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.
The argument from editorials has some weight, but only some. There were two issues, at least. 1] Was there a right to secede, and 2] was it wise and just to oppose secession, even unlawful secession, by force of arms? I would have to read through a representative sample of these editorials to see what question the writers were responding to. Moreover, passions and fears were high, and some of the same papers changed their editorial stance after Sumter. Moreover, there are contrary indicators of popular sentiment, such as the anti-secession resolutions adopted by many Northern state legislatures.
Public opinion shifted in the upper South during this period, too. Witness the failure of the first Virginia Convention to decide on secession.
Of course, none of this bears on the views of the Founding period, which is already 50 years in the past by the time of these editorials.
Finally, do you have a link to the editorials, or does one have to get hard copy?
Regards,
Richard F.
A lot of union soldiers died for Lincoln's and your belief in the first civil war. If the president of the US at the time of the next secession believes that statement, I can guarantee that a lot more are going to die for that misguided concept in the next civil war.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government,” Declaration of Independence
I have no experience as a warrior or soldier and am past the age of hand to hand combat. But as a pathologist, I have over thirty years of experience in determing why people died. I have personally performed over one thousand autopsies. What kind of an enemy would I make? No, I don't think I would be using missiles or tanks. Bombs and guns? Not likely. No, I think my personal choice of weapons would be chemicals and biologicals. Osama is an amatuer, I suggest that the then current president think carefully before he declares war on people with real training and experience.
I have only the excerpts and I don't remember where I found them. They may have been from the Charles Adams book. If you begin tracking them down and come across a high-powered database in which they can be found please direct me to the same.
The attempt by the LittleRock Caligula to put "clipper chips" in electronic devices.
As the president's oath charges him to see the laws faithfully executed, he won't have any choice.
It's not generally known, but it was suggested by some that Lincoln be impreached UNLESS he reacted strongly to the so-called secession of the so-called seceded states.
All you Lincoln bashers hate what happened apparently, but you have no reasonable suggestions on how things could have been made better then, or now.
Walt
You are among the best finders of evidence in these arguments. Do you know of anything that would answer my question?
I had thought that the defenders of secession would have it at their fingertips, but it seems not to be the case.
Lee said that "in 1808 ... Virginia statesmen ..." had held secession to be nothing other than "treason." Surely the Virginians of that era were responding to something from the New England malcontents, but there seems to be little trace of it.
Any thoughts?
Found this on a website about Fort Macon, North Carolina.
“Secession is nothing but revolution... the framers would not have devoted so much care to the formation of the Constitution if it was intended to be broken by any member of the Confederacy at will... In 1808 when New England states resisted Mr. Jefferson’s embargo law, and when the Hartford Convention assembled, secession was termed treason by Virginian statesmen; what can it be now? Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me. If the Union is dissolved and the government disrupted, I shall return to my native state and share the miseries of my people. Save in her defense, I will draw my sword no more.”
This is from Lee's letter of January 23, 1861. I use part of it often.
Walt
Regards,
Richard F.
Whatever. By the 9th and 10th amendments the people reserve a right to mantain theg Union. That is exactly what they have done.
Walt
Maybe DiLorenzo has finally tumbled onto winning technique. We can't disprove something that never happened.
Walt
IOW, you're looking for proof but disregard all facts as "cloudy". You know, it's a pure joke for you to refer to yourself as a scholar.
The Virginia reservation refers to the people of the United States, not the people of Virginia. That is not cloudy, that's opaque.
Walt
As of 1860 most Northerners and Southerners believed in the Jeffersonian right of secession as enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. In Northern Editorials on Secession Howard Cecil Perkins surveyed about 1,000 Northern newspapers and found that the majority of them agreed basically with what the Bangor Daily Union wrote on November 13, 1860: "The Union depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone." A state that is coerced to remain in the Union becomes a "subject province" and can never be "a co-equal member of the American Union."
I looked for a used copy of the Perkins book on www.abe.com and the only one they had was $100. You are certainly right to question the utility of a survey of newspaper editorials from November 1860 (I don't say that's the only period surveyed, all of DiLorenzo's examples are from 11/60 - 1/61). Before Sumter, the temptation to accept a peaceful break-up must have been strong for men who had no desire or taste for civil war.
By the way, what do you think of this, in the Williams piece?
The northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace.
"I do not say that all who met at Hartford were under the same motives of money, nor were those of France. Some of them are Outs, and wish to be Inns; some the mere dupes of the agitators, or of their own party passions, while the Maratists alone are in the real secret; but they have very different materials to work on. The yeomanry of the United States are not the canaille of Paris. We might safely give them leave to go through the United States recruiting their ranks, and I am satisfied they could not raise one single regiment (gambling merchants and silk-stocking clerks excepted) who would support them in any effort to separate from the Union. The cement of this Union is in the heart-blood of every American. I do not believe there is on earth a government established on so immovable a basis. Let them, in any State, even in Massachusetts itself, raise the standard of separation, and its citizens will rise in mass, and do justice themselves on their own incendiaries.
If they could have induced the government to some effort of suppression, or even to enter into discussion with them, it would have given them some importance, have brought them into some notice. But they have not been able to make themselves even a subject of conversation, either of public or private societies. A silent contempt has been the sole notice they excite; consoled, indeed, some of them, by the palpable favors of Philip. Have then no fears for us, my friend. The grounds of these exist only in English newspapers, endited or endowed by the Castlereaghs or the Cannings, or some other such models of pure and uncorrupted virtue. Their military heroes, by land and sea, may sink our oyster boats, rob our hen roosts, burn our negro huts, and run off. But a campaign or two more will relieve them from further trouble or expense in defending their American possessions."
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl236.htm
Walt
Not at issue. Not with me, any way.
My issue is that unilateral state secession is outside -U.S.- law. It clearly was. Secondly, as the letter above from Jefferson to Lafayette shows, the framers, as Washington said, had an "immovable attachment" to the National Union.
In fact, President Lincoln preserved the government that the framers created.
Walt
The northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace.
At the risk of seeming a bit harsh, I think it a piece of simple humbuggery.
Do the names of the candidates, Douglas and Lincoln, count for anything?
In all my reading on this subject, I have never come across this claim, and I ask, most politely, if anyone here can support it. Do we have resolutions of state parties? Platforms? Legislative resolutions or acts? Anything but the fantasy world of Dr. D.?
A final note: there is a caution here for journalists not to trust ideological allies without a bit of fact checking.
Williams ought to be ashamed of himself for a sentence like this one!
Cheers,
Richard F.
My understanding is that the Republican party had as its foundation a platform of unconditional Union.
Walt
It's not yet posted on the web site and it's too long for me to type and post, but here are a few of the highlights.
Remedy Short of Revolution
Was there a constitutional remedy--that is a solution short of the extreme measures of secession or violent revolution? Figures like Daniel Webster, Joseph Story and later Lincoln thought not. Since they subscribed to the theory of the Union whereby the U.S. Constitution had been adopted by the entire American people in the aggreggate rather than as a compact among sovereign states, what will described as nullification appeared to them to be an unlawful revolt by the arbitrary portion of the people rather than a a exercise of sovereignty by a sovererign body.
Even Alexander Hamilton had envisioned a role for the states in restraining the Federal Government , arguing in Federalist 28, that the State Governments will, in all possible contingencies, afford complete security against invations of the public liberty by the national authority.
There is obviusly, no provision in the Constitution that explicitly authorizes nullifcation, That was no Jefferson's point. He and later John C. Calhoun, suggested that is was in the nature of compacts that no one side could have the exclusive right of inerpreting its terms. This was especially true in the case of the federal compact, since Jefferson and Calhoun contended that the federal government was not a party to it having itself been brought into being by the joint action of the states in creating a compact among themselves. Since the federal government was merely the agent of the states, it could hardly presume to tell the states, with no room for disagreement or appeal , what their own constitution meant.
Nullification in itself is an act of secession. The article goes on about how up to 1860 that Americans generally acknowledged the right of states to secede from the union. But if the Constitution is over the Supreme Court, who or what finally is over the Constitution? It can only be the states who under Article V alone have the power to amend or rewrite it. The theory that the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution must necessarily be the final word effectively concedes to that body the right substtively to amend the Constitution to mean what the Courst say it means. But the right to amend clearly rest with the states. How then do the states unequivocally surrender the control their most fundamental rights, in the last resort to a Court they themselves created?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.