Posted on 05/07/2002 11:31:24 AM PDT by WhiskeyPapa
What it all boils down to is this: did the South have every right to secede from the Union? Absolutely! The Constitution does not forbid states to secede. Arguing over whether or not it was about slavery is a moot point as far as I'm concerned. Lincoln and his congressional cronies had no authority to prevent the Southern states-- states that had voluntarily joined the Union under the premise of reassuming their soverignty should the need arise-- from willingly leaving the Union.
So, given that the states had every right to secede and Lincoln had no authority to stop them, he successfully trashed the Constitution. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter what he thought of slavery. He used his position of power to further his own vision of what the "Union" should be. Need we point out that the secession of the South would not have destroyed the Union? The United States would have continued to exist, albeit with 13 or so fewer states.
From a constitutional standpoint Lincoln was wrong to invade the South, and that fact alone makes him a bad president. The only way anyone can believe he was right would be to read into the Constitution something that simply isn't there. No one can deny that since 1865 we have seen more powers taken from the states and given to the "federal" government. (Actually, it's more of a national government now.) Lincoln's personal war was one of the worst crimes ever perpetrated on the people of this nation.
The Constitution delegates to the Congress the right to provide for the common defense and general welfare.
It also requires the feds to guarantee a republican form of government in every state, and states that federal laws are supreme to state laws, anything in the laws of any state notwithstanding.
The Militia Act of 1792 requires that U.S. law operate in all the states.
Shoehorn secession into all that.
Walt
Fantasy.
The Militia Act --assumes-- that the state government has been perverted or overthrown. It was passed at the request of George Washington.
It was one of the grounds cited by the Supreme Court in 1862 for the propriety of President Lincoln's actions. President Lincoln was required by his oath to resist the overthrow of the lawful government.
I don't care what you heard as a toddler.
Walt
The states that seceded did so using the same republican principles upon which our entire system of government is based. You might have a point if a small faction of rebels had actually overthrown their state's government. The truth is that a majority of the duly elected representatives of the people in the state legislature voted to secede.
It's all the reply this piece of pap deserves. But as long as you're all fired up to defend the idiocy, please list for me a) the "big bureaucracy" that Alexander Hamilton advocated and established; b) the steps Jefferson took to dismantle this infrastructure during his tenure as President; and c) the role Lincoln played in resurrecting the Hamiltonian Leviathan.
And yes, Lincoln did destroy the decentralized Republic the founders envisioned.
The "Founders" were a diverse group with many different "visions", backgrounds, and opinions. Some wanted a decentralized republic, others desired a more centralized nation-state. The genius of the Constitution was to create a federal system with attributes of both types of republic. Pure Jeffersonianism was never obtained by any state in the history of the world -- a plutocratic oligarchy, propped up by the stolen labor of others, in which leisured gentlemen farmers contemplated great philosophical thoughts. A ludicrous basis for a system of government, then and now.
But even so, Metcaff's caricature of the Hamiltonian-Jeffersonian debate is simplistic and silly in the extreme.
So my response is inadequate, huh? ROFL!!!
That situation is addressed by the language of the act.
"And it be further enacted, That whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of such state to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed. And if the militia of a state, where such combinations may happen, shall refuse, or be insufficient to suppress the same, it shall be lawful for the President, if the legislatures of the United States be not in session, to call forth and employ such numbers of the militia of any other state or states most convenient thereto, as may be necessary, and the use of militia, so to be called forth, may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the ensuing session."
Walt
The act authorizes the president to use the militia of the several states to ensure that it -is- part of the United States.
What this means is that the concept of unilateral state secession cannot be supported in U.S. law.
Walt
Jefferson Davis didn't think so.
"Conscription dramatized a fundamental paradox in the Confederate war effort: the need for Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. Pure Jeffersonians could not accept this. The most outspoken of them, Joseph Brown of Georgia, denounced the draft as a "dangerous usurpation by Congress of the reserved rights of the states...at war with all the principles for which Georgia entered into the revolution." In reply Jefferson Davis donned the mantle of Hamilton. The Confederate Constitution, he pointed out to Brown, gave Congress the power "to raise and support armies" and to "provide for the common defense." It also contained another clause (likewise copied from the U.S. Constitution) empowering Congress to make all laws "necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Brown had denied the constitutionality of conscription because the Constitution did not specifically authorize it. This was good Jeffersonian doctrine, sanctified by generations of southern strict constructionists. But in Hamiltonian language, Davis insisted that the "necessary and proper" clause legitimized conscription. No one could doubt the necessity "when our very existance is threatened by armies vastly superior in numbers." Therefore "the true and only test is to enquire whether the law is intended and calculated to carry out the object...if the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional."
--Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson P.433
Your position is fantasy. If the federal government can coerce the states in the matter of conscription, why not secession?
Walt
Once again our debate has come full circle. The concept of unilateral state secession doesn't have to be supported in U.S. law. A state that has seceded is no longer bound by U.S. law.
Perhaps you would like to address the fact that there was nothing in English law that supported the right of a colony to exercise unilateral secession. From that perspective the colonists were nothing but filthy rebels who deserved to be ground into the dirt and forced back into submission just like Lincoln did in the South.
You're opening another can of worms. The Constitution only allows Congress to conscript the militias from the various states, not individual citizens. The drafting of individuals was wrong in both the North and the South. But let's save the debate over conscription for another thread.
Fantasy.
The Militia Act --assumes-- that the state government has been perverted or overthrown. It was passed at the request of George Washington.
It was one of the grounds cited by the Supreme Court in 1862 for the propriety of President Lincoln's actions. President Lincoln was required by his oath to resist the overthrow of the lawful government.
So, you're saying that we've had a National government, not a Federal government, for over 200 years!? Do you even know the difference!?
That in itself is the argument in a nutshell. What was the south to do? Add another amendment to force the northern states to abide by the Constitutional agreement? And if that failed, add another, and another?
What you overlook is the fact that the colonists were victorious filthy rebels, while the confederates were losing filthy rebels. That's the first difference. In both cases the parties entered into rebellion. But the colonists also did not pretend that their actions were permitted under British law. They knew that they were taking a chance with their necks, they knew that they would have to fight for their freedoms, and they didn't complain about it. That's the second difference.
And you seem at the same time to want to prevent them from knowing the truth about abraham Lincoln.
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