Seceding States And Counties

[Presbylicious]

[quote name='Socrates' date='26 March 2010 - 03:50 PM' timestamp='1269643815' post='2080938']
Sooner or later, every political debate ends up being about Ann Coulter.
[/quote] [url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law"]Coulter's Law?[/url]

Edited April 4, 2010 by Presbylicious

[Guest Ephesian]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' date='25 March 2010 - 02:49 AM' timestamp='1269496165' post='2079621']
Shame on me for not correcting the semantics, thanks for catching that.
[/quote]


You're right. It was a war of secession. The confederacy didn't wish to overthrow the Union government or subvert its government. They simply wanted to live without the interference of a a know-it-all federal government. I can certainly sympathize with that viewpoint now that congress has decided to wreck our economy once and for all by approving this monstrosity of a health care bill.

[Arco]

It's union or no.

The question is ultimately whether sovereignty resides in the Union of the states or in the states themselves. This is a difficult proposition to make sense out of -- for one, only fourteen states had any pre-existing sovereignty, and the rest were formed out of whole cloth by Congress, yet we explicitly understand the states to be legally equal -- New York does not possess rights which are denied to Wyoming, despite New York being a sovereign republic that acceded to the Union and Wyoming being created out of federally-held territory. We have to recognize that the states have given, in their assent to the Constitution, the vast majority of their sovereignty over to the Union, so the question is at that point "how much sovereignty *remains* in the state?" It no longer possesses independent foreign relations or trade. It doesn't ultimately govern its own territory. It has virtually none of the markers that define an independent state in anything approaching a functional capacity. This isn't simply in its inability to assert itself strongly against a militarily-superior power -- the Union -- it's in its inability to assert itself *legally* against that power. The supremacy clause of the Constitution explicitly subordinates state law to federal law, state power to federal power -- the states are elements of a greater whole, and not independent players with their own agency.

Truthfully, the relationship between state and federal union established in the Constitution is ambiguous at best -- it presents itself as a compact among the several states, but at the same time functions as a constituting organ, essentially something that precedes government rather than being established by government. This makes it very odd; it's both a statute and a basic law, deriving from and constituting simultaneously a government. If it precedes the government, the states are not sovereign ex officio; if is is instituted by government, they are, and the document is itself merely a weak contract of assent, establishing a league instead of a nation.

What do you want? A league of sovereign powers, each free but each competing, or a union in theory indissoluble, where every hand should bear up every back?

[Arco]

[quote name='Ephesian' date='06 April 2010 - 08:38 PM' timestamp='1270597083' post='2087995']
You're right. It was a war of secession. The confederacy didn't wish to overthrow the Union government or subvert its government. They simply wanted to live without the interference of a a know-it-all federal government. I can certainly sympathize with that viewpoint now that congress has decided to wreck our economy once and for all by approving this monstrosity of a health care bill.
[/quote]

What they wanted was to prolong a way of life which was no longer tenable, of which slavery was a significant part. While I'll grant the war was not fought primarily over slaves, but of what the abolition of slavery represented -- the end of the agrarian landed gentry and the hierarchy of social class upon which Southern society was based. This way of life was no longer tenable either in a Federal union or outside of it; to remain in the union was to be marginalized by the increasing economic power of the Northern states, an economic power which was quickly dominating the West as their larger population spread throughout the territories. This happened because the Southern plantation economy simply didn't lend itself to the formation of large cities. The crops didn't need complicated distribution plans and thus didn't need centralized hubs. Small-scale farming didn't exist on the same level as in, say, New England, so town centers for the sale of small goods were less necessary, and as a result, populations lagged. The South couldn't compete with the Northern states in congressional apportionment *or* economic power. So to stay in the Union would have meant to subordinate themselves to the North and have their way of life either stripped from them by force or simply abandoned as for reason of competitiveness.

Meanwhile, to *leave* the Union was to only hasten that death. The Confederacy would not have been able to compete in a global market, and would have likely found itself the subject of the same sorts of condemnations and boycotts that plagued Brazil until the 1870's. It's economy was based on one or two staple crops which were no longer selling at rates to which southerners had become accustomed, and would almost certainly have led to economic collapse. Let's also not forget how self-defeating the South's founding philosophy was -- the State of Georgia very nearly seceded *from the CSA* for fear that Jefferson Davis was too powerful. No, an independent confederacy would have been a basketcase on the world stage, collapsing either politically or economically or both. We may have been left with twelve tiny, squabbling taifa states fighting economic wars and reduced to third-world levels of comfort.

[SaintOfVirtue]

[quote][quote name='aalpha1989' date='26 March 2010 - 09:28 PM' timestamp='1269664107' post='2081131']
[url="http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/voluntary.htm"]Yes[/url], they do have the right according to the Constitution to secede. The Republican governments at the State level were intended to be independent of the Federal government. The Federal government was intended to be more of a confederacy than anything else.
[/quote]
[quote name='poetryofimage' date='27 March 2010 - 12:06 AM' timestamp='1269673580' post='2081189']
Of course the States have the right to secede. They did so from the Articles of Confederation, and they gave up no right in signing the Constitution. In fact, the 10th amendment specifically gives ALL RIGHTS not restricted by the Constitution to the States. All rights would include the right to secede.
[/quote][/quote]

Well, that's not the impression I get from reading Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 1, of the US Constitution.

[quote name='US Constitution, Article I, Section 10']
SECTION. 10.
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation;
grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money;
emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver
Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder,
ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation
of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay
any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what
may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection
Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid
by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of
the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be
subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

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.
[/quote]

At this point in time I would be in favor of secession. I do not see how secession is possible given the above. Of course if a state(s) wanted to secede then they wouldn't really care what the Constitution says, they'd just split and tell Washington to pack sand. Also it is my recollection that the Civil War was originally fought with the intention of stopping the south from splitting from the union. Lincoln did not grant freedom to the slaves until it became tactically advantageous to do so, otherwise he would have granted them freedom right at the start of the war.

[Arco]

[quote name='aalpha1989' date='27 March 2010 - 01:28 AM' timestamp='1269664107' post='2081131']
The Federal government was intended to be more of a confederacy than anything else.
[/quote]

No, it wasn't. They were explicitly abandoning a confederacy. We had had a decade of a confederacy that hadn't worked, and the push was to turn the confederation into a federation. The initial political divide -- Federalist versus Republican -- was essentially a divide over whether or not this republic was a democracy or an oligarchy, over *who* would rule this consolidated state, not whether or not it *was* a consolidated state. The Federalists pushed to fashion this federal government into an active, European-style state, with a standing army, a strong and centralizing national bank, and a national debt they could finance currency off of. It wasn't a question of balancing the sovereignties of the several states -- which were subsumed into the federal union -- but of social classes -- the British-oriented, culturally aristocratic Federalists who believed in a landed gentry who would be independent of politics as they would have no business interests, or the French-oriented, culturally democratic Republicans who believed the government functioned as representatives of the great mass of people beneath them, to whom they were accountable.

Consider the great debates of the day were over who got the vote, and whether the government would be a monarchy or not. The intention was not to create a confederacy or a league -- this was assumed to such a degree that people in government got in ferocious disagreements over the nature of this *unified state*.

It drives me batty to hear people talk about the intentions of the Founders who don't know jack about the Early Republic.

[Lounge Daddy]

[quote name='Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam' date='26 March 2010 - 10:59 AM' timestamp='1269619195' post='2080585']
Again I think you have misspelled the "War of Northern Aggression"
...
[/quote]

[SaintOfVirtue]

[quote name='SaintOfVirtue' date='08 July 2010 - 11:16 AM' timestamp='1278612994' post='2139370']
Well, that's not the impression I get from reading Article I, Section 10, Paragraph 1, of the US Constitution.[/quote]

We gonna beat around the bush, or will someone take on my argument?

[Aloysius]

SOV, the legal way to succeed is to rescind the states ratification of the constitution. It was ratified voluntarily by the state and therefore the state can voluntarily opt out of that agreement. Obviously once they rescind the Constitution it loses all force of law in that state.

The Supreme courts argument about "perpetual union" being in the articles of confederation and the constitution creating a "more perfect union" are terrible. Who's to say it's not a 'more perfect union' precisely because states continue to stay in it voluntarily? IMO, the phrase "perpetual union" was not included in the Constitution purposefully, keeping it the right of the State to ratify or rescind the Constitution at any time.

[dairygirl4u2c]

even if it's a weakness, propping up poorer countries (id guess it's generally a weakness, not always), that doesn't mean that the EU is just as bad as the USA, or is socialistic, etc.

the EU still by and large, is a lot more like a confederacy, as originally done by the USA. that means we're still mostly basing their system on confederacy, or not, for the most part.

the talk of propping up poorer countries then is just a side point, really ultimately irrelevant to the bigger picture.

[Nihil Obstat]

Edit:
I think I'm on the wrong thread.....

Edited July 13, 2010 by Nihil Obstat

[Sternhauser]

"If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation . . . to a continuance in the union . . . I have no hesitation in saying, 'Let us separate.'" --Thomas Jefferson, after the attempted secession of the New England Federalists.

"At Virginia's ratification convention, the delegates said, 'The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.'

In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what 'the people' meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, 'not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong."

[url="http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/politics/rights/1543-States-Have-Right-Secession.html"]Link.[/url]

~Sternhauser

Edited July 17, 2010 by Sternhauser

[SaintOfVirtue]

[quote name='Aloysius' date='12 July 2010 - 01:52 PM' timestamp='1278967956' post='2141800']
SOV, the legal way to succeed is to rescind the states ratification of the constitution. It was ratified voluntarily by the state and therefore the state can voluntarily opt out of that agreement. Obviously once they rescind the Constitution it loses all force of law in that state.

The Supreme courts argument about "perpetual union" being in the articles of confederation and the constitution creating a "more perfect union" are terrible. Who's to say it's not a 'more perfect union' precisely because states continue to stay in it voluntarily? IMO, the phrase "perpetual union" was not included in the Constitution purposefully, keeping it the right of the State to ratify or rescind the Constitution at any time.
[/quote]

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