Replies

They were not withheld from the States. Your persistently saying so stands Constitutional history on its head. Those powers belonged to the States, which otherwise would not have had any authority to delegate them to the United States of America under the Constitution.

Read the specific language of the first sentence of Articles I, II, and III: it speaks of Powers that shall be vested. But by whom? Look at Article VII (emphases mine):

"The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same."

Whoop! There it IS!! It is not a self-sourcing, self-originating, self-creating document, but a created Thing, which names its creators in that sentence. The clincher is the second clause of the same Article:

"done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September ....."

Quod erat demonstrandum.

I repeat: If these sovereign powers had not inured to the States from the outset, the Constitution would not have enumerated them at all, since it would have been obvious to all observers that the States did not dispose of these powers to begin with.

Your interesting rewriting of the XIII is typical and totally FUD.

I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean by that. I merely attempted to state, as part "b", in additional clauses of the XIIIth, the unwritten but nevertheless operative changes which I believe Abraham Lincoln made to the Constitution by victoriously warring on the South. The English Constitution has been occasionally modified by acts rather than writs or laws over the centuries; and without passing on their way of amendment as distinct from ours, I wanted merely to point out that Lincoln had, in fact, effectuated such unwritten amendments to our own Constitution -- such as the implosion of the Tenth Amendment under cooperative assaults by Congress and the Courts asserting the Commerce Clause power in the teeth of the Tenth.

Because of the fact that slavery existed at the start of the Union, an amendment was needed to end it, because of the 10th amendment and the fact that slavery was one of those "reserved rights" that you are so proud of. You might note that the XIII was ratified with the help of the *real* legislatures of many of the southern states - unlike the [XIVth], which was only ratified after these same legislatures were removed by the federal government.

If the ex-Confederate state legislatures met and ratified the XIIIth Amendment, that is currently news to me (I can't swear I never heard of it), and of course raises questions of compulsion (1,000,000 troops). But I can see numbers of ex-Confederate legislators taking the conciliatory view Longstreet took, even though I believe that view was in the minority in the South.

For a state to be sovereign, it has to have the ability to make treaties, declare war, regulate foreign commerce, etc. These (and other sovereign powers) were specifically withheld from the individual states.

They were not withheld from the States. Your persistently saying so stands Constitutional history on its head. Those powers belonged to the States, which otherwise would not have had any authority to delegate them to the United States of America under the Constitution.

Boy I will say this about you. You consistently do a contextual rail split with my words. So to explain to you in words of one syllable or less:
a). I have been talking of individual state soveriegnty (or the lack thereof) after ratification, not before.
b). Before ratification, each individual state was sovereign (subject to the limitations imposed by the Articles of Confederation). Afterwards, they were not.
c). The states did not delegate their sovereignty. On the contrary, they gave up their sovereignty to a constitutional republican form of government which then delegated powers to the federal government and reserved the rest for people and individual states.
d). By ratifying the constitution, a state was acknowledging it as the supreme law of the land.

Read the specific language of the first sentence of Articles I, II, and III: it speaks of Powers that shall be vested. But by whom? Look at Article VII (emphases mine): "The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same." Whoop! There it IS!! It is not a self-sourcing, self-originating, self-creating document, but a created Thing, which names its creators in that sentence. The clincher is the second clause of the same Article: "done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September ....."
Quod erat demonstrandum.

All you've succeeded in demonstrating is that the document was created by delegates of the states to a constitutional convention. Once the constitution was created by said delegations, the states had to ratify it. In so doing, they gave up certain sovereign rights that they had enjoyed prior to ratification. Note that they didn't delegate these powers to the federal government. They gave them up.

I repeat: If these sovereign powers had not inured to the States from the outset, the Constitution would not have enumerated them at all, since it would have been obvious to all observers that the States did not dispose of these powers to begin with.

I've never said that the states didn't originally have sovereignty. I merely said that they gave it up when they ratified the constitution. Do us both a favor and not impute words to me that aren't there.

Your interesting rewriting of the XIII is typical and totally FUD.

I'm sorry, I don't know what you mean by that. I merely attempted to state, as part "b", in additional clauses of the XIIIth, the unwritten but nevertheless operative changes which I believe Abraham Lincoln made to the Constitution by victoriously warring on the South. The English Constitution has been occasionally modified by acts rather than writs or laws over the centuries; and without passing on their way of amendment as distinct from ours, I wanted merely to point out that Lincoln had, in fact, effectuated such unwritten amendments to our own Constitution -- such as the implosion of the Tenth Amendment under cooperative assaults by Congress and the Courts asserting the Commerce Clause power in the teeth of the Tenth.

Firstly, write the amendment, then your opinion concerning the amendment, don't rewrite the amendment into a form that doesn't exist.

Secondly, accusing Lincoln of using the 13th to usurp powers is coming it a bit too strong, since he died in April of the year it was ratified, and the war was fought under reserved powers in Article I section 8 of the Constitution.

You seem to want to blame Lincoln for all your ills. However, the abuses of the commerce clause didn't really start until FDR. You will note that Article I gives the federal government explicit power to put down insurrections. And any way you put it, the secession of the southern states was still an insurrection against federal authority and the constitution.

Furthemore, I can't think of a single instance wherein Lincoln didn't have historical precedent. Adams, for example, is a major reason for the Bill of Rights. Jackson and Buchanon used hob-nailed boots on states which tried to assert sovereignty. Madison, himself, disputed John Calhoun's nullification and secession theories (BTW, if you want to look at a person who did extreme damage to the Union, you need look no further than Calhoun).

Because of the fact that slavery existed at the start of the Union, an amendment was needed to end it, because of the 10th amendment and the fact that slavery was one of those "reserved rights" that you are so proud of. You might note that the XIII was ratified with the help of the *real* legislatures of many of the southern states - unlike the [XIVth], which was only ratified after these same legislatures were removed by the federal government.

If the ex-Confederate state legislatures met and ratified the XIIIth Amendment, that is currently news to me (I can't swear I never heard of it), and of course raises questions of compulsion (1,000,000 troops). But I can see numbers of ex-Confederate legislators taking the conciliatory view Longstreet took, even though I believe that view was in the minority in the South

Considering that it was refusal by the southern states to ratify the XIVth (excuse me for getting my Roman Numerals mixed up earlier) that caused the north to throw out state legislatures, it is doubtful that compulsion forced the South's hand. Although they may have been bowing to the inevitable. BTW, I consider the XIVth to be a good amendment, but I am uncomfortable with the methods used to ratify it.

"done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September ....."I love the "unanimous" piece. The state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations REFUSED to attend. Numerous delegates left, among them John Lansing and fellow New York delegate Robert Yates.
Originally, 70 delegates were selected to attend, but many could not (or would not attend), among them Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Samuel Adams and John Hancock. Of the 55 delegates who did attend the Constitutional Convention sessions only 39 actually signed the Constitution.
Attending but not signing were:
Oliver Ellsworth (CT) - left early
William Houston (GA) - left early
William L. Pierce (GA) - business was failing
Luther Martin (MD) - left in protest
John F. Mercer (MD) - left in protest
Elbridge Gerry (MA) - refused to sign
Caleb Strong (MA) - left due to family illness
William C. Houston (NJ) - left due to illness
John Lansing, Jr. (NY) - left in protest
Robert Yates (NY) - left in protest
William R. Davie (NC) - left early
Alexander Martin (NC) - left early
George Mason (VA) - refused to sign
James McClurg (VA) - left early
Edmund J. Randolph (VA) - refused to sign
George Wythe (VA) - left early

Of note, is the abstention of Elbridge Gerry (MA), who had signed the Declaration and Articles.