After the war there were 17 black Republicans elected to Congress, the Democrats got around to it in the 1930's I understand.
I'm not sure you can use Maryland politicians as a guide to the beliefs of northern political leaders. The first suspension of habeas corpus by Lincoln was for the imprisonment of Maryland secessionists.
Lincoln's argument was that secession based on protecting slavery was illegitimate. In his view, secession and revolt have to be legitimate and moral - for example, because of taxation without representation, or billeting of troops in homes without compensation.
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
Yes, Madison said that, and some may find ways of reading a right to unilateral secession into those words regardless of other evidence to the contrary. How come the apostles of dis union never quote these words from Madison?
I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession." But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy.As to Northern politicians arguing for the right to unilateral secession in 1861, some very prominent Southern folks argued the opposite.
"Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for "perpetual union" so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution.""The South seceded because of Washington's encroachment on that vision."
Exactly how was Washington ‘encroaching’ on the rights of the Southern States? Did South Carolina have a constitutional “right” to impose slavery on the people of Kansas? The only grievences mentioned in their resolutions of secession were slavery issues and the only question on slavery then was expansion!
The South wanted a Revolution so they could expand slavery. It was an economic necessity for them to continually expand slavery or they would be swamped with excess slaves and the value of their 'property' would colapse. They made very few bones about it at the time. Their revolution and that war was all about slavery. Williams should know better.
Be that as it may, one framer at least urged an immovable attachment to the national union.
"The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.
For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.
But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole."
--George Washington, farewell address
Walt
Thomas J. DiLorenzo's book "The Real Lincoln" claims to provide a "new look" at Abraham Lincoln. It does no such thing. It is instead a rehash of Confederate propaganda spiced up with touches of Marxist economic analysis.
The book's thesis can be summed up by a passage from a speech delivered by the archsecessionist Roger Atkison Pryor in Charleston, S.C., just before the attack on Fort Sumter. He thanked South Carolina for annihilating "this accursed Union, reeking with corruption and insolent with excess of tyranny." Continue at the Washington Times