promote that very same policy?
Had he taken the opportunity to talk with the Peace Conference representative, there would have been no Federal action in Charleston. There would have been no excuse for war, and therefore no war. This is a prime example of the stubborn wrongheadedness of this man, and his unilateral decision making about the business of government. And by the designed exclusion of congress, it shows that his primary circle of influence was Northern governors and business interests.
The man hijacked this country and the sheeple in congress and courts threw out the laws to protect themselves and their mercantile, federalist accomplices.
Glad you liked it. It really exposes the illegitimate functioning of the US government under Lincoln. And by your first statement, I am supposing you support genocide.
Well, that would be competely irrational on your part, wouldn't it?
There were two commissioners, right?
Hanging these proto-traitors would hardly constitute genocide.
We do know that President Jackson is on the record saying something very much like:
"I will bring the federal army to South Carolina and hang the first man I can catch from the first tree I can find", in response to earlier rumblings of treason and secession down in Charleston.
So the traitors backed off, and waited for more favorable conditions. Thay thought they had them when Lincoln was elected. But they were wrong
It is SO easy to show you neo-confderates for the poltroons you are.
You hurl a charge of favoring genocide at me. Goodness gracious.
Why you think insulting and attempting to belittle me is going to win you points in arguments in an open forum, with a free exchange of ideas, is beyond me.
Walt
AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union between the State of South Carolina and other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America." We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the ordinance adopted by us in convention on the twenty-third day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of the "United States of America," is hereby dissolved. Done at Charleston the twentieth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty.
How many times was slavery mentioned? The fact is none. But what if it did?
Wait a second...are you seriously suggesting that the protection of slavery was not important to the South Carolinians?
This is from the SC secession document:
"The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief. [that's my favorite part]
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.
Adopted December 24, 1860
Good grief. Don't you ever even look at the record?
Some criticism of the D of C:
"Conscious that this document bore upon its face the plain contradiction of their pretended authority, and its own palpable nullity both in techincal form and essential principle, the convention undertook to give it strength and plausibility by an elaborate Declaration of Causes, adopted a few days later (December 24th)-- a sort of half-parody of Jefferson's masterpiece. It could of course, quote no direct warrant from the Constitution for secession, but sought to deduce one, by implication, from the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Xth amendment. It reasserts the absurd paradox of State supremacy-persistantly miscaled "State Rights" --which reverses the natural order of governmental existance ; considers a State superior to the Union; makes a part greater than the whole; turns the pyramid of authority upon its apex; plants the tree of liberty with its branches in the ground and its roots in the air. The fallacy has been has been a hundred times analysed, exposed, and refuted; but the cheap dogmatism of demagougues and the automatic machinery of faction perpetually conjures it up anew to astonish the sucklings and terrify the dotards of politiics. [I think he means people like you] The notable point in the Declaration of Causes is, that its complaint over grievances past and present is against certain states, and for these remedy was of course logically barred by its own theory of state supremacy. On the other hand, all its allegations against the Union are concerning dangers to come, before which admission the moral justification of disunion falls to the ground, In rejecting the rememdy of future elections for future wrongs, the conspiracy discarded the entire theory of republican government.
One might have thought that this might have exhausted their counterfeit philosophy--but not yet. Greatly as they groaned at unfriendly state laws--seriously as they pretended to fear damage or spoilation under future federal statutes, the burden of their anger rose at the sentient and belief of the North. "All hope of remedy," says the manifesto, "is rendered vain by the fact that the public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief." This is language one might expect from the Pope of Rome; but that an American convention should denounce the liberty of opinion, is not merely to recede from Jefferson, to Louis XIV; it is flying from the town-meeting to the Inquisition."
--John Nicolay, 1881.
Your position is absurd.
Walt
You do yourself and the good posters here a great disservice when you define the people of the time inaccurately. Here are their words:
South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession (December, 1860):
“We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.”
“The guaranties of the Constitution no longer exist; the equal rights of the States are lost.
(Southern) States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal government will have become the enemy.”
Georgia Secession Decree (January, 1861):
“(The Northern States) have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and refused to comply with their constitutional obligations to us in reference to our property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.
“The people of Georgia, after a full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with firmness that (the Northern States) shall not rule over them.”
Mississippi Secession Decree (January, 1861): “(The North) has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.
“Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity (to secede).”
Texas Secession Document (February, 1861)
“The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.”
South Carolina’s address to other Southern States (December, 1860)
“The Southern States now stand in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation, and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit.
For the last forty years the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North.
“The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue -- to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.”
Louisiana Secession Document (January, 1861):
“The people of Louisiana are unwilling to endanger their liberties and property by submission to the despotism of a single tyrant, or the canting tyranny of pharisaical majorities(in the North).
Mississippi Secession Document (January, 1861):
That they have elected a majority of electors for President and Vice-President on the ground that there exists an irreconcilable conflict between the two sections of the Confederacy in reference to their respective systems of labor and in pursuance of their hostility to us and our institutions, thus declaring to the civilized world that the powers of this government are to be used for the dishonor and overthrow of the Southern section of this great Confederacy.
South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession:
We affirm that these ends for which this government was instituted have been defeated, and the government itself has been destructive of them by the action of the(North).”
Virginia Secession Document (April, 1861):
The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the constitution of the United States of America, having declared that the powers granted under the said constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the federal government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the southern States”. Alexander Stephens, Cornerstone Speech, (March, 1861):
Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements (of the new Confederate Constitution over the old Union Constitution). The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new.
“We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another.
“This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic,is removed forever from the new.
Jefferson Davis’ Farewell Address to the Senate (January, 1861):
“It has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights our fathers bequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi into her present decision.”
“A State, finding herself in the condition in which Mississippi has judged she is, in which her safety requires that she should provide for the (secession) out of the Union…”
The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.
In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a Declaration, by the Colonies, "that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do."
They further solemnly declared that whenever any "form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government." Deeming the Government of Great Britain to have become destructive of these ends, they declared that the Colonies "are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved."
In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to exercise its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a Constitution, and appointed officers for the administration of government in all its departments-- Legislative, Executive and Judicial. For purposes of defense, they united their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered into a League known as the Articles of Confederation, whereby they agreed to entrust the administration of their external relations to a common agent, known as the Congress of the United States, expressly declaring, in the first Article "that each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, by this Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled."
Under this Confederation the war of the Revolution was carried on, and on the 3rd of September, 1783, the contest ended, and a definite Treaty was signed by Great Britain, in which she acknowledged the independence of the Colonies in the following terms: "ARTICLE 1-- His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz: New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that he treats with them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof."
Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes destructive of the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of these principles, was the fact, that each Colony became and was recognized by the mother Country a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE. In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the Articles of Confederation, and on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adoption of the States, the Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States.
The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact was to take effect among those concurring; and the General Government, as the common agent, was then invested with their authority.
If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they then were-- separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitution until long after it had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised the functions of an independent nation.
By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that 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. On the 23d May , 1788, South Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution, and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had undertaken.
Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered unnecessary any specification of reserved rights. We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences. In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.
I count 18 references to slave or slavery. How about you. Feel free to use your toes when you run out of fingers.
"That is my major complaint with Adams' book. It if very poorly researched and full of inaccuracies such as these"
Well, you major complaint is not founded on fact. That is not a quote from the author of the book.
Well, aren't we just overflowing with the Christmas spirit today?
I'll admit that I was unaware of any Virginia peace conference other than the one in Washington, D.C. that was called by Governor Letcher and which was boycotted by the seven confederate states. Who did the Davis government send to this second one you are talking about?
So when did the Supreme Court rule that he had acted unconstitutionally?
Thank you
Mississippi -
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.
Here is the link to the entire document.
Georgia -
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.
Here is a link to the entire document.
Texas -
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association.
Here is a link to the entire document.
You do people a great disservice when you try to misinform.
As you know, the SC ruled that a blockade -specifically- WAS constitutional. That puts me in mind of a quote:
"We are all Republicans--we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is free to combat it."
Thomas Jefferson, March 4, 1801
Walt
Most modern history books leave it out all together (gee, I wonder why) and speak not a word of it, nor much anything the north did from Crittenden to Fort Sumter, other than inaugurating Lincoln plus some skewed version of the south firing on the Star of the West.
To find any mention of Corwin in a history textbook, even a one-sentence reference, you pretty much have to go back over half a century. Even the small number of recent scholarly works specifically dealing with the history of the amendments to the constitution give it, at most, a page or two. Having researched the Corwin amendment, I had to go all the way back to an account published in 1933 to find any substantial material about its coming into being, and that was in an 8 page chapter from a book dealing specifically with the time period in between the first and last southern states to seceed. Prior to that, mention of Corwin seems to have been payed at least a small ammount of attention. But today, there is barely anything at all on it. Not even in those rare books by extremely bored authors that attempt to give a biography of President Buchanan!
I've always found this interesting considering that most of the other constitutional amendments that passed yet never recieved the ratification needed are payed at least some attention in the history books. The "Equal Rights Amendment" is a favorite topic of all history textbooks, often due to their liberal slant. Additionally, they often throw in the child labor amendment into the chapter on progressivism. Some even mention the titles of nobility amendment, albeit briefly, but still there are chapters books (and conspiracy theory pamphlets) about it if one takes a few minutes to look around and find them. But nothing at all on the Corwin amendment. I even know of cases where bigwig Yale and Harvard constitutional law professors have admitted being first skeptical then shocked after discovering that it exists. Mysteriously, or perhaps not so mysteriously, it has been scrubbed from the pages of our history books. IMHO, the reason is all to clear - the Corwin amendment gives concrete meaning to what is otherwise an obscure and seemingly senseless statement in Lincoln's first inaugural, and that meaning isn't a very pretty one.
That being said, I will offer you the words of the people of the time:
"Fort Sumter, situated in the entrance to the Charleston harbor in South Carolina, was held by United States troops under the command of Major Robert Anderson. A native of Kentucky, Anderson nevertheless saw his duty to the Union as paramount over his loyalty to his section of the country. However, he understood, in light of the armistice which had been entered into between South Carolina and the Buchanan Administration on 6 December 1860, that an attempt by the United States military to garrison the fort would precipitate war.
"Such was the sentiment of all but two of the seven members of Lincoln's own Cabinet. In a letter dated 15 March 1861, Lincoln asked his Cabinet whether it was wise to attempt to provision the fort, to which question his Secretary of State, William Seward, replied:
If it were possible to peaceably provision Fort Sumter, of course, I should answer that it would be both unwise and inhuman not to attempt it. But the facts of the case are known to be that the attempt must be made with the employment of military and marine force which would provoke combat and probably initiate a civil war which the Government of the United States would be committed to maintain, through all changes, to some definite conclusion....
Suppose the expedition successful, we have then a garrison in Fort Sumter that can defy assault for six months. What is it to do then? Is it to make war by opening its batteries to demolish the defenses of the Carolinians? Can it demolish them if it tries? If it cannot, what is the advantage we shall have gained? If it can, how will it check or prevent disunion? In either case, it seems to me, that we will have inaugurated a civil war by our own act, without an adequate object, after which reunion will be hopeless, at least under this Administration or in any other way than by a popular disavowal both of the war and of the Administration which unnecessarily commenced it. Fraternity is the element of union; war the very element of disunion.
But your assertion that Lincoln was not guilty of unconstitutional acts because he wasn't charged is silly. He admited, and those around him, admitted extra-constitutional actions. Lack of being charged reflects the protectionism of the republican party, not purity. So, pass this off somewhere else.
South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession (December, 1860):
“We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.”
“The guaranties of the Constitution no longer exist; the equal rights of the States are lost.
What anyone in 1881 or 2001 thinks is speculation.
So, you do support violence. Very bad.
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