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@Thomas,

I can't agree with that. While the question of the legality of secession is not resolved, the rest of the constitution is not held in abeyance. For so long as it is not positively known that secession were constitutionally acceptable, the Federal government was correct in assuming that the states at Montgomery, Alabama had entered into a confederacy in violation of the constitution.

But we're both just indulging chin music here. Essentially, the unstated position of Mr. Lincoln's government was that secession was not legal, but he did not frame it in those terms. He also did not frame it in terms of the abolition of slavery. Clever politician that he was, he framed it in terms of preserving the Union. Now, you can well say that that inferentially means that he considered secession unconstitutional, but politicians don't deal in inference. They only deal in what they have actually said. And, at all events, the states of the South were bent on a couse of war from the outset. In December, 1860, several states made application to the arsenal at St. Louis for the delivery of arms and munitions, before having passed secession ordinances. The war was about slavery, there can be no doubt. The election of Lincoln spurred several southern states to begin to prepare for war even before seceding from the Union. This was because they saw Lincoln as the abolitionist candidate. Never mind that he had no power to accomplish that himself, nor that there was not sufficient votes in Congress to pass an amendment to abolish slavery, nor sufficient states to ratify such an amendment. The hot-headed South was bent on war, they levied war on the Federal government while both Buchanan and Lincoln continued to act in a conciliatory manner, and they brought down upon their own devoted pates the might of the industrial North, carried as arms by their more numerous population, and thereby lost the war. They've been whining about it ever since. And, reality being what it is, the question of secession became moot, and their appeal to the tenth amendment effectively negated that amendment, until the Reagan era flirtation with a concept of states' rights--at which time the issue of secession did not come up.

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@Thomas,

You may well have found it in history books at one time. There was a Virginia cleric--Parson Weems--who cobbled those tales together, and claimed that he had them from Washington's acquaintance, although i don't believe he ever named names. The gullible will always cozy up to hagiography, though, so i'm sure he had a modest literary success in his own lifetime.

Mason Locke Weems

Wikipedia describes his 1800 book about Washington as a best seller. That was within a year of the old boy's death, a propitious time for Weems to publish.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I can't agree with that. While the question of the legality of secession is not resolved, the rest of the constitution is not held in abeyance. For so long as it is not positively known that secession were constitutionally acceptable, the Federal government was correct in assuming that the states at Montgomery, Alabama had entered into a confederacy in violation of the constitution.

The legality of secession is not resolved. But what is resolved, simply by elementary logic, is that secession either was either legal or it wasn't.

If secession was illegal, the Federal government was correct to quash the seceding states' rebellion, and was correct to condemn the confederacy as unconstitutional.
If secession was legal, the US constitution no longer bound the states that had seceded, because they were no longer part of the US. They were sovereign states, free to form a confederacy, that the US government had no business meddling with. If secession is legal, the Civil war was, indeed, a war of Northern aggression.

I take no position on which side was right about the constitution. All I'm saying is that the whole thing turns on the constitutionality of secession.

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I can only agree to the extent of saying that, as a thought experiment, the issue turns on the legality of secession. In the world of hard reality, the issues turned on the bellicosity of the South. They made their bed, they were obliged to lie in it, and have cried about it ever since. Had those states truly had an interest in the issue of the constitutionality of secession, they would not have had resort to armed violence so precipitously. As it was, it took months for the clowns to push the Federal government into the war they (the South) were obviously seeking.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I can only agree to the extent of saying that, as a thought experiment, the issue turns on the legality of secession. In the world of hard reality, the issues turned on the bellicosity of the South.

That's not reality, that's your interpretation: An interpretation that takes the war-winning side's interpretation for granted. Other people, like the revisionist Southerners you mentioned, don't take the Northern assumptions for granted. And given their interpretation, they quite correctly assert that by the time the South had rightfully seceded, the North had become a hostile occupation force in a sovereign country. There's nothing bellicose about throwing a hostile occupation force out of your country.

Or maybe I was just wrong in hearing a tone of indignation when you talked about those revisionist Southerners. Hearing tones in an internet conversation is error-prone, but unfortunately inevitable.

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Well, you should try not to "hear tones." And, it appears, you continue to ignore that the South started the war.

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@Thomas,

And that was not an interpretation. The fact that southern states applied to the St. Louis arsenal for arms and ammunition before they had even passed secession ordinances, the fact that they seized or attempted to seize Federal property before the Confederacy had even been formed, and the fact that they fired on Federal installations before the issue of secession was even canvassed as to its legality make my comment a statement of facts, not an interpretation. The war was well underway before any reasonable claim could be made that the South had been "occupied" by Federal troops.

Your argument sounds to me like the argument members of a condominium co-op might advance if they suddenly armed themselves, then held a meeting to withdraw from the co-op, and immediately began seizing for their exclusive use property held in common by the co-op. Florida did not offer to buy the Federal stores at Forts McRae and Barrancas, nor did they call for the handful of Federal troops there to withdraw. South Carolina seized customs agents and Federal property without warning and without any offer to pay for the property seized. The pattern continued right up to the seizure of the Federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia by forces of the Commonwealth of Virginia immediately after they had passed an ordinance of secession. At no time did any of these states call for Federal troops or agents to withdraw from their territory, at no time did they offer to compensate the Federal government for movable property and real estate seized. Even the fledgling United States in the 1790s agreed to and took measures to compensate British subjects for losses they alleged they sustained in the revolution. It looks to me like you whine about abstruse constitutional questions which have never been resolved while turning a blind eye to rampant, armed criminality.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Well, you should try not to "hear tones." And, it appears, you continue to ignore that the South started the war.

You say it started a war. The revisionists say it resisted federal tyranny, and that tyranny won.

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@Thomas,

The revisionist need to explain, then, what happened in Pensacola and Charleston. Who gives a rat's ass what clowns calling themselves historians have to say when they ignore demonstrable facts?

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

The revisionist need to explain, then, what happened in Pensacola and Charleston. Who gives a rat's ass what clowns calling themselves historians have to say when they ignore demonstrable facts?

Collateral damage. I'm sure the tax-rebellion of 1776, unfortunately misnamed "the Revolution", committed its own share of crimes.

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From the University of South Florida's "Floripedia" site:

Quote:

State Troops seize Arsenal and Forts. A few days before Florida seceded, the Quincy Guards seized the United States arsenal on the Apalachicola, with a good supply of arms and ammunition. On the next day Fort Marion at St. Augustine surrendered to the State troops without making any resistance. About the same time the navy yard, Fort Barraneas [sic], and Fort McRae near Pensacola were seized. But Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island, commanding the harbor of Pensacola, was still held by the United States troops; also the forts at Key West and the Tortugas. (emphasis added)

Source

Claims about occupation by Federal troops are ludicrous. The Federal troops in southern states were very few in number, and were basically caught there when those states seceded. A group of brigands complaining about the presence of garrison troops in the territory they want to claim is hardly a convincing argument.

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@Thomas,

Thomas wrote:

Setanta wrote:
The revisionist need to explain, then, what happened in Pensacola and Charleston. Who gives a rat's ass what clowns calling themselves historians have to say when they ignore demonstrable facts?

Collateral damage. I'm sure the tax-rebellion of 1776, unfortunately misnamed "the Revolution", committed its own share of crimes.

Is there supposed to be some logical correlation between my remarks that you quoted and your comments about the revolution?

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@Setanta,

Fair enough.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

Is there supposed to be some logical correlation between my remarks that you quoted and your comments about the revolution?

Although the correlation is mostly rhetorical, there is also an element of logical analogy there. Crimes have been committed in the course of what you consider a legitimate revolution. Crimes have been committed in the course of what you consider an illegitimate rebellion. The mere existence of such crimes didn't taint the secession of some American colonies from Britain enough to make it illegitimate. Neither should it taint the 1861 secession of some states from the Union in that way.

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In the case of the American revolution, British troops fired on American civilians in 1770 and 1775. When Americans took up arms against those troops, they already had a reasonable provocation. When secessionists took up arms and fired on Federal troops, they had no such provocation. The situations are not analogous.

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I came across a book that is available on the internet in pdf format. The author argues that the writing of the U.S. Constitution was a conspiracy to destroy the new nation's traditional Christian covenants.

Quote:

The ratification of the United States Constitution in 1787-88 was not an act of covenant renewal. It was an act of covenant-breaking: the substitution of a new covenant in the name of a new god.

Conspiracy in Philadelphia: Origins of the United States Constitution by Gary North:
http://www.garynorth.com/philadelphia.pdf

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@wandeljw,

With that pack of godless commies in Philadelphia in 1787, i have no doubt this will be the eye-opener the nation has been waiting for.

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@Setanta,

Quote:

Well, you should try not to "hear tones."

Quote:

They made their bed, they were obliged to lie in it, and have cried about it ever since. Had those states truly had an interest in the issue of the constitutionality of secession, they would not have had resort to armed violence so precipitously. As it was, it took months for the clowns to push the Federal government into the war they (the South) were obviously seeking.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

Wars settle who has the power. They don't settle what's legal. Government enforce illegal policies all the time. Just because the force is successful, that doesn't make them legal.

WQell, in the case of the US Civil War, it probably did both. The NOrth won AND, immediately the South and North, once again, became THE UNION.

The Magazine "Civil War" had a whole series of articles and letters about this very subject in NOv and Dec issues. Interesting how it keeps coming up.

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@Thomas,

Quote:

If secession itself was constitutional--

and it wasnt (If you use the word"Constitutional". The Constitution itself forbids any state from making its own confederacies or treties. Point is already made. Punct

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