The Origins and Causes of the U.S. Civil War

[James Everett]

Mr. Bedford was there, you were not, and simply because you claim some to disagree that the States at that time were NOT equally sovereign and Independent without citing one shred of evidence, does not make it so. Mr. Bedford made his observation, just as Madison has made his own.
The 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution is a treaty that established a central body with limited functions, to operate within a limited sphere of delegated authority, pure and simple. Again, Allow me to post the definition of TREATY for you....
A Treaty is....
.A compact made between two or more independent nations with a view to the publicWelfare.
A formal agreement between two or more States containing terms of peace, trade, etc.
Now your gratuitous assertion concerning .....
" Southern politicians, in fact, were eager to use more American blood and treasure to acquire yet more territory in the Caribbean and Central America in which to erect more slave states so as to recapture a majority in the Senate and thereby protect their repugnant institution; it can hardly be said that they were opposed to benefiting from this arrangement."
If you are simply attempting to gain a moral advantage in the discussion, you will be defeated there as well as you have concerning the legality of secession.
The first certain reference to African slavery is in connection with the bloody Pequot War in 1637. The Pequot Indians of central Connecticut, pressed hard by encroaching European settlements, struck back and attacked the town of Wetherfield. A few months later, Massachusetts and Connecticut militias joined forces and raided the Pequot village near Mystic, Connecticut. Of the few Indians who escaped slaughter, the women and children were enslaved in New England, and Roger Williams of Rhode Island wrote to Winthrop congratulating him on God's having placed in his hands "another drove of Adams' degenerate seed." But most of the men and boys, deemed too dangerous to keep in the colony, were transported to the West Indies aboard the shipDesire, to be exchanged for African slaves. The Desire arrived back in Massachusetts in 1638, after exchanging its cargo, according to Winthrop, loaded with "Salt, cotton, tobacco and Negroes."
You may also wish to gain a little knowledge on the subject of John Casor, and Anthony Johnson which was the case that legalized chattel slavery in the colonies.
You will gain NO MORAL ADVANTAGE, therefore it best for YOU to stop here before I embarrass you.
AGAIN.....Please cite the law, Article within the 1787/1789 U.S. Constitution, or amendment to it that makes secession an unlawful or illegal act. Without it you lose here as well. These are the facts.

 

[Rogue 9]

I already have. Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 clearly states that nothing in the Constitution shall be construed to prejudice the claims of the United States. Your failure to accept that doesn't make it not so.

And the point isn't to gain moral advantage - though it would be easy to do so, since the Confederacy, after all, was based "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition." The point is that the independence of the United States, and its acquisition of further territory, was brought about by the common effort of the United States, and to simply take the money and run, as it were, is not a just or equitable basis for a compact.

 

[SmedlyButler]

Despite the fact that it has been over for 149 years, the American Civil War's causes, the motives behind the secession of the Deep South, and even the legality of secession itself are still matters of hot debate in historical circles. There has been so much historical revisionism on the subject (on both sides, no less), that it has become difficult to get a clear account of the reasons behind it, although the facts of the actual events are widely available.

In this thread, I'm going to lay out the facts as I see them. I freely admit to being a Unionist and ardent anti-Confederate, but feel that these are positions borne out by the objective facts of the matter rather than damaging biases. Make of that what you will.

First, the motives behind secession.

Too often, you will see apologists for the Confederacy claiming that the South did what it did because they saw that Abraham Lincoln was a despotic tyrant in the making, that he would subjugate the rights of the people and crush the states beneath the boot of the federal government. "Lincoln the Tyrant" is a popular trope, spurred onward by the usual grain of truth that gives such things their lasting appeal: Abraham Lincoln did, as President, suspend habeas corpus, raise an army without the consent of Congress, and, yes, ordered the forfeit of property on the part of Confederates (i.e. freed the slaves, though it's not often put like that in a criticism for obvious reasons). You see this repeated over and over in neo-Confederate and anarchocapitalist circles; for instance, a look through the titles of Thomas DiLorenzo's essays shows an obsession with writing extensive character attacks on President Lincoln, and while probably the most prolific, he's not the only one.

There are obvious problems with this approach, however. The most glaring is that none of the things that Lincoln did that earn so much scorn could have been done outside the context of the Civil War. In other words, far from predicting Lincoln's behavior and seceding to avoid it, the southern states were the catalyst for his behavior! After all, had there been no insurrection, there would have been no need to arrest insurrectionists, raise an army to suppress the insurrection, and emancipate the slaves in Confederate-held territory as a war measure. (More on the scope of the Emancipation Proclamation later.)

The other problem, of course, is that there is no shortage of primary source documents from the Confederate governments themselves stating exactly why they seceded. I see no reason to disbelieve them, so without further ado, the various Declarations of the Causes of Secession from several Confederate states. I have excerpted them for brevity's sake, but the complete text of each may be found at the links provided.

Texas: Declaration of the Causes of Secession

A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union.

The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign and independent nation, the annexation of the latter to the former, as one of the co-equal states thereof,

The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association.

...

When we advert to the course of individual non-slave-holding States, and that a majority of their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.

The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the 4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the slave-holding States in their domestic institutions-- a provision founded in justice and wisdom, and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation...

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States.

For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.

By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress,

Yeah, that's kind of what the majority does in a republic. Moving on.

and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern rights against their exactions and encroachments.

They have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary doctrine that there is a 'higher law' than the constitution and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will disregard their oaths and trample upon our rights.

They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully seeking their rendition.

They have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending citizens, and through the press their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties implicated and indicted for participation in such offenses, upon the legal demands of the States aggrieved.

...

And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the slave-holding States.

In view of these and many other facts, it is meet that our own views should be distinctly proclaimed.

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South.

South Carolina also chimes in, with this gem: South Carolina: Declaration of the Causes of Secession

Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.

...

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: "No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due."

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

...

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.

...

We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

And most egregiously, Mississippi: Mississippi: Declaration of the Causes of Secession

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.

It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists.

...

Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.

Even for those seceding states that did not publish official Declarations of Causes, we may learn much from their secession convention delegates. For instance, this address of George Williamson, a Commissioner for the state of Louisiana, to the Texas secession convention, March 9, 1861. Illustrates slavery as a secession aim.

To the Hon. O.M. Roberts, President of the Convention of the People of Texas.

Mr. President and Gentlemen of the people of Texas.

I have the honor to address you as the commissioner of the people of Louisiana, accredited to your honorable body.

...

The people of Louisiana were unwilling to endanger their liberties and property by submission to the despotism of a single tyrant, or the canting tyranny of pharisaical majorities. Insulted by the denial of her constitutional equality by the non-slaveholding States, outraged by their contemptuous rejection of proffered compromises, and convinced that she was illustrating the capacity of her people for self-government by withdrawing from a union that had failed, without fault of hers, to accomplish its purposes, she declared herself a free and independent State on the 26th day of January last. History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. As her neighbor and sister State, she desires the hearty co-operation of Texas in the formation of a Southern Confederacy. She congratulates herself on the recent disposition evinced by your body to meet this wish, by the election of delegates to the Montgomery convention. Louisiana and Texas have the same language, laws and institutions. Between the citizens of each exists the most cordial social and commercial intercourse. The Red river and the Sabine form common highways for the transportation of their produce to the markets of the world. Texas affords to the commerce of Louisiana a large portion of her products, and in exchange the banks of New Orleans furnish Texas with her only paper circulating medium. Louisiana supplies to Texas a market for her surplus wheat, grain and stock; both States have large areas of fertile, uncultivated lands, peculiarly adapted to slave labor; and they are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence, and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity. ...

The people of Louisiana would consider it a most fatal blow to African slavery, if Texas either did not secede or having seceded should not join her destinies to theirs in a Southern Confederacy. If she remains in the union the abolitionists would continue their work of incendiarism and murder. Emigrant aid societies would arm with Sharp's rifles predatory bands to infest her northern borders. The Federal Government would mock at her calamity in accepting the recent bribes in the army bill and Pacific railroad bill, and with abolition treachery would leave her unprotected frontier to the murderous inroads of hostile savages. Experience justifies these expectations. A professedly friendly federal administration gave Texas no substantial protection against the Indians or abolitionists, and what must she look for from an administration avowedly inimical and supported by no vote within her borders. Promises won from the timid and faithless are poor hostages of good faith. As a separate republic, Louisiana remembers too well the whisperings of European diplomacy for the abolition of slavery in the times of annexation not to be apprehensive of bolder demonstrations from the same quarter and the North in this country. The people of the slaveholding States are bound together by the same necessity and determination to preserve African slavery. The isolation of any one of them from the others would make her a theatre for abolition emissaries from the North and from Europe. Her existence would be one of constant peril to herself and of imminent danger to other neighboring slave-holding communities. A decent respect for the opinions and interests of the Gulf States seems to indicate that Texas should co-operate with them. I am authorized to say to your honorable body that Louisiana does not expect any beneficial result from the peace conference now assembled at Washington. She is unwilling that her action should depend on the border States. Her interests are identical with Texas and the seceding States. With them she will at present co-operate, hoping and believing in his own good time God will awaken the people of the border States to the vanity of asking for, or depending upon, guarantees or compromises wrung from a people whose consciences are too sublimated to be bound by that sacred compact, the constitution of the late United States. That constitution the Southern States have never violated, and taking it as the basis of our new government we hope to form a slave-holding confederacy that will secure to us and our remotest posterity the great blessings its authors designed in the Federal Union. With the social balance wheel of slavery to regulate its machinery, we may fondly indulge the hope that our Southern government will be perpetual.

Geo. Williamson
Commissioner of the State of Louisiana
City of Austin Feby 11th 1861.

To hear from yet another Deep South state, a speech of E.S. Dargan to the Secession Convention of Alabama, January 11, 1861.

I wish, Mr. President, to express the feelings with which I vote for the secession of Alabama from the Government of the United States; and to state, in a few words, the reasons that impel me to this act.

I feel impelled, Mr. President, to vote for this Ordinance by an overruling necessity. Years ago I was convinced that the Southern States would be compelled either to separate from the North, by dissolving the Federal Government, or they would be compelled to abolish the institution of African Slavery. This, in my judgment, was the only alternative; and I foresaw that the South would be compelled, at some day, to make her selection. The day is now come, and Alabama must make her selection, either to secede from the Union, and assume the position of a sovereign, independent State, or she must submit to a system of policy on the part of the Federal Government that, in a short time, will compel her to abolish African Slavery.

Mr. President, if pecuniary loss alone were involved in the abolition of slavery, I should hesitate long before I would give the vote I now intend to give. If the destruction of slavery entailed on us poverty alone, I could bear it, for I have seen poverty and felt its sting. But poverty, Mr. President, would be one of the least of the evils that would befall us from the abolition of African slavery. There are now in the slaveholding States over four millions of slaves; dissolve the relation of master and slave, and what, I ask, would become of that race? To remove them from amongst us is impossible. History gives us no account of the exodus of such a number of persons. We neither have a place to which to remove them, nor the means of such removal. They therefore must remain with us; and if the relation of master and slave be dissolved, and our slaves turned loose amongst us without restraint, they would either be destroyed by our own hands - the hands to which they look, and look with confidence, for protection - or we ourselves would become demoralized and degraded. The former result would take place, and we ourselves would become the executioners of our own slaves. To this extent would the policy of our Northern enemies drive us; and thus would we not only be reduced to poverty, but what is still worse, we should be driven to crime, to the commission of sin; and we must, therefore, this day elect between the Government formed by our fathers (the whole spirit of which has been perverted), and POVERTY AND CRIME! This being the alternative, I cannot hesitate for a moment what my duty is. I must separate from the Government of my fathers, the one under which I have lived, and under which I wished to die. But I must do my duty to my country and my fellow beings; and humanity, in my judgment, demands that Alabama should separate herself from the Government of the United States.

If I am wrong in this responsible act, I hope my God may forgive me; for I am not actuated, as I think, from any motive save that of justice and philanthropy!

Abolition would force them to commit murder, nay, genocide in his view, because that would be better than being "degraded" by having free blacks in their midst.

And to put the final nail in the coffin, we go to the Vice President of the Confederate States, speaking of the new Confederate Constitution. Alexander H. Stephens: Cornerstone Address

March 21, 1861
We are in the midst of one of the greatest epochs in our history. The last ninety days will mark one of the most memorable eras in the history of modern civilization.

...

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other-though last, not least: the new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions-African slavery as it exists among us-the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the Constitution, was the prevailing idea at the time. The Constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly used against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it-when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It is so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is, forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics: their conclusions are right if their premises are. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man.... I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the Northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery; that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle-a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of man. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds we should succeed, and that he and his associates in their crusade against our institutions would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as well as in physics and mechanics, I admitted, but told him it was he and those acting with him who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

In the conflict thus far, success has been on our side, complete throughout the length and breadth of the Confederate States. It is upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly planted; and I cannot permit myself to doubt the ultimate success of a full recognition of this principle throughout the civilized and enlightened world.

As I have stated, the truth of this principle may be slow in development, as all truths are, and ever have been, in the various branches of science. It was so with the principles announced by Galileo-it was so with Adam Smith and his principles of political economy. It was so with Harvey, and his theory of the circulation of the blood. It is stated that not a single one of the medical profession, living at the time of the announcement of the truths made by him, admitted them. Now, they are universally acknowledged. May we not therefore look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first Government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved, were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, [note: A reference to Genesis, 9:20-27, which was used as a justification for slavery] is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite-then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them. For His own purposes He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made "one star to differ from another in glory."

The great objects of humanity are best attained, when conformed to his laws and degrees, in the formation of Governments as well as in all things else. Our Confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders "is become the chief stone of the corner" in our new edifice.

And just as a reminder of what change in the Confederate Constitution he referred to:

No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

Parts in red are relevant. The section of the Texas Declaration in blue admits that Texas surrendered her separate national character.

I should think that this lays to rest claims that the southern states were benevolently attempting to avoid general oppression; they rather acted in order to keep a large segment of their own populations oppressed.

Ah, but regardless of their reasons, moral or immoral, it was the right of the states to end the compact of the Constitution, cries out the Libertarian circle! It was never the intention of the Founders to forever bind the states against their wills, and they intentionally left the door open to secession by not explicitly banning it in the Constitution! Lincoln's actions, therefore, forever and improperly removed a natural right of the states, a safeguard against future tyranny.

Well, no. Let's look at the intentions of the Founders. Secession did indeed occur to them; after all, the Hartford Convention at which a minority of New England delegates advocated secession had happened during their lifetimes and many were still alive during the Nullification Crisis of the 1830s. There are therefore many writings from several Founding Fathers to draw from. At random, let's start with James Madison. From this letter to William Rives.

The milliners it appears, endeavor to shelter themselves under a distinction between a delegation and a surrender of powers. But if the powers be attributes of sovereignty & nationality & the grant of them be perpetual, as is necessarily implied, where not otherwise expressed, sovereignty & nationality according to the extent of the grant are effectually transferred by it, and a dispute about the name, is but a battle of words. The practical result is not indeed left to argument or inference. The words of the Constitution are explicit that the Constitution & laws of the U. S. shall be supreme over the Constitution & laws of the several States, supreme in their exposition and execution as well as in their authority. Without a supremacy in those respects it would be like a scabbard in the hand of a soldier without a sword in it. The imagination itself is startled at the idea of twenty four independent expounders of a rule that cannot exist, but in a meaning and operation, the same for all.

The conduct of S. Carolina has called forth not only the question of nullification, but the more formidable one of secession. It is asked whether a State by resuming the sovereign form in which it entered the Union, may not of right withdraw from it at will. As this is a simple question whether a State, more than an individual, has a right to violate its engagements, it would seem that it might be safely left to answer itself. But the countenance given to the claim shows that it cannot be so lightly dismissed. The natural feelings which laudably attach the people composing a State, to its authority and importance, are at present too much excited by the unnatural feelings, with which they have been inspired agst their brethren of other States, not to expose them, to the danger of being misled into erroneous views of the nature of the Union and the interest they have in it. One thing at least seems to be too clear to be questioned, that whilst a State remains within the Union it cannot withdraw its citizens from the operation of the Constitution & laws of the Union. In the event of an actual secession without the Consent of the Co States, the course to be pursued by these involves questions painful in the discussion of them.

Madison actually considered the idea of unilateral secession so preposterous that until it actually came up when South Carolina first threatened it he felt there was no need to even mention it, and was astonished that he should have to. He also references the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution as proof positive that the states had no such ability, something that modern neo-Confederates tend to deny. Given that he wrote the thing, I should think I trust Madison's interpretation of it. Also note that he asserts that sovereignty and nationality lay with the United States, not the individual states.

And now for the thoughts of the man commonly referred to as the father of our country, George Washington, chairman of the Constitutional Convention and first President. This is from his Circular to the States.

There are four things, which I humbly conceive, are essential to the well being, I may even venture to say, to the existence of the United States as an Independent Power:

1st. An indissoluble Union of the States under one Federal Head.

2dly. A Sacred regard to Public Justice.

3dly. The adoption of a proper Peace Establishment, and

4thly. The prevalence of that pacific and friendly Disposition, among the People of the United States, which will induce them to forget their local prejudices and policies, to make those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the Community.

...

Under the first head, altho' it may not be necessary or proper for me in this place to enter into a particular disquisition of the principles of the Union, and to take up the great question which has been frequently agitated, whether it be expedient and requisite for the States to delegate a larger proportion of Power to Congress, or not, Yet it will be a part of my duty, and that of every true Patriot, to assert without reserve, and to insist upon the following positions, That unless the States will suffer Congress to exercise those prerogatives, they are undoubtedly invested with by the Constitution, every thing must very rapidly tend to Anarchy and confusion, That it is indispensable to the happiness of the individual States, that there should be lodged somewhere, a Supreme Power to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederated Republic, without which the Union cannot be of long duration. That there must be a faithful and pointed compliance on the part of every State, with the late proposals and demands of Congress, or the most fatal consequences will ensue, That whatever measures have a tendency to dissolve the Union, or contribute to violate or lessen the Sovereign Authority, ought to be considered as hostile to the Liberty and Independency of America, and the Authors of them treated accordingly, and lastly, that unless we can be enabled by the concurrence of the States, to participate of the fruits of the Revolution, and enjoy the essential benefits of Civil Society, under a form of Government so free and uncorrupted, so happily guarded against the danger of oppression, as has been devised and adopted by the Articles of Confederation, it will be a subject of regret, that so much blood and treasure have been lavished for no purpose, that so many sufferings have been encountered without a compensation, and that so many sacrifices have been made in vain.

Ouch. That one's got to sting, especially since many neo-Confederates actually hold Washington as a hero. There was in fact a portrait of him dominating the front wall of the hall in Montgomery where the Confederate Constitution was drawn up.

But these are the opinions of men. What does that Supreme Law of the Land say, actually? Often the Tenth Amendment is cited as a grant of the power to break up the Union. That Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

But this explicitly applies to powers not delegated to the United States. So let's see what is.

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions

Insurrection and rebellion are obviously illegal; otherwise there would be no provision for suppressing it.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Again, if rebellion is legal, why the injunction against it?

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Again, if you need the consent of Congress to raise an army, then it would seem that just leaving would be out; after all, if you can just leave, why bother having such a restriction?

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Speaks for itself, I think.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

This one's the kicker. When taken in the context of the Supremacy Clause, we see that the states cannot violate the territorial sovereignty of the United States. Secession is such a violation. Here is that Clause, which is the one Madison referred to in his letter to Senator Rives:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

So where is the right to secede? I'm certainly not seeing it. Incidentally, if that was such a big deal to the Confederate States, you would think they would have seen fit to include it in their own constitution. They did not. In fact, the only change they made which affects the ability of states to leave their union is this:

We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...

So much for the right of secession.

Now, none of this is to say that the North was all sweetness and light. It was not. While slavery was the proximate cause of the initial secessions, and therefore the ultimate cause of the war, freeing the slaves was not the North's motive in prosecuting the war. Rather, the North was motivated primarily to preserve the Union; while Lincoln was personally an abolitionist, he did not believe it within his power as President to free the slaves. (Ironic, since he did take several powers normally reserved for Congress - namely, suspension of habeus corpus and calling out the militia to suppress insurrection - upon himself in the interim between his inauguration and Congress coming to session.)

The Emancipation Proclamation was indeed a great step, but it was first and foremost a war measure. Slave states which did not secede from the Union were permitted to keep their slaves until the passage of the 13th Amendment. In fact, prior to the Proclamation, Lincoln rescinded orders by Generals John Frémont and David Hunter freeing the slaves in areas of the Confederacy they had captured; he dismissed Frémont when the general refused the President's orders to reverse his decision.

It was political reality that making the war about slavery would likely have cost Lincoln the war (Ulysses S. Grant said he would resign if he thought the war's objective was to free the slaves, and the border states would likely have simply seceded themselves), but that doesn't change the fact that the Union's prosecution of the war was not to free the slaves; it just makes it more excusable.

However, what is not excusable is the South's behavior prior to and during the Civil War. War would not have happened without secession. The initial secessions were without doubt motivated by a desire to maintain and expand chattel slavery (secessions after Lincoln took office were motivated by an unwillingness to contribute troops to fight the South, but again, without slavery none of it would have happened), and that is what matters to the causes of the war.

Good post, thanks. It never hurts to remind people of the facts unencumbered with "lost cause" romanticism and "states rights" apologia.

 

[James Everett]

I already have. Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 clearly states that nothing in the Constitution shall be construed to prejudice the claims of the United States. Your failure to accept that doesn't make it not so.

And the point isn't to gain moral advantage - though it would be easy to do so, since the Confederacy, after all, was based "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition." The point is that the independence of the United States, and its acquisition of further territory, was brought about by the common effort of the United States, and to simply take the money and run, as it were, is not a just or equitable basis for a compact.

Rogue9, You posted....
"Article IV, Section 3, clause 2 as your defence, ....
I am astonished at how many such as you, have no understanding of their own U.S. CONstitution. Article IV, section 3, clause 2, is in reference to territories belonging to the U.S. States DO NOT BELONG TO THE U.S. they are members of the treaty called the U.S. CONstitution. Again, this issue of municiple jurisdiction was discussed and an opinion rendered concerning the municiple jurisdiction of the land and waters within a State in .....
Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 44 U.S. 3 How. 212 212 (1845)

Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan

44 U.S. (3 How.) 212
"The United States never held any municipal sovereignty, jurisdiction, or right of soil in and to the territory of which Alabama,or any of the new States, were formed, except for temporary purposes, and to execute the trusts created by the acts of the Virginia and Georgia legislatures, and the deeds of cession executed by them to the United States
The shores of navigable waters, and the soils under them, were not granted by the Constitution to the United States, but were reserved to the States respectively, (individually) and the new States have the same rights, sovereignty, and jurisdiction over this subject as the original States. Upon the admission of Alabama into the union, the right of eminent domain, which had been temporarily held by the United States, passed to the State."
I do not understand your inability to grasp this point.
The U.S. Municipal jurisdiction and right of soil ends once the territory forms itself into a State.
This should not be so difficult for you to grasp!
Well , I warned you!!
Lets examine what YOUR government was doing at the time of this great war to "end slavery"
Nov. 29, 1864, The U.S. Sand Creek massacre of the peaceful Cheyenne village of Black Kettle, who had been told that if he placed that wonderful U.S. Flag above his lodge,his people would not be molested by the U.S. yet as the U.S. Solders stormed into the village, one of the Cheyenne men grabbed the flag and was waiving it back and forth so that the U.S. Soldiers would see that they were friends, he was shot dead.....
“My shame is as big as the earth. I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man, but it is hard for me to believe the white man any more."
The U.S. Soldiers slaughtered the women and children as the women were on their knees begging for their lives, The pregnant women's wombs were carved open, their unborn children removed and scalped, the nursing infants were tossed into the air, and bayoneted as their little bodies fell back toward the bloodStained ground, women's private parts were carved from their bodies as trophies for YOUR U.S. Soldiers. Crying children were used as target practice with bragging rights for your soldiers as they took turns aiming and shooting them as they ran dodging the bullets from side to side. Your U.S.
soldiers later claimed that they did these things, "BECAUSE NITS MAKE LICE!!!!"
The we have your U.S. governments CDC tuskegee syphilis experiments performed on our Southern Black brothers in Alabama from 1932 until 1972, which even your own U.S. President Bill Clinton remarked as RACIST.
And we have tour U.S. Governments racist Eugenics program that was upheld as CONstitutional by your SCOTUS, the very program which Nazi Germany used as the model for its Master Race program.
Please forgive me if your attempts to gain some moral advantage falls on its face.

 

[Rogue 9]

I already have. Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 clearly states that nothing in the Constitution shall be construed to prejudice the claims of the United States. Your failure to accept that doesn't make it not so.

And the point isn't to gain moral advantage - though it would be easy to do so, since the Confederacy, after all, was based "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition." The point is that the independence of the United States, and its acquisition of further territory, was brought about by the common effort of the United States, and to simply take the money and run, as it were, is not a just or equitable basis for a compact.

Rogue9, You posted....
"Article IV, Section 3, clause 2 as your defence, ....
I am astonished at how many such as you, have no understanding of their own U.S. CONstitution. Article IV, section 3, clause 2, is in reference to territories belonging to the U.S. States DO NOT BELONG TO THE U.S. they are members of the treaty called the U.S. CONstitution. Again, this issue of municiple jurisdiction was discussed and an opinion rendered concerning the municiple jurisdiction of the land and waters within a State in .....
Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 44 U.S. 3 How. 212 212 (1845)

Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan

44 U.S. (3 How.) 212
"The United States never held any municipal sovereignty, jurisdiction, or right of soil in and to the territory of which Alabama,or any of the new States, were formed, except for temporary purposes, and to execute the trusts created by the acts of the Virginia and Georgia legislatures, and the deeds of cession executed by them to the United States
The shores of navigable waters, and the soils under them, were not granted by the Constitution to the United States, but were reserved to the States respectively, (individually) and the new States have the same rights, sovereignty, and jurisdiction over this subject as the original States. Upon the admission of Alabama into the union, the right of eminent domain, which had been temporarily held by the United States, passed to the State."
I do not understand your inability to grasp this point.
The U.S. Municipal jurisdiction and right of soil ends once the territory forms itself into a State.
This should not be so difficult for you to grasp!

It's hardly my fault that you can't read plain English. The clause plainly says that the Constitution doesn't prejudice the claims of the United States. Your interpretation involves rhetorical contortions concerning your insistence that the Constitution is a treaty, not a government charter (a ludicrous assertion on its own) and a case involving the use of eminent domain for building a canal. Your position is a logical absurdity, asserting that the Constitution creates a government with no ability to govern, when that was the problem the Constitutional Convention was convened to fix in the first place with the Articles of Confederation. "Hey guys, in order to make a more perfect union, we screwed it up real bad!" No. That is nonsensical.

Well , I warned you!!
Lets examine what YOUR government was doing at the time of this great war to "end slavery"

Nov. 29, 1864, The U.S. Sand Creek massacre of the peaceful Cheyenne village of Black Kettle, who had been told that if he placed that wonderful U.S. Flag above his lodge,his people would not be molested by the U.S. yet as the U.S. Solders stormed into the village, one of the Cheyenne men grabbed the flag and was waiving it back and forth so that the U.S. Soldiers would see that they were friends, he was shot dead.....
“My shame is as big as the earth. I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man, but it is hard for me to believe the white man any more."
The U.S. Soldiers slaughtered the women and children as the women were on their knees begging for their lives, The pregnant women's wombs were carved open, their unborn children removed and scalped, the nursing infants were tossed into the air, and bayoneted as their little bodies fell back toward the bloodStained ground, women's private parts were carved from their bodies as trophies for YOUR U.S. Soldiers. Crying children were used as target practice with bragging rights for your soldiers as they took turns aiming and shooting them as they ran dodging the bullets from side to side. Your U.S.
soldiers later claimed that they did these things, "BECAUSE NITS MAKE LICE!!!!"
The we have your U.S. governments CDC tuskegee syphilis experiments performed on our Southern Black brothers in Alabama from 1932 until 1972, which even your own U.S. President Bill Clinton remarked as RACIST.
And we have tour U.S. Governments racist Eugenics program that was upheld as CONstitutional by your SCOTUS, the very program which Nazi Germany used as the model for its Master Race program.
Please forgive me if your attempts to gain some moral advantage falls on its face.

I'm not attempting to gain moral advantage. I have repeatedly asserted that the Union did not go to war to end slavery. The topic of this thread, let me remind you, is the causes of the war, not the legality of secession. It is undeniable that the 1860-61 secessions and accompanying aggressive seizure of federal forts, ships, and arsenals; firing on U.S. flagged vessels; and assaults on federal troops posted for the protection of the South against foreign invasion were the trigger for the war. What, then, was the cause for secession? There is only one running theme in the answer to that question, and you know what it is.

The United States has blood on its hands. I have never denied that, so I'm curious as to why you think posting about it will make a difference. It's a classic red herring and ad hominem tu quoque fallacious argument to boot, one which you used to once again ignore the actual operative point, which is that "the independence of the United States, and its acquisition of further territory, was brought about by the common effort of the United States, and to simply take the money and run, as it were, is not a just or equitable basis for a compact," if I may quote myself.

Of course, this is simply running with your own argument for the sake of it - after all, the Constitution is in fact not a compact (nor a treaty) between states but proceeds directly from the People to be placed over the states, as ruled in McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819; Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1816; and even as early as Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793. A government of the people may be dissolved by the people, but not simply broken up by a subordinate local government. You literally have no case, as Daniel Webster was so kind as to point out in 1830 when discussing this very issue with Robert Hayne of South Carolina on the Senate floor:

So much, Sir, for the argument, even if the premises of the gentleman were granted, or could be proved. But, Sir, the gentleman has failed to maintain his leading proposition. He has not shown, it cannot be shown, that the Constitution is a compact between State governments. The Constitution itself, in its very front, refutes that idea; it declares that it is ordained and established by the people of the United States. So far from saying that it is established by the governments of the several States, it does not even say that it is established by the people of the several States; but it pronounces that it is established by the people of the United States, in the aggregate. The gentleman says, it must mean no more than the people of the several States. Doubtless, the people of the several States, taken collectively, constitute the people of the United States; but it is in this, their collective capacity, it is as all the people of the United States, that they establish the Constitution. So they declare; and words cannot be plainer than the words used.

When the gentleman says the Constitution is a compact between the States, he uses language exactly applicable to the old Confederation. He speaks as if he were in Congress before 1789. He describes fully that old state of things then existing. The Confederation was, in strictness, a compact; the States, as States, were parties to it. We had no other general government. But that was found insufficient, and inadequate to the public exigencies. The people were not satisfied with it, and undertook to establish a better. They undertook to form a general government, which should stand on a new basis; not a confederacy, not a league, not a compact between States, but a Constitution; a popular government, founded in popular election, directly responsible to the people themselves, and divided into branches with prescribed limits of power, and prescribed duties. They ordained such a government, they gave it the name of a Constitution, and therein they established a distribution of powers between this, their general government, and their several State governments. When they shall become dissatisfied with this distribution, they can alter it. Their own power over their own instrument remains. But until they shall alter it, it must stand as their will, and is equally binding on the general government and on the States.

 

[James Everett]

I already have. Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 clearly states that nothing in the Constitution shall be construed to prejudice the claims of the United States. Your failure to accept that doesn't make it not so.

And the point isn't to gain moral advantage - though it would be easy to do so, since the Confederacy, after all, was based "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition." The point is that the independence of the United States, and its acquisition of further territory, was brought about by the common effort of the United States, and to simply take the money and run, as it were, is not a just or equitable basis for a compact.

Rogue9, You posted....
"Article IV, Section 3, clause 2 as your defence, ....
I am astonished at how many such as you, have no understanding of their own U.S. CONstitution. Article IV, section 3, clause 2, is in reference to territories belonging to the U.S. States DO NOT BELONG TO THE U.S. they are members of the treaty called the U.S. CONstitution. Again, this issue of municiple jurisdiction was discussed and an opinion rendered concerning the municiple jurisdiction of the land and waters within a State in .....
Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 44 U.S. 3 How. 212 212 (1845)

Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan

44 U.S. (3 How.) 212
"The United States never held any municipal sovereignty, jurisdiction, or right of soil in and to the territory of which Alabama,or any of the new States, were formed, except for temporary purposes, and to execute the trusts created by the acts of the Virginia and Georgia legislatures, and the deeds of cession executed by them to the United States
The shores of navigable waters, and the soils under them, were not granted by the Constitution to the United States, but were reserved to the States respectively, (individually) and the new States have the same rights, sovereignty, and jurisdiction over this subject as the original States. Upon the admission of Alabama into the union, the right of eminent domain, which had been temporarily held by the United States, passed to the State."
I do not understand your inability to grasp this point.
The U.S. Municipal jurisdiction and right of soil ends once the territory forms itself into a State.
This should not be so difficult for you to grasp!
Well , I warned you!!
Lets examine what YOUR government was doing at the time of this great war to "end slavery"
Nov. 29, 1864, The U.S. Sand Creek massacre of the peaceful Cheyenne village of Black Kettle, who had been told that if he placed that wonderful U.S. Flag above his lodge,his people would not be molested by the U.S. yet as the U.S. Solders stormed into the village, one of the Cheyenne men grabbed the flag and was waiving it back and forth so that the U.S. Soldiers would see that they were friends, he was shot dead.....
“My shame is as big as the earth. I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man, but it is hard for me to believe the white man any more."
The U.S. Soldiers slaughtered the women and children as the women were on their knees begging for their lives, The pregnant women's wombs were carved open, their unborn children removed and scalped, the nursing infants were tossed into the air, and bayoneted as their little bodies fell back toward the bloodStained ground, women's private parts were carved from their bodies as trophies for YOUR U.S. Soldiers. Crying children were used as target practice with bragging rights for your soldiers as they took turns aiming and shooting them as they ran dodging the bullets from side to side. Your U.S.
soldiers later claimed that they did these things, "BECAUSE NITS MAKE LICE!!!!"
The we have your U.S. governments CDC tuskegee syphilis experiments performed on our Southern Black brothers in Alabama from 1932 until 1972, which even your own U.S. President Bill Clinton remarked as RACIST.
And we have tour U.S. Governments racist Eugenics program that was upheld as CONstitutional by your SCOTUS, the very program which Nazi Germany used as the model for its Master Race program.
Please forgive me if your attempts to gain some moral advantage falls on its face.

 

[paperview]

Nonsense, guys, but since the South refused to follow constitutional, electoral process and then attacked the national government, in effect pissing on Old Glory and the Patriot Fathers, the President and Congress constitutionally, electorally empowered and responsible for suppressing insurrection.

JakeStarkey, please explain how "South refused to follow constitutional, electoral process and then attacked the national government." Just because Lincoln was not allowed on the ballot in the Southern States was not a violation of the electoral process, and certainly not law. YOUR two party duopoly control the electoral process in your U.S. to this day, not allowing third party candidates to appear on the ballot in many States in each electoral process. Please cite the law which made secession an illegal act, which would then make such rise to "Insurrection". All you need do, is cite the law, Article within your U.S. CONstitution, or the amendment that makes secession illegal or unlawful, then your claim of "Insurrection" may hold water. Even so, as I have posted, the 1793 act for calling forth the Militia by the Executive requires FIRST, that a State legislature make an application, (Request) of the Executive before the Executive may act.

No, James, that has all been explained over and over and over, so you don't get "just once more."

Contact paperveiw by conversation. She is the acknowledged unchallenged expert on this issue, on the Board.

If she has time, she may be willing to educate you.

You may ramble all you want in ignorance, but you don't have the power to drag anyone along who corrects you.

Rogue 9 here seems to be doing just fine...and I must say...
What a kick ass OP.

Congrats on a fine piece of work Rogue.



I'm quite busy right now, so not able to spend much time here, but maybe I'll be able to add a little, and I'll enjoy reading more of your well presented thread. ..................''n Thanks Jake.

 

[JakeStarkey]

Rogue 9 is doing a good, good job.

 

[JakeStarkey]

James Everett, show your face, you skunk. Don't run away.

 

[James Everett]

I already have. Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2 clearly states that nothing in the Constitution shall be construed to prejudice the claims of the United States. Your failure to accept that doesn't make it not so.

And the point isn't to gain moral advantage - though it would be easy to do so, since the Confederacy, after all, was based "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition." The point is that the independence of the United States, and its acquisition of further territory, was brought about by the common effort of the United States, and to simply take the money and run, as it were, is not a just or equitable basis for a compact.

Rogue9, You posted....
"Article IV, Section 3, clause 2 as your defence, ....
I am astonished at how many such as you, have no understanding of their own U.S. CONstitution. Article IV, section 3, clause 2, is in reference to territories belonging to the U.S. States DO NOT BELONG TO THE U.S. they are members of the treaty called the U.S. CONstitution. Again, this issue of municiple jurisdiction was discussed and an opinion rendered concerning the municiple jurisdiction of the land and waters within a State in .....
Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan, 44 U.S. 3 How. 212 212 (1845)

Pollard's Lessee v. Hagan

44 U.S. (3 How.) 212
"The United States never held any municipal sovereignty, jurisdiction, or right of soil in and to the territory of which Alabama,or any of the new States, were formed, except for temporary purposes, and to execute the trusts created by the acts of the Virginia and Georgia legislatures, and the deeds of cession executed by them to the United States
The shores of navigable waters, and the soils under them, were not granted by the Constitution to the United States, but were reserved to the States respectively, (individually) and the new States have the same rights, sovereignty, and jurisdiction over this subject as the original States. Upon the admission of Alabama into the union, the right of eminent domain, which had been temporarily held by the United States, passed to the State."
I do not understand your inability to grasp this point.
The U.S. Municipal jurisdiction and right of soil ends once the territory forms itself into a State.
This should not be so difficult for you to grasp!

It's hardly my fault that you can't read plain English. The clause plainly says that the Constitution doesn't prejudice the claims of the United States. Your interpretation involves rhetorical contortions concerning your insistence that the Constitution is a treaty, not a government charter (a ludicrous assertion on its own) and a case involving the use of eminent domain for building a canal. Your position is a logical absurdity, asserting that the Constitution creates a government with no ability to govern, when that was the problem the Constitutional Convention was convened to fix in the first place with the Articles of Confederation. "Hey guys, in order to make a more perfect union, we screwed it up real bad!" No. That is nonsensical.

Well , I warned you!!
Lets examine what YOUR government was doing at the time of this great war to "end slavery"

Nov. 29, 1864, The U.S. Sand Creek massacre of the peaceful Cheyenne village of Black Kettle, who had been told that if he placed that wonderful U.S. Flag above his lodge,his people would not be molested by the U.S. yet as the U.S. Solders stormed into the village, one of the Cheyenne men grabbed the flag and was waiving it back and forth so that the U.S. Soldiers would see that they were friends, he was shot dead.....
“My shame is as big as the earth. I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man, but it is hard for me to believe the white man any more."
The U.S. Soldiers slaughtered the women and children as the women were on their knees begging for their lives, The pregnant women's wombs were carved open, their unborn children removed and scalped, the nursing infants were tossed into the air, and bayoneted as their little bodies fell back toward the bloodStained ground, women's private parts were carved from their bodies as trophies for YOUR U.S. Soldiers. Crying children were used as target practice with bragging rights for your soldiers as they took turns aiming and shooting them as they ran dodging the bullets from side to side. Your U.S.
soldiers later claimed that they did these things, "BECAUSE NITS MAKE LICE!!!!"
The we have your U.S. governments CDC tuskegee syphilis experiments performed on our Southern Black brothers in Alabama from 1932 until 1972, which even your own U.S. President Bill Clinton remarked as RACIST.
And we have tour U.S. Governments racist Eugenics program that was upheld as CONstitutional by your SCOTUS, the very program which Nazi Germany used as the model for its Master Race program.
Please forgive me if your attempts to gain some moral advantage falls on its face.

I'm not attempting to gain moral advantage. I have repeatedly asserted that the Union did not go to war to end slavery. The topic of this thread, let me remind you, is the causes of the war, not the legality of secession. It is undeniable that the 1860-61 secessions and accompanying aggressive seizure of federal forts, ships, and arsenals; firing on U.S. flagged vessels; and assaults on federal troops posted for the protection of the South against foreign invasion were the trigger for the war. What, then, was the cause for secession? There is only one running theme in the answer to that question, and you know what it is.

The United States has blood on its hands. I have never denied that, so I'm curious as to why you think posting about it will make a difference. It's a classic red herring and ad hominem tu quoque fallacious argument to boot, one which you used to once again ignore the actual operative point, which is that "the independence of the United States, and its acquisition of further territory, was brought about by the common effort of the United States, and to simply take the money and run, as it were, is not a just or equitable basis for a compact," if I may quote myself.

Of course, this is simply running with your own argument for the sake of it - after all, the Constitution is in fact not a compact (nor a treaty) between states but proceeds directly from the People to be placed over the states, as ruled in McCulloch v. Maryland, 1819; Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1816; and even as early as Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793. A government of the people may be dissolved by the people, but not simply broken up by a subordinate local government. You literally have no case, as Daniel Webster was so kind as to point out in 1830 when discussing this very issue with Robert Hayne of South Carolina on the Senate floor:

So much, Sir, for the argument, even if the premises of the gentleman were granted, or could be proved. But, Sir, the gentleman has failed to maintain his leading proposition. He has not shown, it cannot be shown, that the Constitution is a compact between State governments. The Constitution itself, in its very front, refutes that idea; it declares that it is ordained and established by the people of the United States. So far from saying that it is established by the governments of the several States, it does not even say that it is established by the people of the several States; but it pronounces that it is established by the people of the United States, in the aggregate. The gentleman says, it must mean no more than the people of the several States. Doubtless, the people of the several States, taken collectively, constitute the people of the United States; but it is in this, their collective capacity, it is as all the people of the United States, that they establish the Constitution. So they declare; and words cannot be plainer than the words used.

When the gentleman says the Constitution is a compact between the States, he uses language exactly applicable to the old Confederation. He speaks as if he were in Congress before 1789. He describes fully that old state of things then existing. The Confederation was, in strictness, a compact; the States, as States, were parties to it. We had no other general government. But that was found insufficient, and inadequate to the public exigencies. The people were not satisfied with it, and undertook to establish a better. They undertook to form a general government, which should stand on a new basis; not a confederacy, not a league, not a compact between States, but a Constitution; a popular government, founded in popular election, directly responsible to the people themselves, and divided into branches with prescribed limits of power, and prescribed duties. They ordained such a government, they gave it the name of a Constitution, and therein they established a distribution of powers between this, their general government, and their several State governments. When they shall become dissatisfied with this distribution, they can alter it. Their own power over their own instrument remains. But until they shall alter it, it must stand as their will, and is equally binding on the general government and on the States.

[/QUOTE
Rogue9

Nonsense, guys, but since the South refused to follow constitutional, electoral process and then attacked the national government, in effect pissing on Old Glory and the Patriot Fathers, the President and Congress constitutionally, electorally empowered and responsible for suppressing insurrection.

JakeStarkey, please explain how "South refused to follow constitutional, electoral process and then attacked the national government." Just because Lincoln was not allowed on the ballot in the Southern States was not a violation of the electoral process, and certainly not law. YOUR two party duopoly control the electoral process in your U.S. to this day, not allowing third party candidates to appear on the ballot in many States in each electoral process. Please cite the law which made secession an illegal act, which would then make such rise to "Insurrection". All you need do, is cite the law, Article within your U.S. CONstitution, or the amendment that makes secession illegal or unlawful, then your claim of "Insurrection" may hold water. Even so, as I have posted, the 1793 act for calling forth the Militia by the Executive requires FIRST, that a State legislature make an application, (Request) of the Executive before the Executive may act.

No, James, that has all been explained over and over and over, so you don't get "just once more."

Contact paperveiw by conversation. She is the acknowledged unchallenged expert on this issue, on the Board.

If she has time, she may be willing to educate you.

You may ramble all you want in ignorance, but you don't have the power to drag anyone along who corrects you.

Rogue 9 here seems to be doing just fine...and I must say...
What a kick ass OP.

Congrats on a fine piece of work Rogue.



I'm quite busy right now, so not able to spend much time here, but maybe I'll be able to add a little, and I'll enjoy reading more of your well presented thread. ..................''n Thanks Jake.

Nonsense, guys, but since the South refused to follow constitutional, electoral process and then attacked the national government, in effect pissing on Old Glory and the Patriot Fathers, the President and Congress constitutionally, electorally empowered and responsible for suppressing insurrection.

JakeStarkey, please explain how "South refused to follow constitutional, electoral process and then attacked the national government." Just because Lincoln was not allowed on the ballot in the Southern States was not a violation of the electoral process, and certainly not law. YOUR two party duopoly control the electoral process in your U.S. to this day, not allowing third party candidates to appear on the ballot in many States in each electoral process. Please cite the law which made secession an illegal act, which would then make such rise to "Insurrection". All you need do, is cite the law, Article within your U.S. CONstitution, or the amendment that makes secession illegal or unlawful, then your claim of "Insurrection" may hold water. Even so, as I have posted, the 1793 act for calling forth the Militia by the Executive requires FIRST, that a State legislature make an application, (Request) of the Executive before the Executive may act.

No, James, that has all been explained over and over and over, so you don't get "just once more."

Contact paperveiw by conversation. She is the acknowledged unchallenged expert on this issue, on the Board.

If she has time, she may be willing to educate you.

You may ramble all you want in ignorance, but you don't have the power to drag anyone along who corrects you.

Rogue 9 here seems to be doing just fine...and I must say...
What a kick ass OP.

Congrats on a fine piece of work Rogue.



I'm quite busy right now, so not able to spend much time here, but maybe I'll be able to add a little, and I'll enjoy reading more of your well presented thread. ..................''n Thanks Jake.

Well Paperview, so good of you to join the discussion....
Now since your fan has been begging for you to join in, lets address you first, then I will get to Rogue9.
Now, Paperview, you have stated.....
"Nonsense, guys, but since the South refused to follow constitutional, electoral process and then attacked the national government, in effect pissing on Old Glory and the Patriot Fathers, the President and Congress constitutionally, electorally empowered and responsible for suppressing insurrection."
Paperview, allow me to introduce the definition of insurrection to you......
This definition comes from Johnson's dictionary of the English language (1755 edition), this is the definition that both the founders' and the framers' of YOUR 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution would have considered......
Insurre'ction. n.f. {injurga Latin.] A
Seditious rifing ; a rebellious commotion.
This leads us to the definition of Rebellion, which is defined from the same source.....
ReBc'llion. n, f. [rtbellion, French;
rcbellio, Latin ; from rebel j
Insurrection Against lawful authority.

Now, Paperview, you have stated that the President and Congress are constitutionally empowered and responsible for suppressing insurrection.
Now, I challenge you to cite the law, Article within the 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution, or amendment thereof that states that secession is unlawful, or illegal.
You see paperview, there first must be a law established for there to be an insurrection against the lawful authority, so PLEASE by all means CITE SUCH LAW.
Now I address Rogue9.....
Your fan seems to think you are doing a good job, I think NOT! Well actually you are doing a great job twisting and contorting, trying in vain to find a definition, or at least redefine words to mean what you need to help your lost position.
First I stated correctly that the 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution was a TREATY between
sovereigns, you claimed it to be a Compact, which I explained is the same as a treaty supplying you withe the definition of each in order to prove the point. When that didn't help your position, you next claimed it to be a CHARTER. ...
Charter is defined in Johnson's dictionary of the English language (1755 edition), this is the definition that both the Founders' and the Framers of YOUR 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution would have considered.....
Charter.....
Cha'rtbr. h. /. [ckarta,,hanvi.'\
I . A charter is a written evidence of things
done between nr. n and man. Cbnrttrs
are divided into charurs of the king,
and charter! of private perfons.
CO'MPACT. «. / [faSum, Latin.] A
contract ; an accord ; an agreement ; a
mutual and settled appointment between
two or more.
Treaty....
Tre'aty. n.f. {traite, French.]
1. Negotiation; aft of treating.
Siic begin a treaty to procure,,
And ftath.'h terms betw xt both their rcijucfts.
Spenfir.
He caft by maty and by trains
Her to perfuade. Spenfer.
2. A compaft of accommodation relating
to public affairs.
Treatise....
Tre'atise. ». /. [fraaatus, Lit.} Discourse
; written contract.
Constitution...
Constitu'tiOn. n.f. [from conjlitute-l
1. The act of constituting ; enacting ;
deputing ; establishing ; producing.
Next, Rogue9, you have pointed out that YOUR U.S. CONstitution begins with the words...
"We the people" and that the States had no say in the ratification process, that it was in fact ratified by the people.
If in fact this is the case, the YOUR 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution established a de facto government, an unlawful and illegal government, and the fact is that the Articles of Confederation are indeed the lawful and legal government.
Article XIII.
Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.
Well Rogue9, did the legislatures of every State ratify YOUR 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution?
Further Rogue9 if indeed the 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution was ratified by "We the people", then it amounts to nothing more than a simple contract between the men the living. One cannot eastblish a contract that binds his posterity, such contract would have ended with the death of the last living man at the time in which the contract was entered. Your great grandparents, nor your Grand Parents, nor your parents can enter their posterity into a contract that is binding upon them, this is why all debts are paid from the estate of the deceased, and cannot be passed on to the deceased posterity once the deceased estate has been liquidated, the lender has no other recourse, and surely none to hold you as a binding party to any contract that any of the aforementioned entered into.
All of this leads back to the original point....
YOU MUST CITE THE LAW, ARTICLE WITHIN YOUR U.S. CONSTITUTION, AMENDMENT THERETO, STATUTE, OR LAW, THAT MAKES SECESSION AN ILLEGAL ACT.
SORRY IF I HAVE HURT YOUR FAN, IN CORRECTING YOU, AND PAPERVIEW.

 

[James Everett]

JAKESTARKEY,
I JUST DID, AND I AM TRULY SORRY FOR BITCH SLAPPING YOUR MENTORS!!!!! NOT!!!!

 

[James Everett]

One more thing, Mr. Starkey,
I am not at your beck and call. This is one of many places wherein I post the truth.
TRY CSAgov.org for example.

 

[Rogue 9]

Well Paperview, so good of you to join the discussion....
Now since your fan has been begging for you to join in, lets address you first, then I will get to Rogue9.
Now, Paperview, you have stated.....
"Nonsense, guys, but since the South refused to follow constitutional, electoral process and then attacked the national government, in effect pissing on Old Glory and the Patriot Fathers, the President and Congress constitutionally, electorally empowered and responsible for suppressing insurrection."
Paperview, allow me to introduce the definition of insurrection to you......
This definition comes from Johnson's dictionary of the English language (1755 edition), this is the definition that both the founders' and the framers' of YOUR 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution would have considered......
Insurre'ction. n.f. {injurga Latin.] A
Seditious rifing ; a rebellious commotion.
This leads us to the definition of Rebellion, which is defined from the same source.....
ReBc'llion. n, f. [rtbellion, French;
rcbellio, Latin ; from rebel j
Insurrection Against lawful authority.

Now, Paperview, you have stated that the President and Congress are constitutionally empowered and responsible for suppressing insurrection.
Now, I challenge you to cite the law, Article within the 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution, or amendment thereof that states that secession is unlawful, or illegal.
You see paperview, there first must be a law established for there to be an insurrection against the lawful authority, so PLEASE by all means CITE SUCH LAW.

Funny, I didn't see her say any of that in here. Been stalking people again? Anyway...

Now I address Rogue9.....
Your fan seems to think you are doing a good job, I think NOT! Well actually you are doing a great job twisting and contorting, trying in vain to find a definition, or at least redefine words to mean what you need to help your lost position.
First I stated correctly that the 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution was a TREATY between
sovereigns, you claimed it to be a Compact, which I explained is the same as a treaty supplying you withe the definition of each in order to prove the point. When that didn't help your position, you next claimed it to be a CHARTER. ...
Charter is defined in Johnson's dictionary of the English language (1755 edition), this is the definition that both the Founders' and the Framers of YOUR 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution would have considered.....
Charter.....
Cha'rtbr. h. /. [ckarta,,hanvi.'\
I .

A charter is a written evidence of things
done between nr. n and man. Cbnrttrs
are divided into charurs of the king,
and charter! of private perfons.
CO'MPACT. «. / [faSum, Latin.] A
contract ; an accord ; an agreement ; a
mutual and settled appointment between
two or more.
Treaty....
Tre'aty. n.f. {traite, French.]
1. Negotiation; aft of treating.
Siic begin a treaty to procure,,
And ftath.'h terms betw xt both their rcijucfts.
Spenfir.
He caft by maty and by trains
Her to perfuade. Spenfer.
2. A compaft of accommodation relating
to public affairs.
Treatise....
Tre'atise. ». /. [fraaatus, Lit.} Discourse
; written contract.
Constitution...
Constitu'tiOn. n.f. [from conjlitute-l
1. The act of constituting ; enacting ;
deputing ; establishing ; producing.
Next, Rogue9, you have pointed out that YOUR U.S. CONstitution begins with the words...
"We the people" and that the States had no say in the ratification process, that it was in fact ratified by the people.
If in fact this is the case, the YOUR 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution established a de facto government, an unlawful and illegal government, and the fact is that the Articles of Confederation are indeed the lawful and legal government.
Article XIII.
Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State.
Well Rogue9, did the legislatures of every State ratify YOUR 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution?
Further Rogue9 if indeed the 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution was ratified by "We the people", then it amounts to nothing more than a simple contract between the men the living. One cannot eastblish a contract that binds his posterity, such contract would have ended with the death of the last living man at the time in which the contract was entered. Your great grandparents, nor your Grand Parents, nor your parents can enter their posterity into a contract that is binding upon them, this is why all debts are paid from the estate of the deceased, and cannot be passed on to the deceased posterity once the deceased estate has been liquidated, the lender has no other recourse, and surely none to hold you as a binding party to any contract that any of the aforementioned entered into.
All of this leads back to the original point....
YOU MUST CITE THE LAW, ARTICLE WITHIN YOUR U.S. CONSTITUTION, AMENDMENT THERETO, STATUTE, OR LAW, THAT MAKES SECESSION AN ILLEGAL ACT.
SORRY IF I HAVE HURT YOUR FAN, IN CORRECTING YOU, AND PAPERVIEW.

No apology necessary, since you have done no such thing. I was simply operating within the framework of your own argument to illustrate a point. You are trapped, Mr. Everett; either the Constitution is a binding agreement between the states, in which case no single state may break it (that is, after all, the entire point of a contract) or (as is actually true, as ruled by the Supreme Court on multiple occasions) the Constitution was created and ratified by the People of the United States in convention assembled to be the sovereign government of the United States. Either way, you're wrong. You're entirely predictable; your argument patterns are unchanging and it's a simple matter to get you to talk yourself into a corner, as you have done.

You know as well as I how the Constitution was ratified, or should since you proclaim yourself an expert on the subject. The Constitutional Convention sent the Constitution to the Articles Congress, which transmitted it to the state legislatures. The legislatures then called for the special election of conventions specifically for ratification (or not), the act of which signals agreement with the dictates of the conventions - which is what happened. The state legislatures specifically put the question to the people, which satisfies the requirement.

I'm curious about an apparent contradiction in your position, however. You say that if the Constitution was established by the people, then it is only binding on the people then living and can have no continuity of government. Why, then, do the states in your view? What makes them so special that they endure while a government established by the People supposedly does not?

 

[JakeStarkey]

James Everett, go whither you will, but you have only 'bitch slapped' yourself. Try this for real points in a real history forum with real terms, definitions, and narratives, you would not make it by the first round.

You simply don't have what it takes.

 

[James Everett]

Rogue9,
First you asked....
"I'm curious about an apparent contradiction in your position, however. You say that if the Constitution was established by the people, then it is only binding on the people then living and can have no continuity of government. Why, then, do the states in your view? What makes them so special that they endure while a government established by the People supposedly does not?"
The State governments only exist by the voluntary accession of new citizens as they come of age. If however, the U.S. CONstitution is a contract between "We the people" then it died with those who agreed to that contract. We see that the people at the age of consent in the Southern States, as in Tennessee the vote was put to the people of the State, they chose to exit the union, hence that contract between their ancestors who consented to it when Tennessee became a member State in the union, was not binding on them. If however the 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution was a treaty between States, then its accession is by each member State respectively, and as the Treaty, gave specifically enumerated powers to the U.S. (THE STATES COLLECTIVELY), and RESERVED all others to themselves, then YOU MUST CITE THE LAW, ARTICLE WITHIN THE TREATY/CONstitution,OR AN AMENDMENT THEREOF WHICH MAKES SECESSION AN UNLAWFUL OR ILLEGAL ACT. THE STATES RETAINED EVERY RIGHT OF SOVEREIGNTY THAT THEY DID NOT EXCLUSIVELY DELEGATE TO THE UNITED STATES. YOU MUST CITE THE POWER THAT THEY DELEGATED TO THE UNITED STATES TO HOLD THEM AGAINST THEIR WILL, OTHERWISE THE POWER TO EXIT THE UNION WAS RETAINED BY EACH STATE INDIVIDUALLY.


It appears it was Starky who posted it, I get you Yankees Confused, as you all make the same pathetic losing Arguments.
Now, Rogue9, again read what the States agreed to in the Articles...
."nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every State."
Were the alterations to the Articles via the 1787/1789 CONstitution CONFIRMED by each State's legislature?
You state that....
"The legislatures then called for the special election of conventions specifically for ratification (or not), the act of which signals agreement with the dictates of the conventions - which is what happened."

Therefore the State legislature agreed first with the Philadelphia conventions proposal and then with the State their convention, hence were party to the TREATY, They could have refused, and the people, would not have been allowed to elect delegates to attend a convention within their State.
In other words the State legislatures had the AUTHORITY to NOT allow a convention to take place within their State. The 1787/1789 U.S. CONstitution had to have the blessing of each States legislature, hence they were party to it, they each sent delegates to the Philadelphia Convention, and their delegates did debate and create the TREATY to present FIRST to each of their State legislatures, then it was each States legislature that allowed a State convention. The State legislatures agreed first, and then allowed the people of their respective States to elect delegates to a convention. In other words it was a treaty agreed to by the State legislatures, and then those State legislatures gave voice through elected delegates.
AGAIN......According to international law....
"Treaties are not necessarily permanently binding upon the signatory parties. As obligations in international law are traditionally viewed as arising only from the consent of states
When a state withdraws from a multi-lateral treaty, that treaty will still otherwise remain in force among the other parties, unless, of course, otherwise should or could be interpreted as agreed upon between the remaining states parties to the treaty."
I hope that I have been able to educate you concerning YOUR U.S. CONstitution these past couple of days. I will likely not be available to help you again until next weekend.
If you are able, please try and come up with some other alterations of definitions to benefit your case, it is quite amusing witnessing your dancing.......

 

[James Everett]

Starky boy,
The definitions that I posted are TRUE DEFINITIONS, NOT THE CURRENT REVISIONIST DEFINITIONS THAT YOU WISH TO PRESENT TO HELP YOUR PATHETIC CASE. You simply keep digging yourself further into a hole.

 

[JakeStarkey]

James, don't be silly. Many of us are either from the South or lived most of our adult lives in the South. And that is unimportant The crux of your argument remains the fallacy that the states remained autonomous and sovereign after the formation of the Union.

You pay attention to Rogue and paperview, and you will learn how much you yet have to learn.

How fortuitous for you that you came to the Board.

 

[James Everett]

James, don't be silly. Many of us are either from the South or lived most of our adult lives in the South. And that is unimportant The crux of your argument remains the fallacy that the states remained autonomous and sovereign after the formation of the Union.

You pay attention to Rogue and paperview, and you will learn how much you yet have to learn.

How fortuitous for you that you came to the Board.

Well, YOUR sweetheart "Paperview" never showed up, and as for Rogue9, the pathetic attempts to find a definition to benefit his/her case were pathetic, he/she didn't even know the correct definitions he/she was posting.
The fact is, that with all the two of you posturing and stomping your feet, diverting, and running in every direction in an attempt to run from the one basic fact that could win the day for you, neither of you have been able to fill my one simple request, that being to.....
Cite the law, Article within YOUR U.S. CONstitution,or amendment thereof that states that makes secession an unlawful, or illegal act, and I add here, the power DELEGATED to the United States,(The States collectively) that grants the collective the power to prevent a State from exercising its RETAINED sovereign power to withdraw from the union.
READ the tenth amendment here....
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
It is simply what is states.....
You Sir must...Cite the law, Article within YOUR U.S. CONstitution,or amendment thereof that states that makes secession an unlawful, or illegal act, and I add here, the power DELEGATED to the United States,(The States collectively) that grants the collective the power to prevent a State from exercising its RETAINED sovereign power to withdraw from the union.

 

[JakeStarkey]

A whole world's narrative continued after 1791, James. Tell us how Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, and the 14th Amendment affected the 10th's applicability after 1869 in American history. The fact is the states never had a retained, stated, or inherent power to leave the Union.

 

[James Everett]

Starkey,
First it was the result of the poison fruit of Lincolns rebellion to the authority of the U.S. CONstitutions tenth amendment, the 14th created a U.S. Citizen, from an American citizens, leading to the fictional JAKE STARKEY rather than the flesh and blood Jake Starkey, hence the creation of a fictional individual who has been made chattel to the U.S. debt via the U.S. Bankruptcy.
You have stated here....
"The fact is the states never had a retained, stated, or inherent power to leave the Union."
Again, where does this claim of yours reside? Which Article States that a State cannot leave the union?
Which Amendment States that a State cannot leave the union?
What law; What Statute, states that a State cannot leave the union?
You just defeated your own position, by stating..."The fact is the states never had a retained, stated, or inherent power to leave the Union."
The fact that it was NOT a POWER STATED AS BEING DELEGATED TO THE U.S. MEANS THAT IT WAS RETAINED BY EACH STATE INDIVIDUALLY. READ THE AMENDMENT.
Alexander Hamilton, the most ardent nationalist, stated to the effect as a complaint at the debates that everyone was complaining that the Constitution grants this power or that power to the United States, but does not mention what powers that the United States does not have. Hamilton stated that it would be impossible to enumerate every power that the United States as a collective does not have, therefore it is understood that any power NOT delegated to it is retained by each State individually. his as well as his words that I have already posted in #32 of the debates, led to the tenth amendment, TO BE SURE THAT SUCH BE UNDERSTOOD AND ENUMERATED. I understand that this destroys your wish to validate Lincolns destruction of the union, and consolidate the government into a single national government system, hence the 13th, and 17th amendments as a result thereof. Now instead of State governments being party to and a union of States, you have a corporately owned two party duopoly, which exists via perpetual war and hegemony.
You really do need to read Madison's explanation of the system in #39 and 62, even though he was conning the States, and the people. Lincoln simply fulfilled the nationalist wishes of those who claimed to be "federalists"
#39...."The proposed Constitution, therefore is, in strictness, neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both. In its foundation it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the government are drawn, it is partly federal and partly national; in the operation of these powers, it is national, not federal; in the extent of them, again, it is federal, not national; and, finally, in the authoritative mode of introducing amendments, it is neither wholly federal nor wholly national."
"The idea of a national government involves in it, not only an authority over the individual citizens, but an indefinite supremacy over all persons and things."
YOU, Sir, now have a wholly national government system wherein it holds authority over you, and everything that you think that you own. Do you hold allodial title to any property? NO you do not. Don't pay your tribute/income tax, and see how long you hold that property. Without property that is your own, you have no place to set your feet, hence no place to set yourself or your belongings, hence you exist JAKE STARKEY exists as a corporate fiction, Jake Starkey through UCC becomes the fictional JAKE STARKEY chattel to YOUR national governments debt. UCC replaced common law, wherein under common law, you were free to do whatever you please as long as you did not infringe on the life liberty, or property of another. UCC is all based on contracts. For example, obtain a gun permit and you have now entered into a contract with the government to keep and bear arms, in other words, you willingly forfeited Jake Starkeys right to bear arms, and became JAKE STARKEY under UCC. The government cannot prevent you from contracting therefore you willinglcontractually give up your rights without realiit. My computer is freezing up now, gotta go