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its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone."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
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.
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?
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State of Maine
Resolves in favor of harmony and union
Resolved, That we the people of the State of Maine devotedly cherish the constitution and laws of the United States, and have ever been willing to assist in maintaining the National Union, and to respect faithfully the rights of all its members.
Resolved, That in the present attempt to coerce the government of the United States, and the will of the majority of the people thereof, to the will of the minority, by treason most foul, and rebellion the most unjustifiable, it is the right and the duty of the state to proffer to the national government for its own maintenance and for the suppression of this treason and rebellion all the means and resources which it can command. Resolved, That while as a member of the family of the states, we are ever ready to review our course in reference to any seeming infringement of the rights of sister states, still we can never so far forget the pride of our sovereignty, or the dignity of our manhood, as to hold parley with treason or with traitors.
Resolved, That whenever we shall see the sentiment of patriotism and devotion to American liberty manifested in the slave-holding states, we will vie with such states in the restoration of harmony, and will tender to such, every fraternal concession consistent with the security of our own citizens.
Resolved, That it is our right and our solemn purpose, with "our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor," to defend to the last our Federal Government, and the strength and the glory of our national capitol, by whatever hands assailed,as the only hope of our own and of the world's freedom and progress.
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Now let's see, was this legislature composed of anything but Northern Democrats and Republicans? Did Maine vote for Breckenridge?
Cheers,
Richard F.