Posted on 08/27/2007 1:37:39 PM PDT by BnBlFlag
Sorry, but I stopped reading when you accused me of posting fiction. Considering the content of your posts you are the last person in the world to be accusing others of making things up.
On what grounds should such talk have been taken before the court? Courts rule on actions taken, not contemplated or talked about.
When Jefferson Davis gave his farewell speech to the U.S. Senate, he began by saying, "I rise, Mr. President [John C. Breckinridge], for the purpose of announcing to the Senate that I have satisfactory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the United States."
He then announced that since his functions were terminated, he would be going home to Mississippi. Foote writes that Davis stayed in Washington a few days afterward, hoping to be arrested for treason, thereby testing the doctrine of secession in the federal courts.
Was there not sufficient cause in Davis's announcement -- that he was resigning from the Senate to join a group of "rebels" -- to provide for a test case?
Sure it is. Ask the Nazis or the Imperial Japanese Navy. Or George III.
Actually that was the basis for the war, My point exactly.
Yeah, well there's a reason James Buchanan always lands near the bottom of the presidential rankings. His only agenda was to avoid doing anything until his term was up and he could get out of town.
Defeat in battle merely ilustrates the superior power. Right or wrong doesn’t enter into it. Viz: right of secession.
barbra ann
Which goes more towards pointing out Davis's abysmal understanding of the law and the Constitution tahn anything else. The Constitution defines treason. What exactly had Davis done that qualified? Resigning from the Senate isn't treason. Advocating secession isn't treason. The South hadn't started the war yet. What treasonous act had been committed?
Now assuming for the sake of arguement that Davis had committed treason. He would have been arrested, tried in federal court, convicted, appealed, conviction upheld, and appealed again before it would have gotten to the Supreme Court. The rebellion short-circuited that path just a little bit.
Is it available online?
That isn't what you contended. You said issues could never be settled by force of arms. That one side loses doesn't make the issue any less settled. When one side surrenders, it acquiesces to the rules and conditions of the winner, upon pain of enforcement. When one side loses a court battle, it is no different: they choose to abide under pain of enforcement by legal penalties. The point is that the issue is settled when the loser decided to acquiesce.
No, but many of Jefferson Davis's contemporaries claimed that actual secession was treason...and that's exactly what Davis said he was joining. Mississippi had already seceded.
Doesn’t work with me.
Treason agaisnt the United states is defined in the Constistution as "levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Now which one of those is Davis supposed to have done?
I recognize that this isn't your argument, but it isn't an argument at all. It is a statement that lacks in support or analysis and cuts against what are (at least now) standard tools for textual analysis. It is--at the very least--a stretch to think that the phrase "more perfect" means perpetual, but it is even a greater stretch considering that most of the exact same folks who wrote the Articles (and therefore were perfectly aware how to state that a union was perpetual) would suddenly, a little more than a decade later, take to what amounts to a coded message to convey the same idea.
I know I'm restating my argument, but the Framers wrote that the Union was perpetual once: if they wanted to do so again, they could have. But they didn't.
I cannot believe that given the other restrictions the Constitution places on the states and the powers granted to Congress to literally create states in the first place that the Founders meant for secession to be unilateral.
Why not? Again, the fact that all the other restrictions are spelled out so carefully tends to cut in favor of thinking that the Framers intended for the states to have the right of secession. When the Framers were drafting Art. I, Sec. 10--which are state prohibitions--do you think they just forgot to include secession? When they were drafting Art. IV, do you think the subject slipped their mind again? That would seem like a strange result, especially considering that the United States just fought a war of secession against England, don't you think?
Again, the Framers were intelligent people; we have to assume that any omissions were deliberate. If we don't do this, we needn't bother with constitutional interpretation at all: it becomes meaningless because anything omitted is just assumed.
“It flat out ain’t so”
Last year, you were heartily recommending “Days of Defiance” by Maury Klein, who carefully outlines Lincoln’s assault plans on Charleston Harbor. Now, you deny the plan ever existed. What’s it gonna be?
Yes, if you are a member of JSTOR.
The words "lightbulb", "goat", and "purple" are also not in that Amendment. So what? The intent was that powers not delegated to the United States are reserved to the states.
James Madison:
The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the Federal Government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.
Paraphrasing Gen Eisenhower
Or is it as Chief Justice Marshall pointed out, that the authors of the Constitution gave the broad outlines and meant for much of the meaning to be interpreted based on those outlines. So if the Constitution gives Congress the power to admit states in the first place and to approve any change in their status or border once they're in then I don't think it's any real stretch to conclude that Congressional approval is needed for them to leave. If states cannot take steps which impact the interests and well-being of other states without consent of Congress while they are a part of the U.S. then why should we assume they can take those steps while leaving? To my way of thinking assuming that the founders meant for the Constitution to be used as a club to beat up remaining states if a particular state wanted to leave is too far fetched to believe.
I'm not sure. I've never heard of "Days of Defiance" OR Maury Kline.
That doesn’t prove anything. It is like saying Ohio would have beat Florida if Fred Gwinn hadn’t been hurt, because he would have run back every kickoff. However, it is the kind of speculation that sounds an awful like an excuse.
In the end all the “Facts” are just that, and they can’t be changed. When they all got added up, the south lost. BFD. I still don’t understand why it is still a current topic in the south.
Kindest Regards,
Boiler Plate
PS I went to HS with your great great grandson. He is a great guy and a world renown scientist. But you already knew that.
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