Alfred Montestruc <montestruc@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On May 7, 4:10 pm, archm...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Nate Edel) wrote:
> > They never gave a peaceable and legal secession a chance; whether they
> > "should" have seceded at some prior justification is irrelevant to the
> > question of how secession was conducted in late 1860 and early 1861.
The
> > Southern states abandoned any pretense of conducting the secession via
legal
> > means (act of congress, treaty, or the supreme court - any of which
could
> > potentially have been viable) and instead proceeded unilaterally to
sieze
> > federal property before Lincoln was even inaugurated.
> You are missing a huge part of the argument. Namely that states and
> their people voted to enter the union by state elections and state
> legal processes, and they had just as much right to vote their way
> right back out again without the federal government getting to say boo
> about it.
That doesn't fly; if you want to look at it purely from the states'
perspective, the Constitution is a contract between the states. Like any
contract, it need not be perpetual, but an individual state does not
necessarily have the right to unilaterally decide the terms under which
the
contract is terminated.
Indeed, since the Constitution is silent on the terms under which a state
can
secede, but does not forbid it, there are at least three mechanisms under
which a state could secede peacefully:
* by concluding a treaty with the remaining states, to be ratified by the
Senate
* by constitutional amendement, determining a legal process for secession
* by lawsuit, under which the SCOTUS could determine that a state's
process
of secession was acceptable.
Any of these could well have succeeded, given a bit more patience and
forebearance on the part of the seceding states, and only one of them (the
first) was within Lincoln's power to say "boo" to.
> The constitution does not say that a state entering the union is a one
way
> event, and gives no explicit power to the federal government to stop
them,
> by that and the 9th and 10th amendment to the constitution of the USA,
the
> states and the people of them have the power to seceed from the union.
In theory, certainly. A pity that there was no chance to adjudicate it in
the courts.
> As to the property, so what, all property of the Federal government is
> in the end owned by the people of the USA, and people leaving a
> partner****p have the right to a pro****tional share of that property.
But not the right to unilaterally determine what share of it they receive,
and indeed, unless the shares are spelled out in advance, they either have
to make mutual agreement about the shares or take the matter to court.
> They sent delegations to the federal government to negotiate a final
> settlement of property and the Feds, (Lincoln) refused to negotiate at
> all.
Great matters of state are rarely resolved in a matter of ~39 days, which
is
the time between Lincoln's inauguration and the South firing on Fort
Sumter.
> If your wife is leaving you and you refuse to negotiate about property,
it
> is not her problem if she grabs her clothes and a frying pan to hit you
> with if you try and stop her.
That's a false analogy; nobody tryed to use force to prevent secession per
se. A better analogy is this: if you and your business partner have a
falling out, pulling a gun on him to resolve the owner****p of disputed
property is still assault with a deadly weapon.
> Funny thing about how Lincoln was ignoring the results of numerous
> landslide elections, and popular acts of state legislatures and
> secession conventions in southern states to secede, and holding onto
> federal property on the land of a seceded state and with the explicit
> intent of enforcement of federal taxes on the citizens of that seceded
> state.
I think if the South had attempted to secede in a peaceful and orderly
manner, that Lincoln would have had to give in to the inevitable.
> You must presume that the citizens of South Carolina had no right to
> seceded exactly as they seceded from the UK some 90 odd years before,
A process that took a decade from the first serious grievances to the
first
use of force, and that latter primarily on the part of the British.
> if you are going to hold that Lincoln had the right to tax the people of
> South Carolina, and maintain a fort for explicit purpose of collection
of
> such taxes, after they had passed ordinances of secession and withdrawn
> their congressional delegation from Wa****ngton.
It's not clear who was in the right there, but reasonable people give the
rule of law a chance over a reasonable period of time. By contrast, South
Carolina gave the legal process less than 30 days from secession until
they
decided to fire on the Star of the West, and about 4 1/2 months until they
actually fired on Fort Sumter.
By contrast, in a far more clear-cut case, the US and UN took longer to
take
military action against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf war.
--
Nate Edel http://www.cubiclehermit.com/
preferred email |
is "nate" at the | "I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity.
posting domain | I'm for it." - prologue to "Smut" by Tom Lehrer
|
