The Original Secessionists

I’ve been busy and still am, but I thought I could put together a response to the first of your recent posts if I stayed up late enough.

Reference 1, from my post 194:

If one party to a contract can unilaterally breach it at will without fear of penalty I see no point to even having a contract and I don’t see that the terms of the contract, whatever they may be, matter. I doubt society as we know it can exist if we can’t have contracts or compacts or agreements to which the involved parties can be held, which likely involves some sort of possible penalty for breach.

Refer to my post 184 for one way that Northern states were violating the contract, a violation of one key part of the contract without which the Constitution would not have been ratified. Note the comments of Daniel Webster of Massachusetts in post 184.

Reference 2, from my post 194: [excerpts from your Reference 2 are listed below.]

If actions by the Northern States were sufficient to breach the agreement forming the Union, thereby justifying secession by the Southern States, the Northern States were in the wrong to wage war.

If actions by the Northern States were not sufficient to breach the agreement forming the Union and secession by the Southern States was unjustified, the Northern States had some right to try and hold the seceding States to the agreement or penalize them.

Who is to decide whether it was justified or not? The oppressors or the oppressed? If you argue that the oppressors should decide whether a state can secede from the "voluntary" union, we disagree and are talking past each other. If you argue that the oppressors should decide, which of the following oppressors might you be favoring?

(1) The states that violated the Constitution by preventing the return of fugitive slaves?

(2) The Northern states who were transferring wealth from the South to Northern industry and Northern workers by means of the tariff on imports?

(3) The states whose representatives were blocking Southern citizens from equal access to the territories that Southern blood and money had gone into winning or purchasing?

Here are my comments on the numbered items above.

(1) See post 184 above. See also the Georgia Platform of 1850, supporting the Missouri Compromise. It says in its last provision [Wikipedia source, so be careful]:

Fifthly, That it is the deliberate opinion of this Convention, that upon the faithful execution of the Fugitive Slave Bill by the proper authorities depends the preservation of our much loved Union.

(2) Through the existing tariff, the self-aggrandizing states were already transferring large amounts of Southern wealth to Northern manufacturers thereby providing jobs to Northern workers. They also had the votes in the incoming Congress to substantially increase that transfer from the South by means of the Morrill Tariff (which actually passed right before Lincoln took office). An editorial by the Daily Chicago Times on December 10, 1860 [as reported in the New Orleans Picayune] says the following. Keep in mind that the Morrill Tariff had not yet passed the Senate at this point.

The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.

Here’s some information from the 1860 book Southern Wealth and Northern Profits by Thomas Prentice Kettell. Kettell broke down the distribution of imports to regions by consumption. For 1859, he calculates Southern consumption of imports as $106,000,000, Western consumption (mainly the Midwest, I think) as $63,000,000, and Northern consumption (New England and perhaps New York and Pennsylvania and New Jersey, I think) of imports as $149,000,000. Kettell based the split among regions on Treasury figures from 1856.
Kettell also estimated that the North sent $240,000,000 in domestic goods to the South in 1859. Many the Northern goods were protected against lower priced imported goods by the tariff. Thus, the South was effectively paying the tariff on those particular US manufactured goods and were thus supporting Northern manufacturers and Northern jobs. Kettell also said that the South paid to the North some $63,000,000 in interest and brokerage.
(3) Here is what Jefferson Davis said on the floor of the Senate, January 10, 1861:

Is there a Senator on the other side who to-day will agree that we shall have equal enjoyment of the Territories of the United States? Is there one who will deny that we have equally paid in their purchases, and equally bled in their acquisition in war? Then, is this the observance of your compact? Whose fault is it if the Union be dissolved? Do you say there is one of you who controverts either of these positions? Then I ask you, do you give us justice; do we enjoy equality? If we are not equals, this is not the Union to which we were pledged; this is not the Constitution you have sworn to maintain, nor this the Government we are bound to support. (pg 311, Congressional Globe)

The February 13, 1861 issue of the Gate City Guardian of Atlanta pointed out the disparity between those volunteering from the North and South for the Mexican War that won the Southwestern territory. The paper presented a state-by-state analysis of the volunteers for that war. Slaveholding states furnished 45,680 volunteers; non-slaveholding states furnished 23,084. Didn't Southerners earn the right to take their property to the Southwestern territory?
Similarly, did Southerners not contribute to the purchase of the Louisiana Territory? The treaty by which we purchased that land had a proviso that inhabitants could take their property (slaves being property at that time) anywhere in the territory. Or were those territories reserved for the constituents of the Northern congressmen so that they would not face competition from slaves or Southern plantation owners?

They don't say that "they (the STATES) reserved the right to "resume" the powers of government". They say that the people (in one case referring to the people of the United States and in another referring to the people of the several states) may resume or reassume the "powers". They're not saying the States can leave the Union. They're saying the people can replace the Federal (or for that matter the State) government.

The resume powers argument of Bledsoe convinced me that the people who delegated powers of government (the people of the individual states acting separately are the people who can legitimately resume powers). This argument and the others of Bledsoe do not appear to sway you.

You are correct that the Virginia ratification document did say the people of the United States, but Bledsoe destroyed that argument in several different ways, IMO. In their secession document, Virginia noted that the Southern states had been damaged. The people in those states are people of the United States. The people of the individual Southern states elected delegates to their states' separate secession conventions and/or submitted the secession question directly to their voters. The sovereign voices of the individual states or their elected delegates decided to secede.

Where does sovereignty ultimately reside – in a government or union or in the people who delegated powers to the government or union?

I absolutely do not buy your argument that the other two ratification documents mean that it is only the people of the several states (i.e., the lumpen mass of the whole people of the United States) who may resume or reassume powers that the lumpen mass of the whole people never had.

I note that the criteria given for the people of New York and Rhode Island to resume their powers is a lower bar than that posed by Virginia's ratification document. The New York or the Rhode Island people could do that whenever it was necessary for their happiness.

Many state constitutions say that the people have the right to alter or abolish their form of government and these constitutions were judged consistent with the US Constitution.

From the 1845 Texas Constitution: "All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their benefit; and they have at all times the unalienable right to alter, reform, or abolish their form of government, in such manner as they may think expedient."

From the 1780 Massachusetts Constitution and still there today: "The end of the institution, maintenance, and administration of government, is to secure the existence of the body politic, to protect it, and to furnish the individuals who compose it with the power of enjoying in safety and tranquility their natural rights, and the blessings of life: and whenever these great objects are not obtained, the people have a right to alter the government, and to take measures necessary for their safety, prosperity and happiness."

I fail to see how “every claim to the right of secession for the future” could be extinguished by conquest, which was involuntary, but not be extinguished by agreement to perpetual union which was voluntary.

The federal conquerors of the Southern states made those Southern states disavow secession in their constitutions as a condition for readmitting them to the United States after the war.

By the way, the "perpetual" union is no more. It became no more when the Constitution was ratified by nine states. As Mr. Lancaster of the North Carolina Ratification Convention said:

We find that the ratification of nine states shall be sufficient for its establishment between the states so ratifying the same. This, as has been already taken notice of, is a violation of the Confederation. We find that, by that system, no alteration was to take place, except it was ratified by every state in the Union. Now, by comparing this last article of the Constitution to that part of the Confederation, we find a most flagrant violation. The Articles of Confederation were sent out with all solemnity on so solemn an occasion, and were to be always binding on the states; but, to our astonishment, we see that nine states may do away the force of the whole.

As George Washington said, North Carolina was not a member of the present union. Members of the North Carolina Ratification Convention said they were out of the Union if they did not ratify the Constitution. But, but, you said the Union was perpetual.

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