Posted on 07/01/2003 6:12:02 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
Even the Document linked by sheltonmac above, acknowledges the "Common territory of the Republic" placing the area of the United States under a degree of congressional control.
Clause 1: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”
To begin with a State is a political entity by definition, and in forming the Confederacy, the states were violating the Constitution.
Continuing, That having been said, the Fully half of the states that seceded were Created by the Union.(in the Louisiana Purchase)...
Now, If you wish to argue about the original ratifiers, that might be one thing, However, Every state West of the Mississippi had it's Freedom from France negotiated and Paid for , by the Union Government....Now I am not saying they should have remained without rights, but surely they were more securely bound to the Union than say, the Southeastern states...
Further, As the document linked above by sheltonmac clearly lays out, there was no long list of usurpations and horrors, they were losing at the table of Democracy, and didn't like it.
No we get the government the power brokers in Washington tell us we're going to have. Any respective citizen that doesn't get the nod from one of numerous political national organizations, even if the role is strictly for one state, gets thrown out like yesterday's trash.
Never mind the fact the original intent of the Founders was to be that we would never vote for Senators, except through voting on our state legislature
end of story.
free dixie,sw
I think there certainly are parallels between President Lincoln and King George:
Imagine King George ascending to the throne of England shortly before the Declaration of Independence was signed and making it his first order of business to address his subjects and argue his case for the preservation of the kingdom. The following is an excerpt of what King George might have said. If it seems a little familiar, it should. The bulk of this text was lifted directly from Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address. A few words have been altered so that it may fit into the context of a brewing conflict between a king hoping to keep his empire intact and a group of secessionists seeking to form their own independent nation:I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Laws of Parliament, the Kingdom of Great Britain is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our Parliamentary Laws, and the Kingdom will endure forever-- it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.Again, if Great Britain be not a government proper, but an association of colonies in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it-- break it, so to speak; but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Kingdom is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Kingdom itself. The Kingdom is much older than the Colonies. It was formed, in fact, by Divine Providence. It was matured and continued by the practice of feudalism. It was further matured, and the faith of all the Barons expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Magna Carta in 1215. And, finally, in 1689 by ordaining and establishing the English Bill of Rights to which its drafters pledged to "most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities for ever..."
But if the destruction of the Kingdom by one or by a part only of the colonies be lawfully possible, the Kingdom is less perfect than before, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.
It follows from these views that no Colony upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Kingdom; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any Colony or Colonies, against the authority of the Kingdom, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.
I therefore consider that, in view of Parliament and its laws, the Kingdom is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as Parliament itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Kingdom be faithfully executed in all the Colonies. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the loyal subjects of the Crown, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Kingdom that it will lawfully defend and maintain itself...
...In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Kingdom will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Kingdom, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and loyalist grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Kingdom, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
So these guys keep saying.
When you point out, that the DOI lays out far greater injuries, they say the DOI is not a ruling Document, the Constitution is.
When you point out that the Constitution prohibits the States from Seceding, They say, The Constitution doesn't apply because the States seceded.
So in extraordinary circumstances, you have the Battlefield, and I guess all of the Baghdad Bobs still fighting this conflict, will say that doesn't matter either...
Just open your wallet, take out a 5, and tell me what you see.
Now that is something we can agree on! They had no right then, and no right now! ;)
"As far as enumerating specific grievances, no such list is required."
So you say, and no doubt it would injure your argument to attempt such. That is why one never sees such a list today. When one attempts to cloak the rebellion of the Southern States in the DOI, you had better have such a list ready.
Georgia
"The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment"
Mississippi
"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery"
South Carolina
"On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States."
No matter how they, or anyone today, try to cover it up, the Rebellion was always about slavery. Slavery, slavery, slavery. And you can see in the South Carolina admission, they aren't so much rebelling against abuses in the past, but those they envision in the future.
It is ironic that the path they chose led to the destruction of the institution of slavery that they were fighting to preserve.
However, please don't confuse "viable option" with a hasty call for secession.
Louisiana might have started looking good to France....Texas to Mexico...etc...
The South lacking a real industrial base, would have been appetizing looking prey...
The compulsory need to be free from tyranny is in the DNA of those who believe that secession IS a moral right. This need was in our Founding Fathers as it was in those, both North and South, who believe that the South exercised its right to invoke that moral right.
The Destroyer of the Constitution.
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