Before 1860 secession was considered to be constitutional

[bripat9643]

The Constitution strictly prohibits states from doing what they did during the Civil War.

This has been pointed out to the OP, before.

show us the secession clause

btw, once a state secedes, they are not under the influence of congress

Ah..it the ol' Christine O'Donnell exact words thing..eh?

Well it was juvenile then and it is still juvenile.

Read the clauses I posted.

It's pretty much in plain English.

Your words are juvenile.

See how easy that kind of imbecile logic is to conjure up?

 

[nodoginnafight]

Before 1860 secession was considered to be constitutional

Yes and before 1860 denying the vote to women was considered Constitutional
And before 1860 owning another human being was considered Constitutional
And before 1860 a president serving 16 straight terms in office was considered Constitutional

 

[Sallow]

The Constitution made no provisions for Secession

If it was legal, the Constitution would have laid out rules for how a state joins the union and how it leaves the union

So everything that isn't specifically allowed by the Constitution is prohibited? That is one of the dumbest arguments on this subject ever posted. However, it is the essence of the boot-licking liberal mentality.

No one believed the Constitution prohibited secession before 1861.

Now you're changing you argument.

And no, the idea that secession was prohibited has been around since the Constitution was ratified.

There was no "out" clause.

 

[bripat9643]

LOL. All you pathetic shit for brains rightwingnut turds that want to secede, go to Somalia. No laws, lots of guns, and they would welcome whatever money you brought with you, and spend it happily after disposing of you skanky asses.

No. Go **** yourself.

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Your point?

How many times have you assholes said this, and never meant a word of it? You are mean minded low life scum, seeking to harm our nation because you did not get your way. Traitors, the whole lot of you.

Lincoln, the traitor, and all his worshipers are the ones who harmed the nation. They turned a free country of citizens into an empire populated with subjects.

You're a good obedient subject.

 

[Sallow]

show us the secession clause

btw, once a state secedes, they are not under the influence of congress

Ah..it the ol' Christine O'Donnell exact words thing..eh?

Well it was juvenile then and it is still juvenile.

Read the clauses I posted.

It's pretty much in plain English.

Your words are juvenile.

See how easy that kind of imbecile logic is to conjure up?

You're the one changing your argument.

I mentioned there might have been a way to secede.

Through an act of congress.

 

[bripat9643]

This is for all you servile turds who believe the Constitution outlaws secession:

"During the weeks following the [1860] election, [Northern newspaper] editors of all parties assumed that secession as a constitutional right was not in question . . . . On the contrary, the southern claim to a right of peaceable withdrawal was countenanced out of reverence for the natural law principle of government by consent of the governed."

~ Howard Cecil Perkins, editor, Northern Editorials on Secession, p. 10

The first several generations of Americans understood that the Declaration of Independence was the ultimate states’ rights document. The citizens of the states would delegate certain powers to a central government in their Constitution, and these powers (mostly for national defense and foreign policy purposes) would hopefully be exercised for the benefit of the citizens of the "free and independent" states, as they are called in the Declaration.

The understanding was that if American citizens were in fact to be the masters rather than the servants of government, they themselves would have to police the national government that was created by them for their mutual benefit. If the day ever came that the national government became the sole arbiter of the limits of its own powers, then Americans would live under a tyranny as bad or worse than the one the colonists fought a revolution against. As the above quotation denotes, the ultimate natural law principle behind this thinking was Jefferson’s famous dictum in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever that consent is withdrawn the people of the free and independent states, as sovereigns, have a duty to abolish that government and replace it with a new one if they wish.

This was the fundamental understanding of the meaning of the Declaration of Independence – that it was a Declaration of Secession from the British empire – of the first several generations of Americans. As the 1, 107-page book, Northern Editorials on Secession shows, this view was held just as widely in the Northern states as in the Southern states in 1860-1861. Among the lone dissenters was Abe Lincoln, a corporate lawyer/lobbyist/politician with less than a year of formal education who probably never even read The Federalist Papers.​

What Americans Used To Know About the Declaration of Independence by Thomas DiLorenzo

It was never constitutional.

Once a state is in the Union, it is a part of the United States and cannot secede without an act of congress.

Horseshit. Prove it.

 

[Sallow]

LOL. All you pathetic shit for brains rightwingnut turds that want to secede, go to Somalia. No laws, lots of guns, and they would welcome whatever money you brought with you, and spend it happily after disposing of you skanky asses.

No. Go **** yourself.

I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Your point?

How many times have you assholes said this, and never meant a word of it? You are mean minded low life scum, seeking to harm our nation because you did not get your way. Traitors, the whole lot of you.

Lincoln, the traitor, and all his worshipers are the ones who harmed the nation. They turned a free country of citizens into an empire populated with subjects.

You're a good obedient subject.

The North won the war.

Nothing is going to change that.

 

[bripat9643]

The Constitution made no provisions for Secession

If it was legal, the Constitution would have laid out rules for how a state joins the union and how it leaves the union

So everything that isn't specifically allowed by the Constitution is prohibited? That is one of the dumbest arguments on this subject ever posted. However, it is the essence of the boot-licking liberal mentality.

No one believed the Constitution prohibited secession before 1861.

Now you're changing you argument.

And no, the idea that secession was prohibited has been around since the Constitution was ratified.

There was no "out" clause.

I haven't changed jack shit. The idea may have been around, but most people accepted the fact that states are allowed to secede. Several times before the Civil War states had threatened to secede, and no blowhards went around saying they had no such right and that the federal government would invade them if they did.

History doesn't support your position.

 

[Sallow]

This is for all you servile turds who believe the Constitution outlaws secession:

"During the weeks following the [1860] election, [Northern newspaper] editors of all parties assumed that secession as a constitutional right was not in question . . . . On the contrary, the southern claim to a right of peaceable withdrawal was countenanced out of reverence for the natural law principle of government by consent of the governed."

~ Howard Cecil Perkins, editor, Northern Editorials on Secession, p. 10

The first several generations of Americans understood that the Declaration of Independence was the ultimate states’ rights document. The citizens of the states would delegate certain powers to a central government in their Constitution, and these powers (mostly for national defense and foreign policy purposes) would hopefully be exercised for the benefit of the citizens of the "free and independent" states, as they are called in the Declaration.

The understanding was that if American citizens were in fact to be the masters rather than the servants of government, they themselves would have to police the national government that was created by them for their mutual benefit. If the day ever came that the national government became the sole arbiter of the limits of its own powers, then Americans would live under a tyranny as bad or worse than the one the colonists fought a revolution against. As the above quotation denotes, the ultimate natural law principle behind this thinking was Jefferson’s famous dictum in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever that consent is withdrawn the people of the free and independent states, as sovereigns, have a duty to abolish that government and replace it with a new one if they wish.

This was the fundamental understanding of the meaning of the Declaration of Independence – that it was a Declaration of Secession from the British empire – of the first several generations of Americans. As the 1, 107-page book, Northern Editorials on Secession shows, this view was held just as widely in the Northern states as in the Southern states in 1860-1861. Among the lone dissenters was Abe Lincoln, a corporate lawyer/lobbyist/politician with less than a year of formal education who probably never even read The Federalist Papers.​

What Americans Used To Know About the Declaration of Independence by Thomas DiLorenzo

It was never constitutional.

Once a state is in the Union, it is a part of the United States and cannot secede without an act of congress.

Horseshit. Prove it.

Prove what?

It's been tried.

Didn't work.

 

[bripat9643]

Before 1860 secession was considered to be constitutional

Yes and before 1860 denying the vote to women was considered Constitutional
And before 1860 owning another human being was considered Constitutional
And before 1860 a president serving 16 straight terms in office was considered Constitutional

All those things were constitutional before 1860, nimrod.

 

[Wry Catcher]

This is for all you servile turds who believe the Constitution outlaws secession:

"During the weeks following the [1860] election, [Northern newspaper] editors of all parties assumed that secession as a constitutional right was not in question . . . . On the contrary, the southern claim to a right of peaceable withdrawal was countenanced out of reverence for the natural law principle of government by consent of the governed."

~ Howard Cecil Perkins, editor, Northern Editorials on Secession, p. 10

The first several generations of Americans understood that the Declaration of Independence was the ultimate states’ rights document. The citizens of the states would delegate certain powers to a central government in their Constitution, and these powers (mostly for national defense and foreign policy purposes) would hopefully be exercised for the benefit of the citizens of the "free and independent" states, as they are called in the Declaration.

The understanding was that if American citizens were in fact to be the masters rather than the servants of government, they themselves would have to police the national government that was created by them for their mutual benefit. If the day ever came that the national government became the sole arbiter of the limits of its own powers, then Americans would live under a tyranny as bad or worse than the one the colonists fought a revolution against. As the above quotation denotes, the ultimate natural law principle behind this thinking was Jefferson’s famous dictum in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever that consent is withdrawn the people of the free and independent states, as sovereigns, have a duty to abolish that government and replace it with a new one if they wish.

This was the fundamental understanding of the meaning of the Declaration of Independence – that it was a Declaration of Secession from the British empire – of the first several generations of Americans. As the 1, 107-page book, Northern Editorials on Secession shows, this view was held just as widely in the Northern states as in the Southern states in 1860-1861. Among the lone dissenters was Abe Lincoln, a corporate lawyer/lobbyist/politician with less than a year of formal education who probably never even read The Federalist Papers.​

What Americans Used To Know About the Declaration of Independence by Thomas DiLorenzo

Not every citizen of a state would like their home to be removed from The Union. I wonder why bripat and others want to focus on secession, if they don't like living in the UNITED States of America why don't they and he get the **** out of my county?

 

[Sallow]

So everything that isn't specifically allowed by the Constitution is prohibited? That is one of the dumbest arguments on this subject ever posted. However, it is the essence of the boot-licking liberal mentality.

No one believed the Constitution prohibited secession before 1861.

Now you're changing you argument.

And no, the idea that secession was prohibited has been around since the Constitution was ratified.

There was no "out" clause.

I haven't changed jack shit. The idea may have been around, but most people accepted the fact that states are allowed to secede. Several times before the Civil War states had threatened to secede, and no blowhards went around saying they had no such right and that the federal government would invade them if they did.

History doesn't support your position.

Sure it does.

So does the Constitution.

There's absolutely nothing that supports your position.

Because some fruitcases went around saying they could secede and no one took them seriously doesn't mean it was possible.

When it was seriously tried? It seriously failed.

 

[bripat9643]

It was never constitutional.

Once a state is in the Union, it is a part of the United States and cannot secede without an act of congress.

Horseshit. Prove it.

Prove what?

It's been tried.

Didn't work.

Not because it wasn't legal. It didn't work only because a tyrant who abused his powers occupied the White House. The non aggression pact Stalin signed with Hitler also didn't work.

 

[bripat9643]

Now you're changing you argument.

And no, the idea that secession was prohibited has been around since the Constitution was ratified.

There was no "out" clause.

I haven't changed jack shit. The idea may have been around, but most people accepted the fact that states are allowed to secede. Several times before the Civil War states had threatened to secede, and no blowhards went around saying they had no such right and that the federal government would invade them if they did.

History doesn't support your position.

Sure it does.

So does the Constitution.

There's absolutely nothing that supports your position.

Because some fruitcases went around saying they could secede and no one took them seriously doesn't mean it was possible.

When it was seriously tried? It seriously failed.

I have posted volumes of material that supports my position. You haven't posted jack shit.

 

[Smilodonfatalis]

Article I Section 9 of the constitution gives Congress the right to suppress insurrections.

Seceding from the union would certainly be considered an insurrection.

Therefore, it is unconstitutional to secede from the union.

 

[bripat9643]

This is for all you servile turds who believe the Constitution outlaws secession:

"During the weeks following the [1860] election, [Northern newspaper] editors of all parties assumed that secession as a constitutional right was not in question . . . . On the contrary, the southern claim to a right of peaceable withdrawal was countenanced out of reverence for the natural law principle of government by consent of the governed."

~ Howard Cecil Perkins, editor, Northern Editorials on Secession, p. 10

The first several generations of Americans understood that the Declaration of Independence was the ultimate states’ rights document. The citizens of the states would delegate certain powers to a central government in their Constitution, and these powers (mostly for national defense and foreign policy purposes) would hopefully be exercised for the benefit of the citizens of the "free and independent" states, as they are called in the Declaration.

The understanding was that if American citizens were in fact to be the masters rather than the servants of government, they themselves would have to police the national government that was created by them for their mutual benefit. If the day ever came that the national government became the sole arbiter of the limits of its own powers, then Americans would live under a tyranny as bad or worse than the one the colonists fought a revolution against. As the above quotation denotes, the ultimate natural law principle behind this thinking was Jefferson’s famous dictum in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever that consent is withdrawn the people of the free and independent states, as sovereigns, have a duty to abolish that government and replace it with a new one if they wish.

This was the fundamental understanding of the meaning of the Declaration of Independence – that it was a Declaration of Secession from the British empire – of the first several generations of Americans. As the 1, 107-page book, Northern Editorials on Secession shows, this view was held just as widely in the Northern states as in the Southern states in 1860-1861. Among the lone dissenters was Abe Lincoln, a corporate lawyer/lobbyist/politician with less than a year of formal education who probably never even read The Federalist Papers.​

What Americans Used To Know About the Declaration of Independence by Thomas DiLorenzo

Not every citizen of a state would like their home to be removed from The Union. I wonder why bripat and others want to focus on secession, if they don't like living in the UNITED States of America why don't they and he get the **** out of my county?

It's my country too, asshole, and I don't like the gang of thieves who are running it.

I focus on secession because the threat of such is the only thing that can keep a tyrannical government like the one we have limited in scope.

 

[bripat9643]

Article I Section 9 of the constitution gives Congress the right to suppress insurrections.

Seceding from the union would certainly be considered an insurrection.

Therefore, it is unconstitutional to secede from the union.

It's only considered an insurrection by boot-lickers like you. Most people living in the USA in 1860 did not consider it to be insurrection. That was purely a novel interpretation by the likes of Abraham Loncoln.

 

[NYcarbineer]

I haven't changed jack shit. The idea may have been around, but most people accepted the fact that states are allowed to secede. Several times before the Civil War states had threatened to secede, and no blowhards went around saying they had no such right and that the federal government would invade them if they did.

History doesn't support your position.

Sure it does.

So does the Constitution.

There's absolutely nothing that supports your position.

Because some fruitcases went around saying they could secede and no one took them seriously doesn't mean it was possible.

When it was seriously tried? It seriously failed.

I have posted volumes of material that supports my position. You haven't posted jack shit.

You posted a bunch of newspaper editorials which are nothing more than opinions.

 

[nodoginnafight]

Article I Section 9 of the constitution gives Congress the right to suppress insurrections.

Seceding from the union would certainly be considered an insurrection.

Therefore, it is unconstitutional to secede from the union.

It's only considered an insurrection by boot-lickers like you. Most people living in the USA in 1860 did not consider it to be insurrection. That was purely a novel interpretation by the likes of Abraham Loncoln.

OK - so what are you trying to get at?

Do you think it should be legal for state to drop out of the union today? Is that your point?

 

[bripat9643]

The idea advanced in the OP, i.e., that there was some sort of broad consensus in 1860 agreeing to the constitutionality of secession,

is simply another rightwing myth along with all of their other concoctions that serve opiates to soothe the rightwing mind.

We can start with the 'dissenting' opinion of the President himself at that time,

Abraham Lincoln. His argument against the constitutionality of secession can be found, for example, in his first inaugural address. From it:

I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States 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 National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

...in other words, he is saying that since the Constitution contains no provision for any break up of the Union, the Union can't be broken up constitutionally.

He goes on to say:

If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States 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?

In other words, even if the Union is just a contract among the individual states, as a contract it can't be voided without agreement among all the parties in the contract.

Anything less is a breach of contract. Seems quite obvious to me.

Abraham Lincoln: First Inaugural Address. U.S. Inaugural Addresses. 1989

Both claims are obviously false. Any party to a contract can break it at any time. Of course, most contracts have penalty clauses, but there are no such clauses in the Constitution.

The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution prohibits the states from passing laws in conflict with federal law. No state could secede without violating the Supremacy clause.

There was no law saying a state couldn't secede. Even if there was,

Furthermore, residents of any individual state are for the most part also citizens of the United States, and that citizenship comes with certain rights, privileges, and protections of the federal government.

No state has the right to deny US citizens those rights, etc. Secession would do so.

Federal law only applies so long as a state is a member of the union. People are only citizens of the United States if their state is a member of the union. Up until that time, the Constitution only barred the federal government from making certain laws. There were no "rights, privileges and protections" conferred by the federal government.

Look at what the Bill of Rights actually says: "congress shall make no law."