Southerners insisted they could legally bolt from the Union.
Northerners swore they could not.
War would settle the matter for good.
Over the centuries, various excuses have been employed for starting wars. Wars have been fought over land or honor. Wars have been fought over soccer (in the case of the conflict between Honduras and El Salvador in 1969) or even the shooting of a pig (in the case of the fighting between the United States and Britain in the San Juan Islands in 1859).
But the Civil War was largely fought over equally compelling interpretations of the U.S. Constitution. Which side was the Constitution on? That's difficult to say.
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The interpretative debate—and ultimately the war—turned on the intent of the framers of the Constitution and the meaning of a single word: sovereignty—which does not actually appear anywhere in the text of the Constitution.
Southern leaders like John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis argued that the Constitution was essentially a contract between sovereign states—with the contracting parties retaining the inherent authority to withdraw from the agreement. Northern leaders like Abraham Lincoln insisted the Constitution was neither a contract nor an agreement between sovereign states. It was an agreement with the people, and once a state enters the Union, it cannot leave the Union.
It is a touchstone of American constitutional law that this is a nation based on federalism—the union of states, which retain all rights not expressly given to the federal government. After the Declaration of Independence, when most people still identified themselves not as Americans but as Virginians, New Yorkers or Rhode Islanders, this union of "Free and Independent States" was defined as a "confederation." Some framers of the Constitution, like Maryland's Luther Martin, argued the new states were "separate sovereignties." Others, like Pennsylvania's James Wilson, took the opposite view that the states "were independent, not Individually but Unitedly."
Supporting the individual sovereignty claims is the fierce independence that was asserted by states under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, which actually established the name "The United States of America." The charter, however, was careful to maintain the inherent sovereignty of its composite state elements, mandating that "each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated." It affirmed the sovereignty of the respective states by declaring, "The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defence [sic]." There would seem little question that the states agreed to the Confederation on the express recognition of their sovereignty and relative independence.
Supporting the later view of Lincoln, the perpetuality of the Union was referenced during the Confederation period. For example, the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 stated that "the said territory, and the States which may be formed therein, shall forever remain a part of this confederacy of the United States of America."
The Confederation produced endless conflicts as various states issued their own money, resisted national obligations and favored their own citizens in disputes. James Madison criticized the Articles of Confederation as reinforcing the view of the Union as "a league of sovereign powers, not as a political Constitution by virtue of which they are become one sovereign power." Madison warned that such a view could lead to the "dissolving of the United States altogether." If the matter had ended there with the Articles of Confederation, Lincoln would have had a much weaker case for the court of law in taking up arms to preserve the Union. His legal case was saved by an 18th-century bait-and-switch.
A convention was called in 1787 to amend the Articles of Confederation, but several delegates eventually concluded that a new political structure—a federation—was needed. As they debated what would become the Constitution, the status of the states was a primary concern. George Washington, who presided over the convention, noted, "It is obviously impracticable in the federal government of these states, to secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide for the interest and safety of all." Of course, Washington was more concerned with a working federal government—and national army—than resolving the question of a state's inherent right to withdraw from such a union. The new government forged in Philadelphia would have clear lines of authority for the federal system. The premise of the Constitution, however, was that states would still hold all rights not expressly given to the federal government.
The final version of the Constitution never actually refers to the states as "sovereign," which for many at the time was the ultimate legal game-changer. In the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark 1819 decision in McCulloch v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall espoused the view later embraced by Lincoln: "The government of the Union…is emphatically and truly, a government of the people." Those with differing views resolved to leave the matter unresolved—and thereby planted the seed that would grow into a full civil war. But did Lincoln win by force of arms or force of argument?
On January 21, 1861, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi went to the well of the U.S. Senate one last time to announce that he had "satisfactory evidence that the State of Mississippi, by a solemn ordinance of her people in convention assembled, has declared her separation from the United States." Before resigning his Senate seat, Davis laid out the basis for Mississippi's legal claim, coming down squarely on the fact that in the Declaration of Independence "the communities were declaring their independence"—not "the people." He added, "I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of state sovereignty, the right of a state to secede from the Union."
Davis' position reaffirmed that of John C. Calhoun, the powerful South Carolina senator who had long viewed the states as independent sovereign entities. In an 1833 speech upholding the right of his home state to nullify federal tariffs it believed were unfair, Calhoun insisted, "I go on the ground that [the] constitution was made by the States; that it is a federal union of the States, in which the several States still retain their sovereignty." Calhoun allowed that a state could be barred from secession by a vote of two-thirds of the states under Article V, which lays out the procedure for amending the Constitution.
Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861, was one of the least auspicious beginnings for any president in history. His election was used as a rallying cry for secession, and he became the head of a country that was falling apart even as he raised his hand to take the oath of office. His first inaugural address left no doubt about his legal position: "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."
While Lincoln expressly called for a peaceful resolution, this was the final straw for many in the South who saw the speech as a veiled threat. Clearly when Lincoln took the oath to "preserve, protect, and defend" the Constitution, he considered himself bound to preserve the Union as the physical creation of the Declaration of Independence and a central subject of the Constitution. This was made plain in his next major legal argument—an address where Lincoln rejected the notion of sovereignty for states as an "ingenious sophism" that would lead "to the complete destruction of the Union." In a Fourth of July message to a special session of Congress in 1861, Lincoln declared, "Our States have neither more, nor less power, than that reserved to them, in the Union, by the Constitution—no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union. The original ones passed into the Union even before they cast off their British colonial dependence; and the new ones each came into the Union directly from a condition of dependence, excepting Texas. And even Texas, in its temporary independence, was never designated a State."
It is a brilliant framing of the issue, which Lincoln proceeds to characterize as nothing less than an attack on the very notion of democracy:
Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it, our people have already settled—the successful establishing, and the successful administering of it. One still remains—its successful maintenance against a formidable [internal] attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world, that those who can fairly carry an election, can also suppress a rebellion—that ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war—teaching all, the folly of being the beginners of a war.
Lincoln implicitly rejected the view of his predecessor, James Buchanan. Buchanan agreed that secession was not allowed under the Constitution, but he also believed the national government could not use force to keep a state in the Union. Notably, however, it was Buchanan who sent troops to protect Fort Sumter six days after South Carolina seceded. The subsequent seizure of Fort Sumter by rebels would push Lincoln on April 14, 1861, to call for 75,000 volunteers to restore the Southern states to the Union—a decisive move to war.
Lincoln showed his gift as a litigator in the July 4th address, though it should be noted that his scruples did not stop him from clearly violating the Constitution when he suspended habeas corpus in 1861 and 1862. His argument also rejects the suggestion of people like Calhoun that, if states can change the Constitution under Article V by democratic vote, they can agree to a state leaving the Union. Lincoln's view is absolute and treats secession as nothing more than rebellion. Ironically, as Lincoln himself acknowledged, that places the states in the same position as the Constitution's framers (and presumably himself as King George).
But he did note one telling difference: "Our adversaries have adopted some Declarations of Independence; in which, unlike the good old one, penned by Jefferson, they omit the words 'all men are created equal.'"
Lincoln's argument was more convincing, but only up to a point. The South did in fact secede because it was unwilling to accept decisions by a majority in Congress. Moreover, the critical passage of the Constitution may be more important than the status of the states when independence was declared. Davis and Calhoun's argument was more compelling under the Articles of Confederation, where there was no express waiver of withdrawal. The reference to the "perpetuity" of the Union in the Articles and such documents as the Northwest Ordinance does not necessarily mean each state is bound in perpetuity, but that the nation itself is so created.
After the Constitution was ratified, a new government was formed by the consent of the states that clearly established a single national government. While, as Lincoln noted, the states possessed powers not expressly given to the federal government, the federal government had sole power over the defense of its territory and maintenance of the Union. Citizens under the Constitution were guaranteed free travel and interstate commerce. Therefore it is in conflict to suggest that citizens could find themselves separated from the country as a whole by a seceding state.
Moreover, while neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution says states can not secede, they also do not guarantee states such a right nor refer to the states as sovereign entities. While Calhoun's argument that Article V allows for changing the Constitution is attractive on some levels, Article V is designed to amend the Constitution, not the Union. A clearly better argument could be made for a duly enacted amendment to the Constitution that would allow secession. In such a case, Lincoln would clearly have been warring against the democratic process he claimed to defend.
Neither side, in my view, had an overwhelming argument. Lincoln's position was the one most likely to be upheld by an objective court of law. Faced with ambiguous founding and constitutional documents, the spirit of the language clearly supported the view that the original states formed a union and did not retain the sovereign authority to secede from that union.
Of course, a rebellion is ultimately a contest of arms rather than arguments, and to the victor goes the argument. This legal dispute would be resolved not by lawyers but by more practical men such as William Tecumseh Sherman and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.
Ultimately, the War Between the States resolved the Constitution's meaning for any states that entered the Union after 1865, with no delusions about the contractual understanding of the parties. Thus, 15 states from Alaska to Colorado to Washington entered in the full understanding that this was the view of the Union. Moreover, the enactment of the 14th Amendment strengthened the view that the Constitution is a compact between "the people" and the federal government. The amendment affirms the power of the states to make their own laws, but those laws cannot "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
There remains a separate guarantee that runs from the federal government directly to each American citizen. Indeed, it was after the Civil War that the notion of being "American" became widely accepted. People now identified themselves as Americans and Virginians. While the South had a plausible legal claim in the 19th century, there is no plausible argument in the 21st century. That argument was answered by Lincoln on July 4, 1861, and more decisively at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865.
Jonathan Turley is one of the nation's leading constitutional scholars and legal commentators. He teaches at George Washington University.
Article originally published in the November 2010 issue of America's Civil War.
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1. The Constitutione begins "We, the People", NOT "We, the States". Sovereignty, therefor, belongs to neither the federal nor state GOVERNMENTS but to THE PEOPLE.
2. The Bill of Rights explicitly acknowledges the existence of rights not listed anywhere within the Constitution & grants those rights to either the states or the people. I interpret this to mean that a right of secession does exist & needs no specific or implied Constitutional authorization to be invoked.
3. The question then becomes, does this right belong to the people or the states? Since ratification of the Constitution was performed by the state as a whole, & not by individuals within each state, I believe the right of secession belongs to the states, not the people.
4. Finally, what legal process must be followed in order for a state to exercise this right? I belive that it mustbe identical to that used for ratification, only in reverse. In other words, if the vote to ratify was cast by the state legislature, then so must the vote to secede; & if by referendum submitted to the people, so also secession. If ratification required 2/3s majority then so also must secession. Finally, only those states whose admission required Congressional authorization need seek the same approval for secession; the original states can secede on their own authority (provided the other conditions have been met.)
Is this an example of what Professor Turley teaches at GWU? I assume so, and it is a sad example of the scholarship that is being force fed to our youth. How will they ever learn what the Constitution is all about with such nonsense?
Professor Turley's main point is that, "Might makes right." So if you are mugged and the robber gets away with your property, then this is now the established law since he prevailed in the theft. I don't think so.
Surely Professor Turley knows that the Constitution is nothing more than an agreement between the states, a Compact if you will, and since there are no terms regarding termination, it is "a contract at will" and can be ended by any of the parties to the agreement; in other words any party is free to secede if they so choose.
I am sure Professor Turley knows better than the point is is trying, and failing, to prove with his twisted "analysis."
Bill
Was the Jewish resistance legal?
Neither side had an overwhelming argument. Hitler's position was the one most likely to be upheld by a (contemporary) court of law. The spirit of the clearly supported the view that groups do not retain the sovereign authority to contest aggression.
Of course, a rebellion is ultimately a contest of arms rather than arguments, and to the victor goes the argument. This legal dispute would be resolved not by lawyers but by more practical men such as Heinrich Himmler.
With all due respect to Professor Turley, the fact that a country can defeat a secessionist movement in combat does not invalidate that movement's right to secede. Presidential pronouncements do not invalidate a movement's rights to secede. Even the 1868 Supreme Court decision led by a Supreme Court chief justice bent on punishing the south doesn't invalidate the rights of a people for self-determination.
Appomattox "answered" nothing but the conflict at hand.
Would Professor Turley prefer to be a subject of Her Majesty, the Queen? Should we forgo the last 250 years of American history and make ourselves a colony of the British Empire again?
Would you join a club that you could never quit? Do you think the states joined the Union thinking they could never leave, after just leaving the British Empire?
Professor Turley's claim that the issue of state sovereignty has been settled "for good" is, in my view quite short-sighted and inaccurate. The United Nations Charter allows every society the right ot self-determination, and that right depends largely upon the recognition it recieves from member states.
The Yugoslavian union was dissolved in this fashion, with the United States recognizing the right of Bosnia, Slovenia and Macedonia to declare their withdrawal from the union.
If a state within the US, so wished, it could proclam its unilateral declaration of independence to the world, and see which states would support them…Russia? China? Serbia, perhaps?
The Confederate states of America declared their sovereignty based upon the Treaty of Paris in which Great Britain recognized the states as separate and soverign bodies…to my knowledge this has never been formally rescinded by Great Britain…has it?
Even if secession were legal, that would make the attack on Fort Sumter an act of military aggression against the United States by a foreign power. If South Carolina were an independent country on April 12, 1861, when it attacked the United States, an American military response would have been entirely justified.
So let's say secession is legal. The United States is attacked by this alliance of foreign countries, responds militarily (as allowed under international law), and creates new governments over the conquered territories. Those governments accept the 14th Amendment, which creates an unambiguous relationship between the federation and the people, as do the states that remain in the Union. Secession without the consent of the people would now be illegal.
That, I would argue, is a good thing. Sovereignty is, by definition, a free license for the sovereign to do what they wish, and sovereign states cannot be compelled to resolve disputes by arbitration. A sovereign state could ignore an arbiter's decision and the only result of that has historically been war.
In war, might does make right. That is the basis of the international system, and the reason that our federal system is better than the international one – which is based on the notion of popular self-determination. Federalism is a fundamentally different way for local governments to interact with each other, and its greatest achievement is the ending of war. The only war we've ever had internally in the United States was an attempt on the part of some to renounce their identity as Americans, and destroy the American system. Apart from that defense of the system from those trying to destroy it – which can hardly be blamed on the system itself – we have never had a situation, ever, where a dispute between states was resolved with force. The Europeans, on the other hand, who have exported their notion of popular self-determination to the rest of the world through colonialism, have killed off close to a hundred million people in wars in that time. Clearly, the American system is not the problem here. The American system, and not the European one, maintains more effectively a set of consistent legal principles for resolving disputes.
Where we get problems is when organized groups of folks see the United States as a "nation" instead of an organization, where we would supposedly fit into the European philosophy as our own nation with our own popular self-determination, just like everyone else. American nationalism is not the answer here; people who wax patriotic about how beautiful the Rocky Mountains are miss the point (the term "everyone else," in the last sentence, of course implies that people who aren't physically within the piece of geography cannot be Americans; this argument was used as late as the 1950s to argue against the admission of Hawaii, an obviously far-off place, as a state, on the assumption that this "foreign land" will never be American because they have our ideas but not the trappings of the people who live on the piece of geography – art, music, food, language, religion, traditions, and so forth). America is an idea, not a place, and in trying to find a place for ourselves in the European system, the nationalists reopen the solved problem of which level of the government has an inherent right to exist at the expense of the other level. This artificial "conflict" between the territorial integrity of the nation-state and the self-determination of local majorities keeps Europeans up at night, but in fact, both sides of that debate are wrong. Rather than supposing that one or the other has an inherent right to exist, why not look at the purpose of government itself, as a way of finding out which one should exist?
Democracy, as a method of impaneling the organization tasked with government, is useful inasmuch as it brings diverse perspectives to the table; without it, a professional oligarchy, even if it were honest and conscientious, would act thoughtlessly. It would not know, and could not know, everything, and without input from the people its decisions would affect, somebody's toes would get stepped on. Democracy, however, is not a goal in and of itself. The goal is to maintain the rights of the individual to act insofar as that individual does not harm others' rights to do the same. A sovereign state, even a democratic sovereign state, is intolerable, precisely because it gives a majority absolute power – the ultimate appeal is to their will.
"Self-determination" on the part of a democratic jurisdiction is therefore simply the right of the local majority to oppress the local minorities. Since secession would create an unchecked local majority, it is not compatible with a federal system dedicated to protecting individual rights. That federation is capable of defending individual rights precisely because it isn't homogeneous in its politics and cultures; only the large-scale democracy, where there's enough diversity to prevent one perspective from dominating, can be impartial in a dispute over whether a state is violating an individual's rights.
Ultimately, the enduring lesson of the Civil War is that it is entirely proper for the federal government to intervene in the internal affairs of a state if that state is violating the constitutional rights of individuals. "Culture" and "our way of life" stop where the coercion of individuals to follow them begins.
Actually, the debate whether session in the Civil War was 'legal' is moot. Groups of States formed their own Nation and became the Confederate States of America in the same manner that the 'Colonies' banded together and began the first 'United States of America.' This was a war between two Nations, and to the victor went the spoils. I can see where this discussion is again becoming relevant in today's USA.
I've never heard the words, "Oh yea, we also retain the rightt to divorce if things don't go so good" as part of any wedding vows. I guess ole Abe could have shot Mary if she had asked for one.
Regrettably all of this comes down to the definition of "rights." Are "rights" always in place for all persons, regardless of stature, location or condition? Think twice before answering, because if your answer is "yes," the "right" to free expression is severely restricted in most of the world.
What mechanism enforces these "rights?" The cosmos? Huh. Then the "right" to build a mosque whereever desired is guaranteed? Really? So, the "right" to marry whoever and whatever you choose is like gravity?
As The Forester implied, might does indeed make right, because you certainly have the "right" to pull a gun and blow your attacker's head off, just as he has a "right" to smash your skull and take your money.
Yes, all of this can be very confusing because the concept of "rights" has been around for a long time, but few have elected to think about what they really mean. In truth, "rights" are defined as "whatever you can get away with, under the veneer of legal action if required."
And to get back to the original subject, the Confederacy had the "right" to seceed, and the Union had the "right" to smash their way of life and force them back into the fold. It's what you can get away with that matters.
Mr. Underwood takes the Yankocentric view that Ft. Sumpter was an act of agression against the United States, if one were to assume that session was legal. Well, if session was legal, then the United States would have been militarily occupied South Carolinian territory would it not? After all SC asked those troops to withdraw for weeks before the bombardment, and Lincoln's dispatch of additional supplies was viewed at the time as a provocation. Yes, it can be argued that SC "ceded" that territory to the Union and that it was then Northern territory, but I think the counter argument would have been that the land could only be "ceded" to the National Government and since SC was then independent, that territory would have reverted to SC. Noting is as obvious as it may seem today.
It's difficult to really understand what the South's logic on session was, when one only uses present day perspectives as the basis for the understanding. I suggest you read Pollard's book (circa 1868) to get a clearer view of the South's position.
To me, the real point is that the Constitution does not prohibit secession, so the states retain that right under the 10th amendment. No other argument seems to be germain.
It also doesn't outlaw putting down a rebellion, a right that would have been retained by Northern states.
I have a few issues here that need to be clarified. First & foremost is that you must separate secession from unilateral secession, which is what the South did in 1860-61. There may be a legal means for secession, but certainly not for unilateral secession.
@ Forester. "The Bill of Rights explicitly acknowledges the existence of rights not listed anywhere within the Constitution & grants those rights to either the states or the people. I interpret this to mean that a right of secession does exist & needs no specific or implied Constitutional authorization to be invoked." Ummm, no it doesn't. Amendment 10 says those POWERS (not rights) not delegated to the U.S. by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Secession is not a "power". Look over the list of powers & there is nothing like secession listed amongst them…..secession is a destructive act. I would also point out Article VI-the Supremacy clause. The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. The Constitution stipulates exactly what constitutes a fair & legal election of the president in Article II. Nowhere in Article II does it say, "Oh, & by the way, if you don't like the results, feel free to leave." Also, in Article I section 9, it clearly states that States cannot enter into treaties, alliances, or confederations. The notion that you can simply bypass this rule by "opting out" makes no sense whatsoever. You cannot simply cite one portion of the Constitution while ignoring the rest of it.
I do agree with you on point 4. IF the South had followed that rule, the majority of them would not have seceded……unless they fudged the numbers like they did in Georgia. I agree that a 2/3rds majority should have been required, but they did it off a majority vote….and Georgia lied about the results.
@DSM. The Confederacy basing its sovereignty upon the Treaty of Paris is flawed. When that treaty was signed, we were under the Articles of Confederation, which was a weaker Constitution. Once we ratified our second & far more stronger Constitution, that was changed. Look at the Treaty of Ghent signed with Britain after our next war…..clearly it is between 2 Nations, not 1 large & 17 small ones. Obviously, the United States had passed from a collection of states into one country.
Stewart, I think you & I are on the same page here & I agree with almost everything you said.
If you look at the vast collection of quotes that I posted on the Armchair General website (http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97656&highlight=secession) when we debated this, the majority of the Founding Fathers were definetely AGAINST secession & the idea of it, including Washington, Webster, Hamilton, & Madison. Andrew Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, & even Robert E. Lee opposed it. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 forbade secession-article 4 states "The said territory and the States which may be formed therein, shall forever remain a part of this Confederacy of the United States of America."
Personally, I feel that unilateral secession is akin to anarchy. If you cannot abide by the rules of an election as laid out by the Constitution, then what is the point? If every state threw up its hands & tried to leave simply because it didn't like the outcome, how is Democracy supposed to work? If you claim a tyranny of the majority in keeping the South in the USA, how then do you justify when the majority of the state votes to secede? Tyranny of the majority is fine when it suits my purposes, but I can ignore that when it comes to getting what I want? There were plenty of Unionists & anti-secessionists who were living in the Deep South who did not want to leave. The radicals were bullying & threating people left & right. In Tennessee & other Southern states, there were Committees of Public Safety that were running anyone with pro-Union sentiments out of the state & marking ballots of Unionists to scare them into not voting. See the article on Tennessee Taliban in the North/South Magazine, Volume 12, issue 2.
The South should have pursued legal means to secede. A national referendum, bringing a case to the Supreme Court, or trying to get something passed in Congress would have been appropriate. I would have a lot more sympathy for the South had they tried something along those lines. Lincoln was not yet inaugurated before 7 states in the Deep South seceded. You cannot claim that Lincoln was a tyrant or anything of the sort seeing as how they left before he even came into office. Just as some people today may not have liked Obama becoming president, you follow the Constitution & express your dislike of him in the midterm elections. Then, when the end of 4 years comes up, you don't reelect him. The same thing should have happended with Lincoln.
The issue is over the rights of the people and states rights. The states
signed the Constitution, thus are united by it. The Federal's
responsibility is in protecting the nation from aggression. The states
are responsible for its citizens in peace time. If a state breaks from the
union, it would no longer be under the Constitution and protected by the
Federal government.
The states must be united with the Federal government for strength and the
protection of its citizens in case of war.
The power to rule of any political structure resides on the will of the people of said structure. When those states that formed the Confederate States of America seceded from the United States it was because the people of those states willed it to be so. The same can be said of western Virginia whose people willed the secesion of that part of a state and was recognized as such by the United States (Old Abe) when it was admitted as a state of said Union. Of course we could talk of the political expidiency of granting statehood to Nevada and Nebraska during the War Between the States to circumbent the voters in the traditional northern states. In any case we have to recogniza that Abe Lincoln was quite the politician.
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. " – Abraham Lincoln
Seems straight-forward enough.
I agree with Jon but the national referendum should have been held after a Consitutional Convention. It seems to me that the slave states could have called for a Constitutional convention, the purpose of which would have been to repeal the original Consitution and break up the Union. If put to a vote, I believe that several Northern States would have joined the slave states in voting for the dissolution.
Did the American forefathers secede from Great Britain?
Of course it was legal, at least until the dolts attacked Ft. Sumter. Democrats vs. Republicans, and the Democrats are still fighting the war. Some day they may get over it, but I doubt it. Family from upstate New York to North Carolina battled it out, brother killing brother. We finished it decades back. BTW, for all ya all Southerners out there, the word Yankee comes from the Iroquois and means white person.
peace!
"Yankee" is not Iroquois; it's Dutch. The original word is; "jonge", in slang it's yongke (pronounce Yankee, but with an 'o' sound, and it means "young," or "young boy". My Grandma immegrated from the Netherlands, and still uses those words frequently.
Will all of the secesh who have posted here clearly identify themselves and their location so they can be picked up for treason? No? I didn't think so.
When a state – which typically but possibly for the original 13 colonies – was a piece of property owned by the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT was admitted to the UNION, it would have abandoned any claim to sovereignty in seeking statehood. The state qua state has no right to secession, no matter what the secesh might think. They were wrong 150 years ago (and I fully intend to celebrate the quashing of the Confederacvy) and they're wrong today. These same secesh might rail against the Taliban because they can't forget their myths but they do it while looking in the mirror.
Where does this professor get off as a scholar? Who gave him his degree? This is a terrible article with many errors. "Notably, however, it was Buchanan who sent troops to protect Fort Sumter six days after South Carolina seceded." What tripe! Buchanan never ordered Anderson to move to Ft. Sumter, he did that on his own for the protection of his command from traitors. He states that the states formed the US Constitution, nothing is or could be further from the truth. The STATES had nothing to do with the ratification of the US Constitution other than to set the dates for the election to the special constitutional conventions.
Madison knew that the STATES would never agree to give up sovereignty and power, so he bypassed the states and took his argument for a new, stronger constitution to the people.
"Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled."
Does anyone see this clause in the US Constitution anywhere? Of course not, because this clause in the AoC was the cause of the problems in the old form of government. This article was brought before the Constitutional Convention and defeated. It was brought forth under the first Congress when Madison was writing the Bill of Rights and rejected.
Madison shot down Calhoun's argument for secession and nullification when Calhoun claimed that Madison agreed with him.
Clearly, from the arguments presented above, the Confederate revisionist history society is at work failing to teach the actual US Constitution to its members.
whale
Anyone who thinks the South was seceding is mistaken. Secession could be legal — just like divorcing your wife could be legal.
But putting a knife to her throat and giving her an ultimatum to blow herself up, or you will kill her, is not divorce.
For 150 years, the South had been getting away with calling their insane violent actions "secession". it was no more secession that violent rape is sex. The South was trying to rape the US, and then call it flirting.
What virtually no one considers is that Lincoln did NOTHING because the South seceded. He only took action when the South tried to cut the country's throat.
Southern leaders did not just "secede". They hung voters, and invaded 12, not just one, fort. They plundered the seas, attacked armories and treasuries.
But mostly what they did is issue war ultimatums. The ultimatums were for the North to obey — or else the South would attack.
All through the election of 1860, they had promised the North, according to Pollard, that they (the South) would take Lincoln's election as "an act of war".
Here in their ultimatums was just the proof — they gave Lincoln and the North an immediate task to do, or the South would attack (That is what ultimatum means — and it was their term)
What did Lincoln and the North have to do?
Lincoln and the North must force slavery down the throats of people in Kansas.
If you don't know about the Southern War ultimatums, let me be the first to wake you up. In March of 1861, the Southern leaders were in Montgomery doing more than just appointing Davis as the lead thug.
They were issuing their war ultimatums. You are simply uninformed if you aren't aware of the ultimatums — and what they reveal about nature of these Southern leaders.
What were their Ultimatums? All five were about slavery. The FIRST ultimatum was that the north must force slavery into the territories. Not only must the north do this, but the people in the territories had to accept "and respect" slavery.
Keep in mind that Kansas (which is what they were talking about) had just kicked the thugs from the South out. And then the people of Kansas voted 98% to 2% to keep slavery out,forever.
So just weeks after Kansas kicked the slavery thugs out, and voted overwhelmingly to reject slavery, Southern leaders FIRST ultimatum was for the North and Lincoln to do what the Southern thugs had failed to do, force slavery down the throats of the people in the territories.
Now, just think about the insanity of that. What kind of lunatic would demand that Lincoln and the North force slavery down the throats of the people in Kansas?
It takes a special kind of audacity to order the North to do this. Even Hitler would never dream of giving England an ultimatum to invade Poland for Germany's amusement. But here the South was, giving an ultimatum for the the North to spread slavery into the territories.
Here is why these lunatics were, well, lunatics. These were men who had for their entire lives got what they wanted not by work, not by compromise, but by violence and terror.
They could say "have that woman tortured" and she was. They could have a child sold with a flip of a finger. They could have men burned to death who dared to fight back against slavery.
Their status, their power, their wealth, came from using violence, and the threats of violence. Slavery in essence is a constant threat of violence, punctuated by acts of cruelty to show your slaves you will torture and kill them if you feel like it.
George Mason, the contemporary of Washington and Virginia representative to the Continental Congress, predicted these kind of lunatics would take over.
Slavery, he said, was a "slow poison" that rotted the mind. Men born in the "school from hell" of slavery, would grow up to learn the trappings of being a "gentleman" but were actually the worst sort of tyrant.
These men — men like Lee, Davis, and all the Southern leaders by 1861, grew up being told God ordained them to enslave, torture, abuse, sell, buy, and have literally life and death control of an entire class of men. Every good impulse of mankind would be driven out.
Mason pretty much hit the nail on the head. And the proof of it, is in these insane Ultimatums by the Southern leaders. Plus, in the fact that men like Lee tortured children and sold infants.
Southern newspapers cheered the ultimatums. Richmond newspapers headline read "THE TRUE ISSUE" — and listed the five ultimatums.
The true issue — the spread of slavery. All five of the ultimatums were about the spread of slavery.
This was nothing new, of course. The South had been violently threatening to spread slavery for decades. The "compromises" of 1850 and 1829 were no more compromises than Poland's compromise with Hitler in 39. The South simply demanded to spread slavery where they wanted, in 1820, and got what they wanted.
Then that was not good enough, So in 1850, they demanded more. The earlier demand said slavery would not go into the territories. But by 1860, the South wanted to expand slavery there too.
SO they did what they always did — violently try to spread slavery, throw tantrums, threaten, and if all that failed, attack. The entire history of the US from 1800-1861 could be summed up in four words –They wanted more slavery..
And they were ordained by God to get it.
In 1861, however, it was different. Kansas had defeated the thugs. Kansas had shown the South for what it was — a violent spoiled child. A sociopath. A lunatic. No longer could the South even pretend they cared about state's rights — a facade the entire time.
Their ultimatums were of course precisely antethis of states rights. The US government would have to force slavery down the throats of the people in Kansas, according to South's ultimatums. There was no pretense of states rights at all.
IN the other attempts to spread slavery, the South was victorious in their violence — in Missouri, in Texas, in Arkansas. But not in Kansas. Kansas showed the lie.
So the SOuthern leaders issued their ultimatums.
Learn the South's ultimatums, and then tell me again — was this secession? Or was it an illegal violent attack by a foreign power, one that had taken over the South illegally, unconstitutionally.
Here is a clue. It was an illegal violent attack by a foreign power, one that had taken over the South illegally, unconstitionally.
Although I want to find out what happened to Clubber Lang, I don't think a comeback fight would be the best way for that to happen. In my opinion, once a boxer retires, he should stay retired. However, I'd love to see some kids reenact the fight with headgear and oversized boxing gloves. :-)
[...] not one in which each state held individual sovereignty. You are trying to argue both sides here. http://www.historynet.com/was-secession-legal.htm [...]
"…there is no plausible argument in the 21st century. That argument was answered by Lincoln on July 4, 1861, and more decisively at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865."
It is an interesting point of view that the toughest bully on the block is right and therefore renders any argument against him as not plausible.