Before 1860 secession was considered to be constitutional

[National Socialist]

I am sure she would....got anything of substance to share?

 

[bripat9643]

Why can't states secede today?

Just because some states that seceded 150 years ago started a war with the U.S.?

I'm pretty sure if circumstances called for it a state could secede anytime now.

The federal government started the war, not the Confederate states.

Whatever.

Your premise is pathetic idiocy, as ‘secession’ is indeed un-Constitutional.

You certainly haven't presented any evidence to support that contention. The Texas v. White decision was the most obviously flawed, biased and rigged Supreme Court decision ever handed down. Lincoln put the majority of the members who made the decision on the court. It's hardly plausible that they would rule that states had a right to secede. Their logic was utterly pathetic and based on the obviously false claim that Texas had been a state of the union for the 8 years prior to the decision. A state has a two senators and a number of House members to represent it in Congress. Texas had no such representation since 1861. There is no way that Texas qualified as a state of the union. Any decision based on the premise that it was is obviously false.

Only the worst kind of groveling boot-licking toady would defend the Texas v. White decision.

Thanks for unmasking yourself.

 

[bripat9643]

I'm not surprised that you admire a psychotic mass murderer. General Sherman murdered tens of thousand of Americans during the war. He burned their property, raped their wives and daughters and tried to starve the remainder. After the war he carried on the same agenda against the American Indians. Never has there been a more thoroughly despicable character in American history, but you think he's a hero.

Atlanta after Sherman passed through it:

 

[candycorn]

Why can't states secede today?

Just because some states that seceded 150 years ago started a war with the U.S.?

I'm pretty sure if circumstances called for it a state could secede anytime now.

The federal government started the war, not the Confederate states.

Whatever.

Your premise is pathetic idiocy, as ‘secession’ is indeed un-Constitutional.

Still...people do un-Constitutional things every day. If he and Mudwhistle and other "patriots" want to get into their SUVs and invade Fort Campbell...I say we let them do it and see how well it plays out for them.

 

[bripat9643]

The federal government started the war, not the Confederate states.

Whatever.

Your premise is pathetic idiocy, as ‘secession’ is indeed un-Constitutional.

Still...people do un-Constitutional things every day.

Yep, Obama is the perfect example of that fact.

BTW, turd, private individuals can't violate the Constitution since it only places limitations on government.

 

[TheOldSchool]

I'm not surprised that you admire a psychotic mass murderer. General Sherman murdered tens of thousand of Americans during the war. He burned their property, raped their wives and daughters and tried to starve the remainder. After the war he carried on the same agenda against the American Indians. Never has there been a more thoroughly despicable character in American history, but you think he's a hero.

The full quote:

"My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." I did not want them to cast in our teeth what General Hood had once done at Atlanta, that we had to call on their slaves to help us to subdue them. But, as regards kindness to the race ..., I assert that no army ever did more for that race than the one I commanded at Savannah."

Quote from a slave:

"We looked upon General Sherman, prior to his arrival, as a man, in the providence of God, specially set apart to accomplish this work, and we unanimously felt inexpressible gratitude to him, looking upon him as a man that should be honored for the faithful performance of his duty. Some of us called upon him immediately upon his arrival, and it is probable he did not meet [Secretary Stanton] with more courtesy than he met us. His conduct and deportment toward us characterized him as a friend and a gentleman."

 

[Old Rocks]

So here it is the birthday of our great nation, and these turds are argueing for the dissolution of our nation. And they would argue that they are patriots!

My Great-Grandfather fought at Fort Donaldson, Shiloh, and a hundred other places for the preservation of the USA. I would gladly don the uniform of my nation again, even at my age, to put down another such peice of idiocy. Thank God for a United State of America!

 

[bripat9643]

I'm not surprised that you admire a psychotic mass murderer. General Sherman murdered tens of thousand of Americans during the war. He burned their property, raped their wives and daughters and tried to starve the remainder. After the war he carried on the same agenda against the American Indians. Never has there been a more thoroughly despicable character in American history, but you think he's a hero.

The full quote:

"My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." I did not want them to cast in our teeth what General Hood had once done at Atlanta, that we had to call on their slaves to help us to subdue them. But, as regards kindness to the race ..., I assert that no army ever did more for that race than the one I commanded at Savannah."

Quote from a slave:

"We looked upon General Sherman, prior to his arrival, as a man, in the providence of God, specially set apart to accomplish this work, and we unanimously felt inexpressible gratitude to him, looking upon him as a man that should be honored for the faithful performance of his duty. Some of us called upon him immediately upon his arrival, and it is probable he did not meet [Secretary Stanton] with more courtesy than he met us. His conduct and deportment toward us characterized him as a friend and a gentleman."

Yeah, right. An illiterate slave said that. The irrefutable fact is that Sherman was a war criminal.

10 War Crimes of the US Civil War - Listverse

Sherman ordered his army of 62,000 men with 64 cannons to march from Atlanta 300 miles southeast to Savannah, Georgia and destroy absolutely everything in their path, especially the railroads. They ripped apart the ties, heated and wrapped the rails around trees, dynamited factories, and burned down towns, farms, banks and courthouses.

. . . .

Uncorroborated reports exist of a massacre of 200 civilians north of Columbia, South Carolina a few months before the march commenced, so Sherman knew full well what his men would do whenever no responsible eyes watched them. Three days after Atlanta was fully evacuated, Sherman ordered the city’s unburned sections shelled to ruins. One shell passed down through a house and blew off the legs of a man named Warner. The same shell cut his daughter in half.

Sherman personally saw his men rape and murder unyielding slaves throughout the march and gave no order to stop this. Those slaves who accepted the offer to enlist were given unarmed porter duties and treated comparatively well, but could only rely on food and water provisions when they were in surplus after the army was satisfied. Sherman also ordered the execution by firing squad of a 50-year-old man accused of espionage. He was most likely not guilty but was given no trial. All crops were either consumed or burned, as were all livestock slaughtered. It is surmised that 50,000 civilians were killed during the war, and possibly 1,000 of them died during the Savannah Campaign at the hands of soldiers unlawfully entering their houses to pillage. The 3rd and 4th Amendments to the Constitution prohibit this.

 

[bripat9643]

So here it is the birthday of our great nation, and these turds are argueing for the dissolution of our nation. And they would argue that they are patriots!

My Great-Grandfather fought at Fort Donaldson, Shiloh, and a hundred other places for the preservation of the USA. I would gladly don the uniform of my nation again, even at my age, to put down another such peice of idiocy. Thank God for a United State of America!

The federal government lost any claim to moral legitimacy when it invaded the Southern states in 1861. Your great grandfather was a stooge in the service of a tyrant.

 

[J.E.D]

So another "patriotic" right wing kook wants to disolve the union because someone he didnt like won an election. Give it a rest already chump. You lost, get over it.

Those of us who understand justice will never give up.

Good luck with your 'revolution', Bribaby.

 

[Old Rocks]

The issue was settled at Appamatox Court House. The United States is one nation. Indivisable.

And fools like you are traitors.

 

[TheOldSchool]

I'm not surprised that you admire a psychotic mass murderer. General Sherman murdered tens of thousand of Americans during the war. He burned their property, raped their wives and daughters and tried to starve the remainder. After the war he carried on the same agenda against the American Indians. Never has there been a more thoroughly despicable character in American history, but you think he's a hero.

The full quote:

"My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." I did not want them to cast in our teeth what General Hood had once done at Atlanta, that we had to call on their slaves to help us to subdue them. But, as regards kindness to the race ..., I assert that no army ever did more for that race than the one I commanded at Savannah."

Quote from a slave:

"We looked upon General Sherman, prior to his arrival, as a man, in the providence of God, specially set apart to accomplish this work, and we unanimously felt inexpressible gratitude to him, looking upon him as a man that should be honored for the faithful performance of his duty. Some of us called upon him immediately upon his arrival, and it is probable he did not meet [Secretary Stanton] with more courtesy than he met us. His conduct and deportment toward us characterized him as a friend and a gentleman."

Yeah, right. An illiterate slave said that. The irrefutable fact is that Sherman was a war criminal.

10 War Crimes of the US Civil War - Listverse

Sherman ordered his army of 62,000 men with 64 cannons to march from Atlanta 300 miles southeast to Savannah, Georgia and destroy absolutely everything in their path, especially the railroads. They ripped apart the ties, heated and wrapped the rails around trees, dynamited factories, and burned down towns, farms, banks and courthouses.

. . . .

Uncorroborated reports exist of a massacre of 200 civilians north of Columbia, South Carolina a few months before the march commenced, so Sherman knew full well what his men would do whenever no responsible eyes watched them. Three days after Atlanta was fully evacuated, Sherman ordered the city’s unburned sections shelled to ruins. One shell passed down through a house and blew off the legs of a man named Warner. The same shell cut his daughter in half.

Sherman personally saw his men rape and murder unyielding slaves throughout the march and gave no order to stop this. Those slaves who accepted the offer to enlist were given unarmed porter duties and treated comparatively well, but could only rely on food and water provisions when they were in surplus after the army was satisfied. Sherman also ordered the execution by firing squad of a 50-year-old man accused of espionage. He was most likely not guilty but was given no trial. All crops were either consumed or burned, as were all livestock slaughtered. It is surmised that 50,000 civilians were killed during the war, and possibly 1,000 of them died during the Savannah Campaign at the hands of soldiers unlawfully entering their houses to pillage. The 3rd and 4th Amendments to the Constitution prohibit this.

Well the south got whupped. So did Hitler. Alabama and Germany had to learn to live with it. They're both doing fine now.

 

[J.E.D]

The only chance we had after Lincoln pretty much made himself dictator was when the south seceded,we lost the battle and are an occupied nation....one day I hope we will kick the occupying army out and declare our independence once again and final.

Then why don't you stand up and fight the occupying army like a man instead of whining about it on the interwebz, you fucking pussified man-child?

 

[The2ndAmendment]

All of the rights found in the Declaration of Independence are protected by the Ninth Amendment.

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people

The word RETAINED is paramount, because it specifically embodies those rights found in the Declaration of Dependence, which was written long before the Constitution.

The definition of retain:

Continue to have (something); keep possession of: "the house retains many original features".

Now let's read this Supreme Court decision:
Chisholm v. Georgia 2 Dall (U.S.) 419, 456-480 (1793) (p.470)

All the country now possessed by the United States was then a part of the dominions appertaining to the crown of Great Britain. Every acre of land in this country was then held mediately or immediately from that crown. All the people of this country were then, subjects of the King of Great Britain, and owed allegiance to him; . . . From the crown of Great Britain, the sovereignty of their country passed to the people of it; . . . Here we see the people acting as sovereigns of the whole country; . . .
(p.471) At the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects and have none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty.

Ok, seems to check out!

 

[bripat9643]

The issue was settled at Appamatox Court House. The United States is one nation. Indivisable.

And fools like you are traitors.

Right, it was "settled" with an iron fist, not with reason.

All you've said is that might makes right - the logic of the schoolyard bully and the dictator.

 

[bripat9643]

The only chance we had after Lincoln pretty much made himself dictator was when the south seceded,we lost the battle and are an occupied nation....one day I hope we will kick the occupying army out and declare our independence once again and final.

Then why don't you stand up and fight the occupying army like a man instead of whining about it on the interwebz, you fucking pussified man-child?

Why are all libturds fucking jackasses like you?

 

[bripat9643]

The full quote:

"My aim then was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. "Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." I did not want them to cast in our teeth what General Hood had once done at Atlanta, that we had to call on their slaves to help us to subdue them. But, as regards kindness to the race ..., I assert that no army ever did more for that race than the one I commanded at Savannah."

Quote from a slave:

"We looked upon General Sherman, prior to his arrival, as a man, in the providence of God, specially set apart to accomplish this work, and we unanimously felt inexpressible gratitude to him, looking upon him as a man that should be honored for the faithful performance of his duty. Some of us called upon him immediately upon his arrival, and it is probable he did not meet [Secretary Stanton] with more courtesy than he met us. His conduct and deportment toward us characterized him as a friend and a gentleman."

Yeah, right. An illiterate slave said that. The irrefutable fact is that Sherman was a war criminal.

10 War Crimes of the US Civil War - Listverse

Sherman ordered his army of 62,000 men with 64 cannons to march from Atlanta 300 miles southeast to Savannah, Georgia and destroy absolutely everything in their path, especially the railroads. They ripped apart the ties, heated and wrapped the rails around trees, dynamited factories, and burned down towns, farms, banks and courthouses.

. . . .

Uncorroborated reports exist of a massacre of 200 civilians north of Columbia, South Carolina a few months before the march commenced, so Sherman knew full well what his men would do whenever no responsible eyes watched them. Three days after Atlanta was fully evacuated, Sherman ordered the city’s unburned sections shelled to ruins. One shell passed down through a house and blew off the legs of a man named Warner. The same shell cut his daughter in half.

Sherman personally saw his men rape and murder unyielding slaves throughout the march and gave no order to stop this. Those slaves who accepted the offer to enlist were given unarmed porter duties and treated comparatively well, but could only rely on food and water provisions when they were in surplus after the army was satisfied. Sherman also ordered the execution by firing squad of a 50-year-old man accused of espionage. He was most likely not guilty but was given no trial. All crops were either consumed or burned, as were all livestock slaughtered. It is surmised that 50,000 civilians were killed during the war, and possibly 1,000 of them died during the Savannah Campaign at the hands of soldiers unlawfully entering their houses to pillage. The 3rd and 4th Amendments to the Constitution prohibit this.

Well the south got whupped. So did Hitler. Alabama and Germany had to learn to live with it. They're both doing fine now.

In other words, might makes right, and you don't care if the victor is in the right or not.

That's the liberal credo! I'll remember that the next time some libturd is whining about how we stole the southwest from Mexico or the USA from the Indians.

 

[NYcarbineer]

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

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

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

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

I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.

It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.

Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

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

He goes on to say:

If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

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

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

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

 

[bripat9643]

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

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

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

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

I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.

It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.

Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

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

He goes on to say:

If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

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

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

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

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

Furthermore, the articles of confederation also claimed to be "perpetual," but the Founding Fathers had to abolish them in order to adopt the Constitution. So it appears that not even the Founding Fathers endorsed the notion that a Federation of states could not be dissolved.

Here is more evidence that people accepted the idea that secession was perfectly legal:

On December 17, 1860 the New York Daily Tribune editorialized that "We have repeatedly asked those who dissent from our view of this matter [the legality of peaceful secession] to tell us frankly whether they do or do not assent to Mr. Jefferson’s statement in the Declaration of Independence that governments ‘derive their just powers from the consent of the governed . . . . We do heartily accept this doctrine, believing it intrinsically sound, beneficent, and one that , universally accepted, is calculated to prevent the shedding of seas of human blood." Furthermore, the Tribune wrote, "f it justified the secession from the British Empire of Three Millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861."

The Kenosha, Wisconsin Democrat editorialized on January 11, 1861, that "The founders of our government were constant secessionists. They not only claimed the right for themselves, but conceded it to others. They were not only secessionists in theory, but in practice.. The old confederation between the states [the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union] was especially declared perpetual by the instrument itself. Yet Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and the hosts of heroes and statesman of that day seceded from it." And, "The Constitution provides no means of coercing a state in the Union; nor any punishment for secession."

Again on February 23, 1861, the New York Daily Tribune reiterated its view that "We must not, in behalf of either of the Union of Freedom, trample down the great truth that ‘governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed.’"

The Washington, D.C. States and Union newspaper editorialized on March 21, 1861, that "The people are the ruling judges, the States independent sovereigns. Where the people chose to change their political condition, as our own Declaration of Independence first promulgated, they have a right to do so. If the doctrine was good then, it is good now. Call that right by whatever name you please, secession or revolution, it makes no sort of difference."

This last sentence was a response to the Republican Party propaganda machine of the day that invented the theory that the Declaration allows for a "right of revolution" but not a right of "secession." The States and Union recognized immediately that this non-distinction was nothing more than a rhetorical flimflam designed to deceive the public about the meaning of their own Declaration of Independence. It is a piece of lying propaganda that is repeated to this day by apologists for the American welfare/warfare/police state, especially the Lincoln-worshipping neocons at National Review, the Claremont Institute, and other appendages of the Republican Party.

On the eve of the war the Providence, Rhode Island Evening Press warned that "the employment of [military] force" against citizens who no longer consented to being governed by Washington, D.C. , "can have no other result than to make the revolution itself complete and lasting, at the expense of thousands of lives, hundreds of millions of dollars, and amount of wretchedness fearful to contemplate, and the humiliation of the American name."

The Evening Press then reminded its readers that in the American Revolution the colonists rejected "the Divine right of Kings" to do whatever they wanted to their subjects. "Our forefathers disputed this dictum," they wrote, and "rose against it, fought against it, and by successful revolution accomplished their independence of it. In its place they substituted the doctrine that ‘to secure human happiness, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed . . ."

 

[Billo_Really]

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

The first several generations of Americans understood that the Declaration of Independence was the ultimate states’ rights document.​

The Articles of Confederation were the ultimate States rights' documents and if the Framers wanted the States to have more rights, they would of kept more of them, instead of throwing most of them out!

I find it hilarious, that the right are so butt hurt on not getting their way and being wholesale rejected by the rest of the country, that they actually wanna secede from the union.

Some fuckin' patriots you turned out to be!

Word to the right, during the worst 8 years (Bush43) this country has ever had to endure (aside from the Civil War), the left never thought of secession.

That's what a patriot is!