Posted on 03/26/2002 10:38:41 PM PST by kattracks
Do states have a right of secession? That question was settled through the costly War of 1861. In his recently published book, "The Real Lincoln," Thomas DiLorenzo marshals abundant unambiguous evidence that virtually every political leader of the time and earlier believed that states had a right of secession.
Let's look at a few quotations. Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address said, "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 left to combat it." Fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in the union ... I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.'"
At Virginia's ratification convention, the delegates said, "The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression." In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what "the people" meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, "not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong." In a word, states were sovereign; the federal government was a creation, an agent, a servant of the states.
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Maryland Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel said, "Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty." The northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace.
Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South's right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful could produce nothing but evil -- evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content." The New York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go." DiLorenzo cites other editorials expressing identical sentiments.
Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, "It is poetry not logic; beauty, not sense." Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives "to the cause of self-determination -- government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth." Mencken says: "It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves."
In Federalist Paper 45, Madison guaranteed: "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 South seceded because of Washington's encroachment on that vision. Today, it's worse. Turn Madison's vision on its head, and you have today's America.
DiLorenzo does a yeoman's job in documenting Lincoln's ruthlessness and hypocrisy, and how historians have covered it up. The Framers had a deathly fear of federal government abuse. They saw state sovereignty as a protection. That's why they gave us the Ninth and 10th Amendments. They saw secession as the ultimate protection against Washington tyranny.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Contact Walter Williams | Read his biography
©2002 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Not under U.S. law.
Walt
He presented the Constitution to the Continental Congress as a document binding on the states. The Judicary Act of 1789 gave the federal government clear power to strike down state laws. In the opinions in one of the very first cases to reach the Supreme Court in 1793, Justice Wilson writes: write:
"As to the purposes of the Union, therefore, Georgia is not a sovereign state."
And:
"We may then infer, that the people of the United States intended to bind the several states, by the legislative power of the national government..
.Whoever considers, in a combined and comprehensive view, the general texture of the constitution, will be satisfied that the people of the United States intended to form themselves into a nation for national purposes."
And:
"Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the state governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform."
Now it seems to me that when the Supreme Court, in one of its its very first cases, comes down so hard on the side of the federal government, that the States should act to protect their rights. But they did not. This states' rights nonsense did not rear its head until it suited certain factions in the south, and for the most heinous of reasons. And I know all about the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, and the Hartford conventions and similar rumblings under the Constitution earlier than the civil war era. The point is you have the Supreme Court saying Georgia is not a sovereign state. Georgia's reaction in 1793? Zilch. Trying to break away 70 years later seems...sort of cheesy.
And interpreting the Constitution as a compact of sovereign states flies in the face of common sense. The Articles of Confederation were a failure. Of them Washington said:
"What stronger evidence can be given of the want of energy in our government than these disorders? If there exists not a power to check them, what security has a man of life, liberty, or property? To you, I am sure I need not add aught on this subject, the consequences of a lax or inefficient government, are too obvious to be dwelt on. Thirteen sovereignties pulling against each other, and all tugging at the federal head, will soon bring ruin to the whole; whereas a liberal, and energetic Constitution, well guarded and closely watched, to prevent encroachments, might restore us to that degree of respectability and consequence, to which we had a fair claim, and the brightest prospect of attaining..."
George Washington to James Madison November 5, 1786,
having said prior to the Constitutional Convention:
"I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation, without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner, as the authority of the different state governments extends over the several states. To be fearful of vesting Congress, constituted as that body is, with ample authorities for national purposes, appears to me to be the very climax of popular absurdity and madness."
George Washington to John Jay, 15 August 1786
A compact of sovereign states would have been even less efficient and less able to act that the the government under the Articles.
Old GW wasn't mincing his words. Makes you wonder how his image got shanghaied onto the greal seal of the CSA, doesn't it?
Chief Justice Marshall, like Chief Justice Jay before him and Chief Justice Taney after him, was a strong propenent of the suremacy of the federal government. We are constantly warned not to judge historical people by moder day standards. That is why the slave holders are constantly defended in some circles. They couldn't help being slave holders. But I digress. How can you make a judgment on the historical people who held that the Union was perpetual? Especially when, as in the case of Washington, Jay, Madison, Marshall and many others, none of their contemporaries did.
President Lincoln called it:
"It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that Resolves and Ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances."
3/4/61
Arguments for a state's right to legal unilateral secession simply crumble when exposed to the words of the people of the day. Let me leave you with one last quote:
"It is idle to talk of secession." Robert E. Lee 1861
Walt
What's a better system?
Walt
The states retain much sovereignty under the Constitution. But they do NOT retain complete sovereignty.
The people said so.
"The convention which framed the constitution was, indeed, elected by the State legislatures. But the instrument, when it came from their hands, was a mere proposal, without obligation, or pretensions to it. It was reported to the then existing Congress of the United States, with a request that it might "be submitted to a convention of Delegates, chosen in each State, by the people thereof, under the recommendation of its legislature, for their assent and ratification." This mode of proceeding was adopted; and by the Convention, by Congress, and by the State Legislatures, the instrument was submitted to the people. They acted upon it, in the only manner in which they can act safely, effectively, and wisely, on such a subject, by assembling in Convention. It is true, they assembled in their several States; and where else should they have assembled? No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act in their States. But the measures they adopt do not, on that account cease to be the measures of the people themselves, or become the measures of the state governments.
--Chief Justice John Marshall, majority opinion, McCullough v. Maryland, 1819
Walt
The natural law rights in the Declaration of Independence trump the Constitution. Every one has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No law can take that right away.
It is grotesque that you suggest that people should remain slaves just because it is the law.
Walt
You are denying that humans must drive these events. To say a "fedgov" agent's opinion doesn't matter is to seek some sort of unattainable nirvana. Thank God the framers knew better.
Some human being or group of human beings MUST have the final say. And any honest person will see that the words of the Supremacy Clause, which gives supremacy to the federal government trump any attempt at state secession because a secession ordinance is a "thing" in the laws of that state which cannot withstand the Supremacy Clause.
Walt
One where you have as many ways of telling a govt no as humanly possible, including secession.
You are inviting anarchy.
Our government system may not be perfect, but it is the best one yet devised.
Walt
And it is even more grotesque that you suggest that leaders have the right to break the law even if the end is correct. Tell me, Walt, how many nations during the same century emancipated their slaves peacefully by paying the slave owners for their slaves? Tell me, Walt, what did lincoln want to do with the slaves again? Move them to Liberia? Tell me, Walt, how many northerners were actually members of this so called huge Abolitionist party?
It was not about slavery, it was the taxes.
I find it grotesque that you suggest that the Confederate states should have remained enslaved in the Union just because you believe that it was the law.
I'd use the word "demanding" instead of "inviting", but otherwise, guilty as charged.
Oh. Well, okay then. :)
Walt
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