It has been a very hard and frustrating week on the road. Mind you it did not start that way. Freight was planned with a trip home lined up. Made plans to see my sweet grand baby, maybe dinner with the kids, even a fishing trip because the moon was gonna be right for some warm spring afternoon fishing. So goes the life of an independent truck driver. You make plans and then one idiot ruins not just your day but your week, and leaves a little one disappointed.
For most people what you call a mistake or an error has only the effect of doing a task over. You may have a pissed off boss breathing down your neck, but you go home with your other hood rats, cronies, bff's or whatever, have a drink and laugh about it. I am not afforded that luxury. I am ridiculed in the press and social circles when I make a mistake. I didn't make a correct entry on my logbook and then some asshole on her cellphone runs a light and I kill or maim her. She was clearly in the wrong, but my "mistake" well, that means I may have lied and should not have been there according to the lawyer so the wreck is my fault. Maybe I forget to check turn signals and someone hits me because I made a "mistake" and thought I saw a working light.
That clerk and her barely English speaking dock foreman made a "mistake". To them it was no big deal, just a little extra work. But to me? I missed my little grand baby and now she is sad cause pawpaw said he was coming home and now he's not. I don't get to sit down tonight and have dinner with my family. I'll miss that really good day fishing. Oh, and I will not even get into the lost revenue that keeps my lights on and pantry filled. The people on the other end of the phone that I call to inform and vent my frustrations to, they don't give a rat's ass either. They are just desk clerks who need to get home and watch over paid sports figures run back and forth and throw a ball at each other.
Your little "mistakes" can have big impacts, much like a collision of a truck, it is time that cannot be gotten back, it is the development of ideas that someone says they will be there but you cannot trust them in the future.
On one more note, I am more than willing to share who the customer was that screwed me over this week. You see, this company prides itself on the fact that its products are "Made in The USA". That sounds really nice, and while they are physically located in the USA, the reason they are so inexpensive relates to the fact they hire mostly illegals to work there. Corsicana Bedding in Corsicana, TX. Sweatshop conditions, run down buildings, products that are not manufactured in a clean facility.
On The Road
The everyday lifestyle of an over the road truck driver. Here you will see pics of daily life, hear my vents and frustrations, and travel this beautiful country of ours.
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Sunday, April 12, 2015
I am back again
It has been way too long and I promise to keep this up this time. I have left the wonderful world of Power Only transportation with the best company in the world, Trailer Transit, Inc. You can find them at www.trailertransit.com
I spent a couple of months at a bulk hauler, Oakley, out of North Little Rock, AR. They are an OK company if you like to speed, run overweight, and compete against other drivers to make money. I will not recommend them to anyone at anytime for any reason.
I now find myself as an owner operator leased on to the company that trained me and started my career in 1990. Schneider National Carriers based out of Green Bay, WI. While they do have their faults, I came back because I needed to be home more often. I have a little girl, my 4 year old granddaughter who absolutely loves her pawpaw and I am gonna be there for her. This current program allows me to choose my own freight and get home when I need to be there.
I spent a couple of months at a bulk hauler, Oakley, out of North Little Rock, AR. They are an OK company if you like to speed, run overweight, and compete against other drivers to make money. I will not recommend them to anyone at anytime for any reason.
I now find myself as an owner operator leased on to the company that trained me and started my career in 1990. Schneider National Carriers based out of Green Bay, WI. While they do have their faults, I came back because I needed to be home more often. I have a little girl, my 4 year old granddaughter who absolutely loves her pawpaw and I am gonna be there for her. This current program allows me to choose my own freight and get home when I need to be there.
Sunday, August 31, 2014
Lincoln's War on Independent States
The American Revolution and the Secession of Southern States
The two events that did more than any other to shape the
course of American history are the struggle for American independence from
Great Britain that historians call the Revolutionary War and the struggle for
Southern independence that historians call the Civil War. So let’s look at some
similarities and differences between them.
When in 1776 thirteen British colonies in America set forth
on a quest for independence, it was looked upon by the British government as a
rebellion, and those who took part in it were called rebels and traitors. For
eight years the British attempted to crush the rebellion, and had they been
able to do so, those who took part in it would have been punished for treason.
In 1861, seventy-eight years after the signing of the Treaty
of Paris in which His Britanic Majesty recognized the thirteen "free,
sovereign, and independent States,” four of those now sovereign states, along
with several others that had subsequently been created, also declared their
independence. And just as the British had done in 1776, the United States
government called it a rebellion, and those who took part in it were called
rebels and traitors.
Because the united colonies were successful in their quest,
those who fought for independence are now called patriots. But because the
Southern states were not successful in their quest, those who fought for
independence have been called traitors. And though these two historical events
are said to be parallels with opposite outcomes, there is a significant difference
that most historians either do not see or choose not to explain.
In the first case, the British government existed before the
thirteen American colonies, and those colonies were established by grants and
charters from that government. In the second case, the thirteen independent and
sovereign states existed before the United States government, and that
government was created by a constitution drafted and ratified by conventions of
the people in those states. And so, in the first case the British government
was the superior and the American colonies the inferior, while in the second
case the states and the citizens thereof were the superior and the United
States government the inferior. This is confirmed by the 9th and 10th
Amendments to the Constitution.
Article VII of the Constitution says: “The Ratification of
the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of
this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.” (Note the last
phrase which by exclusion makes it clear that any states not ratifying the
Constitution would not become a part of the new federation.)
Because it had been established that the Constitution of the
United States could not take effect until it had been ratified by no fewer than
nine states, had that number not ratified the Constitution, there would have
been no federal government and thus no United States of America.
As fortune would have it, eleven states ratified the
Constitution; the seats of Congress were filled; a president and vice-president
were elected; and the government began to function.
It is important to clarify here that as previously noted
regarding the status of states not ratifying the Constitution, as Rhode Island
and North Carolina had not yet ratified the Constitution, they could not take
part in the elections of 1788 and played no further role in the establishment
of the government at that time. And until they did ratify the Constitution,
they remained separate and independent sovereign states and could have remained
so indefinitely. Note also that Vermont, which was not one of the original
thirteen states but which had played a notable part in the struggle for
independence, did not unite with the other states in the formation of the
government under the Articles of Confederation and remained sovereign and
independent until March of 1791—three years after the Constitution had been
ratified.
Just as when in 1776 the thirteen American colonies wished
only to separate in peace and pursue their own destiny, in 1861 the seceded
Southern states wished only to “go in peace” and be “let alone.” And as in 1861
neither the Constitution nor any law of the United States prohibited the states
that had voluntarily entered into the compact of union from separating from
that compact, the secession of Southern states was not a rebellion, and those
who fought for independence from the United States were not traitors. (Had
there been a United States Military Academy at West Point in 1776 and Benedict
Arnold had graduated from that institution, his portrait would not be hanging
in the gallery there as are the portraits of Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall”
Jackson. And had Confederate Lieutenant General Joseph Wheeler been a traitor,
he certainly would not have been given command of United States cavalry forces
in Cuba during the war between the United States and Spain. The same might be
said of Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., the highest-rankking U.S. officer
to be killed during WW-II, for he was the son of Confederate general Simon
Bolivar Buckner..
Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defines
rebellion as 1. open, organized, and armed resistance to ones government or
ruler or 2. resistance to or defiance of any authority, control, or tradition.
If you begin with the second definition and follow with the
first, you will have the sequence that characterizes the struggle for American
independence from Great Britain. But the definition cannot fit the struggle for
Southern independence from the United States, for those states could not have
been in “open, organized, and armed resistance” to the government of a nation
of which they were no longer a part. To refute this, one must prove the
secession of Southern states to have been either un-Constitutional or illegal.
Remember these differences:
The American colonies came into existence by virtue of
grants or charters from theBritish government while the United States
government came into existence by virtue of a constitution drafted and ratified
by conventions in nine of thirteen sovereign states. And there is ample
evidence that in their doing so, they had no intention of surrendering their
sovereignty but rather of creating a government of specifically limited powers
for the purpose of making it possible to cooperate on such matters and in such
circumstances as affected their common interest.
Now note these further differences between the American
colonies that declared their independence from Great Britain in 1776 and the
Southern states that declared their independence from the United States in
1860-61:
The American colonies, having no warrant for separation
under British law, claimed their right to independence on the philosophy of
Thomas Jefferson and John Locke as expressed in the Declaration of
Independence—viz., “…the laws of nature and of nature’s God” and “…whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the
People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” The seceding
Southern states, however, claimed their right to independence both on the
arguments set forth in the Declaration of Independence and also on the fact
that they had voluntarily acceded to a compact of union with other states from
which they could voluntarily secede as expressed by James Madison when he
wrote: "a breach of any one article by any one party, leaves all other parties
at liberty to consider the whole convention as dissolved.”
(Source: The Madison Papers (Philadelphia: 1840), 895, in H.
Newcomb Morse, "The Foundations and Meaning of Secession," Stetson
University College of Law, Stetson Law Review, Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986), 426.)
_____
Note: Stetson University, located in DeLand, Florida, is my
alma mater. It was founded in 1883 and is Florida's first university. Stetson's
College of Law, located in St. Petersburg, was founded in 1900 and is Florida's
oldest law school.
_____
It is important to note that whereas the Declaration of
Independence claims the right of any people “to alter or to abolish it [their
existing government], and to institute new Government…,” the Southern states
had no desire to alter or change the government of the United States but simply
to form one of their own, and in doing so, “laying its foundation on such
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Surprising as it may seem to some, in 1847 when he was a
Congressional Representative from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln made a compelling
case for secession in a speech before the House of Representatives in reference
to the war with Mexico and the declaration of Independence of the Republic of
Texas:
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the
power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form
a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, --a most sacred
right--a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is
this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing
government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may
revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit.
More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize,
putting down a minority, intermingled with , or near about them, who may oppose
their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the Tories of our own
revolution." (Congressional Record, Jan. 12, 1847)
Ironically, and in contradiction to his previous statement,
just 13 years later Lincoln claimed that the Southern States did NOT have the
right to secede and that somehow the government came before the states formed
the union and its government by ratifying the Constitution. He argued in his
1861 Inaugural address that "Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in
the fundamental law of all national governments." This is hardly consistent
with his argument in 1847.
(It should also be noted that the Framers of the
Constitution specifically avoided the use of the words "national" and
"perpetual" and in every instance struck them from proposed
documents. James Madison made it clear that the people, their liberties, and
their "safety and happiness" were more important than any form of
government when he said, "The safety and happiness of society are the
objects at which all political institutions must be sacrificed." (It seems
to be quite a stretch of the purpose of preserving the “safety and happiness of
society” that the political institution known as the Confederate States of
America had to be sacrificed.)
It is important to note in this context that no state would
have ratified the Constitution if it had contained any language declaring the
Union to be indivisible. Moreover, three states—Virginia, New York, and Rhode
Island—explicitly reserved the right to sever the bonds of union as follows:
Virginia—"We the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in
pursuance of a recommendation of the General Assembly and now met in
Convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings
of the Federal Convention and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation
hath enabled us to decide thereon, do in the name and behalf of the People of
Virginia declare and make known that 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 and oppression, and that
every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will"; New
York--"That all power is naturally vested in, and consequently derived
from the people"; and Rhode Island—“that the powers of government may be
reassumed by the people whensover it shall become necessary to their
happiness." (From Part 2 of “The Right of a State to Secede from the
Union” in Constitutional History of Secession by John Remington Graham)
Also in the reference just cited, Graham points out that in
the Virginia Convention of 1788, John Marshall asserted: "We are
threatened with the loss of our liberties by possible abuse of power,
notwithstanding the maxim that those who give power may take it away. It is the
people who give power, and can take it back. Who shall restrain them. They are
the masters who give it, and of whom their servants hold it."
The fact that none of the other states that ratified the
Constitution offered any objection to the right to withdraw from the Union as
expressed by Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island (and that their doccumends of
ratification wer accepted as written) is strong evidence that all the states
viewed the right to withdraw from the compact as a fundamental right.
Southerners during the secession debate knew and understood
this argument. Senator Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana, a brilliant legal mind
who was later Attorney General, Secretary of War and Secretary of State of the
Confederacy, in his farewell speech to the United States Senate on February 5,
1861, said: “The rights of Louisiana as a sovereign state are those of
Virginia; no more, no less. Let those who deny her right to resume delegated
powers, successfully refute the claim of Virginia to the same right, in spite
of her expressed reservation made and notified to her sister states when she
consented to enter the Union.” (Judah P. Benjamin, "Farewell Address to
the U. S. Senate," delivered February 5, 1861, in Edwin Anderson Alderman,
and Joel Chandler Harris, eds., Library of Southern Literature (Atlanta: The
Martin and Hoyt Company, 1907), Volume I, 318.)
And as some argue that the seceding Southern states acted
with reckless abandon, it should be noted that they held that any such
separation was not to be undertaken for trivial or insignificant reasons as was
expressed by James Madison in a letter to Nicholas P. Trist on February 15,
1830:
“Applying a like view of the subject to the case of the U.
S. it results, that the compact being among individuals as embodied into
States, no State can at pleasure release itself therefrom, and set up for
itself. The compact can only be dissolved by the consent of the other parties,
or by usurpations or abuses of power justly having that effect."
President James Buchanan said in his inaugural address that
the founding fathers rejected the idea of allowing the federal government to
use force to compel the obedience of a state:
“The question fairly stated is, Has the Constitution
delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is
attempting to withdraw or has actually withdrawn from the Confederacy? If
answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has
been conferred upon Congress to declare and to make war against a State. But no
such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the
Federal Government. It is manifest upon an inspection of the Constitution that
this is not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress, and
it is equally apparent that its exercise is not ‘necessary and proper for
carrying into execution’ any one of these powers.
“So far from this power having been delegated to Congress,
it was expressly refused by the Convention which framed the Constitution. It is
clear from the proceedings of that body that on the 31st May, 1787, the clause
‘authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole against a delinquent State’
came up for consideration. Mr. Madison opposed it in a brief but powerful
speech, from which I shall extract but a single sentence. He observed: ‘The use
of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an
infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party
attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.’
“Upon his motion the clause was unanimously postponed, and
was never, I believe, again presented. Soon afterwards, on the 8th June, 1787,
when incidentally adverting to the subject, he said: ‘Any government for the
United States formed on the supposed practicability of using force against the
unconstitutional proceedings of the States would prove as visionary and
fallacious as the government of Congress,’ evidently meaning the then existing
Congress of the old Confederation.
“Without descending to particulars, it may be safely
asserted that the power to make war against a State is at variance with the
whole spirit and intent of the Constitution.”
American legal giant William Rawle, whose book, A View of
the Constitution of the United States, was a standard text at West Point up
until the War Between the States (and used by the deligates to the Hartford
Convention), said that Article IV:4 does not provide any authority for the
federal government to use force against a state that has left the Union:
“Hence, the term guarantee, indicates that the United States
are authorized to oppose, and if possible, prevent every state in the Union
from relinquishing the republican form of government, and as auxiliary means,
they are expressly authorized and required to employ their force on the
application of the constituted authorities of each state, "to repress
domestic violence." If a faction should attempt to subvert the government
of a state for the purpose of destroying its republican form, the paternal
power of the Union could thus be called forth to subdue it. Yet it is not to be
understood, that its interposition would be justifiable, if the people of a
state should determine to retire from the Union, whether they adopted another
or retained the same form of government, or if they should, with the express
intention of seceding, expunge the representative system from their code, and
thereby incapacitate themselves from concurring according to the mode now
prescribed, in the choice of certain public officers of the United States. The
principle of representation, although certainly the wisest and best, is not
essential to the being of a republic, but to continue a member of the Union, it
must be preserved, and therefore the guarantee must be so construed. It depends
on the state itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation,
because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To
deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political
systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to
determine how they will be governed. This right must be considered as an
ingredient in the original composition of the general government, which, though
not expressed, was mutually understood, and the doctrine heretofore presented
to the reader in regard to the indefeasible nature of personal allegiance, is
so far qualified in respect to allegiance to the United States. It was
observed, that it was competent for a state to make a compact with its
citizens, that the reciprocal obligations of protection and allegiance might
cease on certain events; and it was further observed, that allegiance would
necessarily cease on the dissolution of the society to which it was due.”
(Rawle, William, A View of the Constitution of the United
States, 2nd Edition, 1829, pp. 295-304, 305-307)
(Most people think that in 1860 thirteen Southern states
were chafeing at the bit to break away from the Union. However, the truth is
that it took just ten days short of a year for thirteen states to make this
move—six of them deciding to break away only after Lincoln had declared war on
the first seven.)
A less drastic but equally important right claimed by
virtually all of the founders of the Consttitution was that of nullification as
explained by John Remington Graham in the following paragraphs from “The right
of a State to Secede from the Union” in his book Constitutional History of
Secession:
“Tied to the right of secession was the twin right of
nullification, which was a cautious and gradual kind of secession actually
understood at the time of the formation of the United States Constitution as an
extraordinary mode of redress against unconstitutional acts within or of the
Union in a case of unusual magnitude where, due to the passions of the day, or
the very nature of the question, normal modes of redress by petition or
litigation could not be effective and beneficial. It was a process known to
have three distinct stages:
“First, there might be an act of interposition,- i.e., a
resolution of formal protest adopted by the legislature of an offended State,
promulgating a solemn declaration identifying the offensive acts of the
government of the Union or of sister States as unconstitutional and injurious,
and concluding with an appropriate demand for redress, lest further measures
become necessary;
“Second, if interposition should fail to induce justice, the
legislature of the offended State might then issue a summons for the election
and assembly of the People in Convention, which could then meet, and, by
command of supreme and irresistible authority, adopt an ordinance of
nullification, declaring the unconstitutional acts null and void, and
authorizing or directing the government of the State to proceed with concrete
measures to obstruct any further implementation of the wrongful acts within her
territory;
“Third, if the ordinance of nullification should fail to
restore proper balance between the Union and the State, the People in
Convention could then, by act of sovereign power, as the means of enforcing the
nullification, adopt an ordinance of secession, lawfully withdrawing the State
from the Union.
“Interposition as a precursor to nullification was well
illustrated by the resolutions of the Virginia House of Burgesses on May 30,
1765, denouncing the unconstitutionality of the Stamp Act. Due to the wisdom
and eloquence of William Pitt, the crisis passed, and interposition did not
mature by stages into secession from the British Empire. Secession occurred
only a decade later on another occasion, upon fresh and aggravated wrongs,
inducing Rhode Island, Virginia, and other colonies of England in North America
to withdraw from the British Empire.
“Interposition was also mentioned by James Madison in the
First Congress under the United States Constitution where he said, ‘The state
legislatures will jealously and closely watch the operations of this
government, and will be able to resist with more effect every assumption of power.’
“The formal use of nullification by the ultimate legal
powers of the several States was foreseen in the Virginia Convention of 1788
where George Nicholas noted worry over abuse of the power of Congress [and]
then asked, ‘Who is to determine the extent of such powers? I say, the same
power which, in all well-regulated communities, determines the extent of
legislative powers. If they exceeded these powers, the judiciary will declare
it void, or else the people will have the right to declare it void.’”
(Considering the present-day unfettered usurpations of power
by the U.S. president and Congress, what Madison and Nicholas foresaw cannot
seem anything less than alarmingly prophetic.)
[John Remington Graham has degrees in philosophy and law
from the University of Minnesota. A former law professor and experienced trial
lawyer, he has devoted much time to the study of British, American, and
Canadian constitutional law and history.]
There is no shortage in today’s media of allegations of
usurpation and abuse of power at the highest levels of government, but in fact
such excesses have been with us almost from the beginning, and some of them
(actual or presumed) have led to Constitutional crises that could have resulted
in the separation of one state or another from the Union. (Massachusetts, for
example, threatened to secede four times—in the early days on the adjustment of
state debts, on the Louisiana Purchase by Jefferson, during the War of 1812,
and on the annexation of Texas. One chamber of the Massachusetts legislature
actually passed a resolution of secession.)
In 1798 during the John Adams administration, the
Federalists, sensing their power draining away because of immigration and
territorial expansion, put through Congress three laws intended to check the
growth of the rising Democratic Party. Because newly naturalized citizens were
generally voting for that party, the Naturalization Act increased the waiting
time for naturalized citizenship from five to fourteen years. The Alien Act
allowed the President, at his discretion, to deport any foreigner without due
process of law. The Sedition Act broadly criminalized libel against federal
officials, even allowing the fine and imprisonment of two or more people who
gathered in political protest. (Under this law Congressman Matthew Lyon of
Vermont was imprisoned for writing a letter to a newspaper criticizing a
federal judge. He was re-elected to Congress while still in prison.)
Outraged over these abuses of the Constitution, Thomas
Jefferson, then vice-president of the United States, and James Madison,
recently retired from Congress, evoked the principle of “nullification”—the
refusal of a state to enforce a federal law it deems to be un-Constitutional.
This resulted in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of November and December
of 1798.
For the state of Kentucky, Jefferson wrote: "Resolved,
That the several States composing the United States of America are not united
on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that,
by compact, under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States,
and of amendments thereto, they constituted a government for special purposes,
delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving each State to
itself the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that,
whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are
unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each state acceded
as a State, and is an integral party; that the government created by their
compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the powers delegated to
itself, since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constituent, the
measure of its powers; but that, as in cases of compact among powers having no
common judge each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well as of
infractions as of the mode of redress."
For the state of Virginia, Madison wrote: "Resolved,
That the General Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare that it
views the powers of the federal government as resulting from a compact to which
the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the
instrument constituting that compact, and as no further valid than they are
authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that, in case of a
deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by the
said compact, the States, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in
duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and
maintaining within the respective limits the authorities, rights and liberties
appertaining to them.”
In a letter to Madison in 1799, Jefferson went further to
say that if the abuses of the Constitution did not cease, Kentucky and Virginia
should "sever ourselves from that union we so much value, rather than give
up the rights of self government which we have reserved, and in which alone we
see liberty, safety and happiness.”
The crisis ended with the expiration of the Alien and Sedition
Acts, but the principle of nullification remained. Vermont and Massachusetts
nullified the Fugitive Slave Law of 1793. At least ten Northern states passed
“Personal Liberty” laws that nullified the Fugitive Slave Law of the Compromise
of 1850 as well as Article IV of the U.S. Constitution. Two of John Brown’s
sons, wanted in Virginia for insurrection and murder, were harbored in Ohio and
Iowa, also in violation of Article IV.
Ironically, the New England Federalists, who had stood so
firm against the doctrine of nullification in Kentucky and Virginia, were quick
to embrace it during the War of 1812. Massachusetts and Connecticut, angered
over the federal government’s institution of a draft and an embargo against
trade with Great Britain, withdrew their militias. In Vermont there was talk of
Secession. In December 1814, deligates from these states along with others from
New Hampshire and Rhode Island met in Hartford, Connecticut, to consider what
drastic measures they might take to protect their states from the abuses of
federal power—including the possibility of seceding from the Union. By
selecting a military leader for that eventuality, they took a giant step beyond
Jefferson’s earlier suggestion that Kentucky and Virginia might secede from the
Union. This meeting has become known as the Hartford Convention. A delegation
was sent to present their demands to the federal government at its temporary
capital at Philadelphia, but by the time they arrived the war had ended.
The most serious test of the principle of nullification came
during the early 1830s over what some refer to as the Tariffs of Abomination.
As it is not easily dealt with in a few words, I have included it as an addendum
entitled “Tariff Laws and the War Between the States."
The Random House dictionary also defines a civil war as “a
war between political factions or regions within the same country.” And so
unless the secession of Southern states and the formation of the Confederate
States of America can be proven to have been illegal or un-Constitutional, the
War Between the States (so named by a resolution of Congress in 1927) cannot
rightly be called a civil war even though most historians do so. (Even Robert
E. Lee and other Confederates incorrectly referred to it as such.)
During the 1876 Centennial, former Governor Benjamin F.
Perry of South Carolina saw an opportunity to drive home to the country the
similarity of principles of the event that has become known as the Revolution
and the event that has been referred to by many as the “Lost Cause.” “This
Centennial glorification of the rebels of ’76,” Perry noted, “cannot fail to
teach the Northern mind to look with more leniency on Confederate rebels who
only attempted to do in the late civil war what the ancestors of the Northern
people did do in the American revolution…It shows a want of sense as well as a
want of principle, and a want of truth, to call the rebels of 1776 patriots and
heroes and the rebels of 1861 traitors.” (The South During Reconstruction,
1865-1877, E. Merton Coulter, LSU Press, 1947, pp. 389-390)
One of the Southern persuasion might be expected to have
such thoughts, but similar sentiments were not uncommon in the North. One
example is an editorial that appeared in Horace Greely’s New York Daily Tribune
on December 17, 1860, the same day South Carolina’s secession convention began.
It read:
“We have repeatedly asked those who dissent from our view of
this matter 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; and that, whenever
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of
the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government,"
&c., &c.’ 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. And, if it justified
the secession from the British Empire of Three Millions of colonists in 1776,
we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of
Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why
does not some one attempt to show wherein and why? …we could not stand up for
coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would be just. We hold the
right of Self-government sacred, even when invoked in behalf of those who deny
it to others... if ever 'seven or eight States' send agents to Washington to
say 'We want to get out of the Union,' we shall feel constrained by our
devotion to Human Liberty to say, Let Them Go! And we do not see how we could
take the other side without coming in direct conflict with those Rights of Man
which we hold paramount to all political arrangements, however convenient and
advantageous.” (Howard Cecil Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials on Secession,
199-201)
Note: Greely chose the exact words as used in South Carolina's
Declaration of Immediate Causes, which were taken from the Declaration of
Independence.
And going back nearly half a century, we find the Hartford
Convention declaring:
“Whenever it shall appear that these causes are radical and
permanent, a separation by equitable arrangement, will be preferable to an
alliance by constraint, among nominal friends, but real enemies, inflamed by
mutual hatred and jealousy, and inviting by intestine division, contempt and
aggression from abroad.” (Journal of the Hartford Convention, as quoted in
George M. Curtis, III, and James J. Thompson, Jr., eds., The Southern Essays of
Richard M. Weaver, Indianapolis: LibertyPress, 1987), 153)
In his article in the Stetson Law Review, H. Newcomb Morse
went on to point out that discussions and legislation proposed by Congress
during the period of secession indicate that Congress believed the right of
secession existed. One proposed bill was introduced to deal with the
disposition of federal property within a seceding state and that state's
assumption of its share of the national debt. Another bill would have allowed
secession only if approved by two-thirds of the members of both Houses of
Congress, the president, and all the states. So those who argue that the
deligates from the several states gave no thought to the idea of secession have
no basis for their argument, and their claiming such betrays their ignorance.
It is important to note that while a delegation from the
seceded states was in Washington to negotiate their states’ share of the
national debt as well as payment for any federal property lying within their
borders, Lincoln was preparing a fleet to “provision” the federal garrison at
Ft. Sumter—this provisioning including arms and ammunition that would have made
it possible for the fort to control the entire harbor as well as pose a threat
to the city of Charleston. (See addendum 2.)
Morse also notes that thirty-six years earlier, Chief
Justice John Marshall, in Gibbons v. Ogden, had said that "limitations of
a power furnish a strong argument in favor of the existence of that power….”
Morse summed up with: “What would have been the point of the foregoing proposed
amendments to the Constitution of the United States prohibiting or limiting the
right of secession if under the Constitution the unfettered right of secession
did not already exist? Why would Congress have even considered proposed
amendments to the Constitution forbidding or restricting the right of secession
if any such right was already prohibited, limited or non-existent under the
Constitution?” (Morse, op. cit. p. 438)
Taking the issue beyond the war to the Reconstruction
period, Morse adds: "the Northern occupational armies were removed from
Arkansas, North Carolina, Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Virginia
only after those former Confederate States had incorporated in their
constitutions a clause surrendering the right to secede." He concludes
that by compelling the former Confederate States to surrender their right to
secede, the United States government implicitly admitted that those states
originally had that right, for they could not surrender a right they did not
already have. (Morse, op. cit. p. 433)
The argument most used against the right of a state to
secede from the Union is based on the words "We the people" in the
preamble to the Constitution. It is claimed that the Constitution is not a
compact but rather a national document and that "We the People" means
all of the American people in one body and not in their sovereign states. This
argument is made in virtually every speech, book, pamphlet, and discussion by
every opponent of the right of secession. Daniel Webster used it in his debate
with John C. Calhoun in 1833 when he argued that if the Constitution was
written as a document for all of the American people in one body, then
individual states had no right to withdraw from it.
But Webster’s argument fails when we compare it with the
words of Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania who chaired the committee on style
at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. In reference to the words “We the
people,” Morris said, “The Constitution was a compact not between individuals,
but between political societies, the people, not of America, but of the United
States, each enjoying sovereign power and of course equal rights.” (Gouverneur
Morris, Life and Writings, vol. iii., p. 193)
Morris believed in the right of secession and supported the
New England states who threatened to do it during the War of 1812. (Bledsoe,
Albert Taylor, Is Davis a Traitor; or Was Secession a Constitutional Right
Previous to the War of 1861? Pp. 64-65)
In the work just cited, Bledsoe quotes The Madison Papers,
referring to some 900 pages of the proceedings of the Constitutional Convention
on which are recorded the debate over the method of ratification. Bledsoe
points out that nowhere in that vast record is there a discussion of the
"people" as meaning the entire American people outside of their
states. Instead, the major debate was over whether the Constitution should be
ratified by the legislatures of the various states or by the people of each
state in special convention. (This is how the Articles of Confederation were
ratified and how each state withdrew from it.) They decided that since a later
legislature might rescind the ratification of an earlier legislature, it would
be a more sound foundation to have the people of each state ratify the
Constitution in special conventions called for the purpose of ratification.
(Bledsoe, op. cit. pp. 66-73)
The use of the People in Convention in each of the several
States, as required by Article VII, is explained by James Madison in the 39th
Federalist where he says: "It appears, on the one hand, that the [United
States] Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the
people of America, given by deputies elected for a special purpose; but on the
other, that this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as
individuals composing the entire nation, but as composing the distinct and
independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent
and ratification of the several States, deprived from the supreme authority in
each State—the authority of the people themselves."
Answering critics of the proposed constitution in the
Virginia ratification Convention of 1788, Madison argued the right of secession
by saying: "If we be dissatisfied with the national government, if we
choose to renounce it, this is an additional safeguard to our defense." (3
Elliot’s Debates 414-415 (June 14, 1788 as found in “The Right of a State to
Secede from the Union,” Part 2, by John Remington Graham)
In that same Virginia Convention, John Marshall added:
"We are threatened with the loss of our liberties by possible abuse of
power, notwithstanding the maxim that those who give power may take it away. It
is the people who give power, and can take it back. Who shall restrain them.
They are the masters who give it, and of whom their servants hold it."
(Graham, op. cit.)
This is exactly how the Southern states went about declaring
their independence—by conventions called for the single purpose of deciding the
issue of secession. And as Morse said in the Stetson Law Review, "not one
state was remiss in discharging this legal obligation."*
_____
*Notes on the secession of Southern states:
Morse (as do many historians) was referring to eleven
Southern states, excluding Missouri and Kentucky. Governor Claiborne F. Jackson
of Missouri declared his state to be independent on August 5, 1861, and the
Missouri legislature passed an act of secession on October 31st—neither act
being in accord with the “convention” principle—this in all probability due to
the fact that that state was already in great turmoil and any convention of the
people might have put them in great danger. And though Kentucky’s legislature
voted to remain in the Union, on November 20, 1861, a convention of the people
denied the legislature’s right to make the decision and voted for secession.
In Virginia, the convention first voted overwhelmingly to
remain in the Union. But on April 17, 1861—after Lincoln’s call on April 15th
for 75,000 volunteers to make war on the seceded Deep South states—they
reversed themselves and voted overwhelmingly in favor of secession. Arkansas,
North Carolina, and Tennessee—each of which had also previously voted not to
leave the Union—soon followed in like manner to declare their independence.
(Note that each state that seceded after the formation of
the Confederate States of America by the initial six Deep South states had to
apply for admittance into the new federation and—just as with each of the first
thirteen United States—first had to ratify the constitution.)
And as it illustrates both the sentiments of the people as
well as the procedure required for the act of secession, I will include here
North Carolina’s declaration of secession:
An Ordinance to dissolve the union between the State of
North Carolina and the other States united with her, under the compact of
government entitled "The Constitution of the United States:
We, the people of the State of North Carolina in convention
assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That
the ordinance adopted by the State of North Carolina in the convention of 1789,
whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified and adopted, and
also all acts and parts of acts of the General Assembly ratifying and adopting
amendments to the said Constitution, are hereby repealed, rescinded, and
abrogated.
We do further declare and ordain, That the union now
subsisting between the State of North Carolina and the other States, under the
title of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved, and that the State
of North Carolina is in full possession and exercise of all those rights of
sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.
Done in convention at the city of Raleigh, this the 20th day
of May, in the year of our Lord 1861, and in the eighty-fifth year of the
independence of said State.
_____
Rather than carry this further at this time, I will simply
point out another similarity between the secession of Southern states and the
American revolution. In his excellent book Radicalism of the American
Revolution, Gordon S. Wood notes that one- third of the American colonists
remained loyal to the crown, one third supported the revolution, and one third
took neither side in the conflict. And though the numbers are not the same,
there were individuals and sections in the South that remained loyal to the
Union and individuals and sections in the North that supported the Confederacy.
Perhaps the following quote from Confederate Lt. Gen. Jubal
Anderson Early best expresses the feeling of most of the Southern leaders who,
like their colonial ancestors, with heavy hearts for what they believed was the
failure of the national government to protect their rights, chose the path of
independence:
“WHEN the question of practical secession from the United
States arose, as a citizen of the State of Virginia, and a member of the
Convention called by the authority of the Legislature of that State, I opposed
secession with all the ability I possessed, with the hope that the horrors of
civil war might be averted and that a returning sense of justice on the part of
the masses of the Northern States would induce them to respect the rights of
the people of the South.
“While some Northern politicians and editors were openly and
sedulously justifying and encouraging secession, I was laboring honestly and
earnestly to preserve the Union.
“As a member of the Virginia Convention, I voted against the
ordinance of secession on its passage by that body, with the hope that even
then, the collision of arms might be avoided and some satisfactory adjustment
arrived at. The adoption of that ordinance wrung from me bitter tears of grief;
but I at once recognized my duty to abide the decision of my native State, and
to defend her soil against invasion. Any scruples which I may have entertained
as to the right of secession were soon dispelled by the unconstitutional
measures of the authorities at Washington and the frenzied clamor of the people
of the North for war upon their former brethren of the South. I recognized the
right of resistance and revolution as exercised by our fathers in 1776 and
without cavil as to the name by which it was called, I entered the military service
of my State, willingly, cheerfully, and zealously.
“When the State of Virginia became one of the Confederate
States and her troops were turned over to the Confederate Government, I
embraced the cause of the whole Confederacy with equal ardor, and continued in
the service, with the determination to devote all the energy and talent I
possessed to the common defence. I fought through the entire war, without once
regretting the course I pursued, with an abiding faith in the justice of our
cause.
(Lieutenant General Jubal Anderson Early, CSA:
Autobiographical Sketch and Narrative of the War Between the States, Electronic
Edition, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1999)
__________
Addendum 1:
Tariff laws and the War Between the States
Most Americans believe that slavery was the principal cause
for the “Civil War.” But they have been miseducated. The means and timing of
handling the slavery question were at issue, although not in the overly
simplified moral sense that predominates in classrooms today. But had it not
been for high protective tariffs, and particularly the Morrill Tariff of 1860,
there might not have been a war. The conflict that cost the lives of no less
than 620,000 Americans and perhaps as many as 50,000 Southern civilians, left
thousands of homes and whole
towns and cities in ruin, and impoverished many millions for
generations afterward might never have happened.
Problems resulting from unjust taxation that was exploiting
the agricultural South and enriching Northern manufacturing states were fanned
to a furious blaze in 1860 by the passing of the Morrill Tariff. It stirred the
smoldering embers of regional mistrust and ignited the fires of Secession in
the South. This precipitated a Northern reaction and call to arms that would
engulf the nation in the flames of war.
In 1860 there was no U. S. income tax. Considerably more
than 90% of U. S. government revenue was raised by tariffs on imports. Tariffs
are not only to raise revenue but also to protect domestic industry from
foreign competition.
Because the nature and products of regional economies can
vary widely, high tariffs are sometimes good for one section of a country but
not for another. Thus it was in the early United States when high protective
tariff laws created economic advantages for Northern manufacturing and railroad
interests with corresponding disadvantages for Southern agricultural interests.
Prior to 1824 the average tariff level in the U. S. had been
in the 15 to 20 % range. This was thought to be sufficient to meet federal
revenue needs and not excessively burdensome to any section of the country. The
increase of the tariff to a 20% average in 1816 was ostensibly to help pay for
the War of 1812. It also represented a 26% net profit increase to Northern
manufacturers.
In 1824 Northern manufacturing states and the Whig Party
under the leadership of Henry Clay began to push for high protective tariffs.
These were strongly opposed by the South, whose economy was based primarily on
agriculture, the export of these products to European countries, and the import
of manufactured goods from those countries.
For example, in the 1850s, the South accounted for 72 to 82%
of U. S. exports. At the same time, they were largely dependent on Europe or
the North for the manufactured goods for both agricultural production and
consumer needs.
It is important to understand at this point that the
population of the U.S. in 1860 was about 31 million and that 22 million lived
in the North while about 9 million lived in the South. There were 33 states, 18
in the North and 15 in the South (That is, eighteen so-called “free states” and
fifteen so-called “slave states.”) Because the Senate (upper house of Congress)
is comprised of two senators from each state, the Northern states held a
six-vote advantage in the Senate. And because the House of Representatives (the
lower house of Congress) is apportioned according to the population of each
state, the North held a more than two-times vote advantage over the South.
(Because of the “Three-fifts Compromise” during the Constitutional convention,
only three of every five slaves were counted for the purpose of apportioning
seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, so increasing the vote advantage of
the Northern states.)
Late in 1824 Northern political dominance enabled Henry Clay
and his allies in Congress to pass a tariff averaging 35%. This resulted in an
economic boom in the North but much hardship and political agitation in the
South. South Carolina was especially hard hit, the State’s exports falling 25%
over the next two years. In 1828 the Northern dominated Congress raised the
average tariff level to 50%. Despite strong Southern agitation for lower
tariffs, the Tariff of 1832 only nominally reduced the effective tariff rate
and brought little relief to the South. These last two tariffs are often
referred to as the Tariffs of Abomination.
This led to the Nullification Crisis of 1832 when South
Carolina called a state convention and “nullified” the 1828 and 1832 tariffs as
unjust and unconstitutional. The resulting crisis came very near provoking
armed conflict when President Andrew Jackson threatened to use the military to
enforce the tariff laws. But through the efforts of John C. Calhoun, former
Vice President and Senator from South Carolina, a compromise was effected in
1833 which over a few years reduced the tariff back to its former rate of about
15%.
Though Henry Clay and the Whigs were not happy to have been
forced into a compromise by Calhoun and South Carolina’s Nullification threat,
the tariff remained at a level near 15% until 1860. A lesson in economics,
regional sensitivities, and simple fairness should have been learned from this
confrontation, but if it was learned, it was ignored by ambitious political and
business factions in the late 1850s.
The high protective tariff policies of the oldd Whig Party
were adopted by the new Republican Party. And then a recession beginning around
1857 gave the cause of protectionism an additional political boost in the
Northern industrial states. This led the Congress in May of 1860 to pass the
Morrill Tariff Bill (named for Republican Congressman and steel manufacturer,
Justin S. Morrill of Vermont), which raised the average tariff from about 15%
to 37% with increases to 47% within three years.
Although this was remarkably reminiscent of the Tariffs of
Abomination which had led in 1832 to a constitutional crisis and threats of
secession and armed force, the House of Representatives passed the Bill 105 to
64. Out of 40 Southern Congressmen, only one Tennessee Congressman voted for
it.
Tariff revenues already fell disproportionately on the
South, accounting for upwards of 85 to 87% of the U.S. total. While the tariff
protected Northern industrial interests, it substantially increased the cost of
living and commerce in the South. It also reduced the trade value of Southern
agricultural exports to Europe. These forces combined to place a severe
economic hardship on most of the Southern states, especially those of the Deep
South. Even more galling was that, because of the Northern states’
control of the vote, 80% or more of these tax revenues were
being expended on Northern public works and industrial subsidies, thus further
enriching the North at the expense of the South. (One might compare the more
extensive and more technically advanced system of railroads in the North that
were receiving generous government subsidies with those in the South that were
not so lavishly subsidized. This less advanced system of transportation played
a great part in the defeat of Confederate forces during the War Between the
States.)
In the 1860 election, Abraham Lincoln, a former Whig and
great admirer of Henry Clay, campaigned for the high protective tariff
provisions of the Morrill Tariff, which was incorporated into the Republican
Party Platform. Prior to his election, Lincoln boasted that he was "an old
Henry Clay tariff Whig" and that he "made more speeches on that
subject than any other."
Loyola economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo summarizes,
"As soon as the new Republican Party gained power, the average tariff rate
was quickly raised from a nominal 15 percent to 47 percent and higher and
remained at such levels for decades after the war. Calhoun's free-trade
arguments, as eloquent and advanced as they were, were no match for the federal
military arsenal." (A more detailed treatice on the subject is made in
Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation by Auburn University professors Mark Thornton
and Robert Ekelund.)
On December 10, 1860, just a month after Lincoln’s election,
the following appeared in the Daily Chicago Times:
"The South has furnished near three-fourths of the
entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of
the whole...we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty
percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to
compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This
operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of
millions annually."
On December 20, South Carolina proclaimed its independence
from the United States, followed early in 1861 by six more lower South states.
In spite of this, in his inaugural address on March 4, 1861, Lincoln pledged to
enforce the tariff and signed it into law a few days after taking office.
Ohio Sen. John Sherman (brother of Union Gen. William
Tecumseh Sherman) explained Lincoln's 1860 election when he said, "Those
who elected Mr. Lincoln expect him to secure to free labor its just right to
the territories, to protect by wise revenue laws, the labor of our
people." (By “free labor,” Sherman meant white labor—as evidenced by
numerous “Black Laws” that existed in most Northern states, particularly those
of what is now the Midwest, and which severely restricted the activities of
black people.)
NOTE: In reading the ordinances of secession of the first
seven Confederate states, you'll find primarily economic issues—tariffs ,
protectionism, federal subsidies to Northern industrial interests, and strict
interpretation of the Constitution—which are in stark contrast to the 1860 GOP
(hence Lincoln) agenda. In fact the documents of only four of the thirteen
seceding states mention slavery as a cause of their departure.
Early Northern public opinion, as reflected in newspapers of
both parties, recognized the right of the Southern States to secede and favored
peaceful separation. A November 21, 1860, editorial in the Cincinnati Daily
Press said this:
“We believe that the right of any member of this Confederacy
to dissolve its political relations with the others and assume an independent
position is absolute.”
And on March 21, 1861, less than three weeks after Lincoln’s
inauguration, the New York Times summarized the majority of editorial opinion
in the North:
“There is a growing sentiment throughout the North in favor
of letting the Gulf States go.”
But two events in April of 1861 led to war.
Northern industrialists became nervous, realizing that a
tariff dependent North would be competing against a free-trade South. They
feared not only loss of tax revenue but considerable loss of trade. Soon
newspaper editorials began to reflect this nervousness.
(Though the newer western—now mid-western—states were less
dependent on manufacturing for their livelihood, they were greatly dependent
upon the Ohio-Missouri-Mississippi river system for their commercial interests.
They were thus less fearful of the South’s free-trade policy as they were of
the possibility of having to pay tolls to pass through the Confederacy via the
Mississippi.)
On April 15, 1861, three days after manipulating the South
into firing on the tariff collection facility of Fort Sumter in Charleston
harbor, Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to put down the “Southern
rebellion.” This, not slavery, led in late April and May to the secession of
the Upper SouthStates of Arkansas, Virginia, Tennessee, and North
Carolina—states that had previously voted to remain in the Union.
Lincoln believed that the threat of force backed by a now
more unified Northern public opinion would quickly (within 90 days) put down
secession. His gambit, however, failed and led to a terrible and costly war.
Increased agitation to “free the slaves” as a noble cause to
justify what was really a dispute over unfair taxation and States Rights was
exacerbated by the lack of success by the Federal army early in the war, the
need to keep England from declaring her support of the South, and the need to
appease the radical abolitionists.
Writing in a London weekly publication in December of 1861,
the famous English author, Charles Dickens, a strong opponent of slavery, said
these things about the war going on in America:
“The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece
of specious humbug disguised to conceal its desire for economic control of the
United States.”
Karl Marx, like most European socialists of the time,
favored the North. But in an 1861 article published in England, he articulated
very well what the major British newspapers—the Times, the Economist, and
Saturday Review—had been saying:
“The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The
war, is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery,
and in fact turns on the Northern lust for power.”
The Tariff question and the States Rights question were
therefore strongly linked, and both are linked to the broader issue of
Constitutionally limited government. Because the Morrill Tariff would have dealt
the South great economic hardship, it made Secession a compelling alternative
to an exploited and unequal union with the North.
Though there was growing tension between North and South
over the issue of slavery, that alone was not sufficient to plunge the nation
into war. And the notion that a virtuous North invaded the evil South to free
the slaves is ludicrous and not supported by historical evidence. (In an August
22, 1862 letter to New York Tribune editor, Horace Greeley, Abraham Lincoln
wrote: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not
either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing
any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving
others alone I would also do that.”)
Five years after the end of the War, prominent Northern
abolitionist, attorney and legal scholar, Lysander Spooner, put it this way:
“All these cries of having ‘abolished slavery,’ of having
‘saved the country,’ of having ‘preserved the Union,’ of establishing a
‘government of consent,’ and of ‘maintaining the national honor’ are all gross,
shameless, transparent cheats—so transparent that they ought to deceive no
one.”
Convinced that union with the North had and would continue
to jeopardize their liberties and economic well-being, the Southern states—just
as the American Colonies had done in 1776—sought to withdraw from the Union and
establish their independence.
As already noted, many in the North felt that the Southern
states had the right to separate from the Union. Many even submitted proposed
flag designs to the provisional Confederate Congress’s Committee on Flag and
Seal. But Northern industrialists—particularly the New England textile
manufacturers —saw this as an economic disaster. (Pressure from this section of
the country during the election year of 1864 when three of every four New
England textile mills were shut down because of a shortage of cotton led Lincoln
to authorize the trading of military supplies to the South for cotton. For a
more complete discussion of the vigorous trade for cotton that went on between
North and South during the war, see The Red River Campaign: Politics and Cotton
During the Civil War by Ludwell H. Johnson.) No longer would the North have a
tariff-free domestic supply of cotton and other Southern agricultural products
such as rice, sugar, tobacco, indigo, and naval stores. In other words, the
very import tariff laws that had enriched their coffers now threatened them
with economic ruin.
In addition to the immeasurable loss of life and leadership
and devastation to property, livestock, and crops during the war, The abuses of
“Reconstruction” and “carpetbagger” state governments further exploited and
impoverished the South, considerably retarding economic recovery. High tariffs
and discriminatory railroad shipping rates continued to favor Northern economic
interests, and it is only in recent times that the political and economic fortunes
of the South have begun to rise.
As the Scriptures tell us, the love of money is an all-evil
root, and the Morrill Tariff was an evil root, which like the proverbial straw
that broke the camel’s back, became the final straw that resulted in the secession
of seven Southern states. The subsequent declaration of war against those
states then led to the breaking away of four more states. Late in 1861 Missouri
and Kentucky, though their were serious divisions within these states, were
admitted into the Southern confederation.
Unfortunately, as outrageous and unjust as the Morrill
Tariff was, because It does not fit the politically correct images and myths of
popular American history, its importance has been largely ignored and obscured.
Here are some interesting quotes:
“Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is,
whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or
absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of
the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as
in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must
ultimately prevail.” -- John C. Calhoun, 1831
"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that
unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result
of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high
places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong
its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is
aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.” —Abraham Lincoln
" (From Democracy at Risk: Rescuing Main Street from Wall Street a
Populist Vision for the Twenty-First Century. Jeff Gates - author. Perseus
Books, Cambridge, MA.)
We have all heard it said that might makes right, and for as
long as I have offered the challenge to prove that the secession of Southern
states was either un-Constitutional or illegal, the one answer that never fails
to be offered is that the war settled the issue for all time. That is, whether
an issue be right or wrong, moral or immoral, legal or illegal, Constitutional
or un-Constitutional, the final court of justice is war. I believe this editorial
from Harper's Weekly Journal Of Civilization, November 25, 1865, sums it up
quite well: "The country has decided by the most prolonged and fearful
war, by the successful operations of vast armies and navies, by an incalculable
sacrifice of precious life, and an enormous expenditure of money, that, whether
lawful or unlawful, constitutional or unconstitutional, there shall be no
secession of states from the Union. The doctrine of State sovereignty, which
was the only plea of the rebellion, has been judged in the battle-field and
overthrown by arms."
This, and sadly so, is the only argument against secession
that stands.
_____
Addendum 2: Ft. Sumter
Even though as noted earlier President Buchanan had said
that the federal government did not have the right to coerce any seceded state
back into the Union, he nevertheless in January of 1861 just a month after Ft.
Sumter had been occupied by Federal troops, he sent the ship Star of the West
with provisions for the garrison. But as the Star of the West attempted to
enter Charleston harbor, a battery on Morris Island manned by Citadel cadets
fired warning shots across her bow, and she turned back.
Then, shortly after his election, Lincoln submitted the
following request in writing to each member of his Cabinet:
Block quote
"My Dear Sir, Assuming it to be possible to now
provision Fort Sumter, under all the circumstances is it wise to attempt it?
Please give your opinion in writing on this question."
Secretary Cameron wrote that he would advise such an attempt
if he "did not believe the attempt to carry it into effect would initiate
a bloody and protracted conflict."
Secretary Welles wrote: "By sending or attempting to
send provisions into Fort Sumter, will not war be precipitated? It may well be
impossible to escape it under any course of policy that may be pursued, but I
am not prepared to advise a course that would provoke hostilities...I do not,
therefore, under all the circumstances, think it wise to provision Fort
Sumter."
Secretary Smith wrote: "The commencement of civil war
would be a calamity greatly to be deplored and should be avoided if the just
authority of the Government may be maintained without it. If such a conflict
should become inevitable, it is much better that it should commence by the
resistance of the authorities or people of South Carolina to the legal action
of the Government in enforcing the laws of the United States....in my opinion
it would not be wise, under all the circumstances, to attempt to provision Fort
Sumter."
Attorney General Bates wrote: "I am unwilling, under
all circumstances...to do any act which may have the semblance before the world
of beginning a civil war, the terrible consequences of which would, I think,
find no parallel in modern times...upon the whole I do not think it wise now to
provision Fort Sumter."
Postmaster-General Blair and Secretary Chase united in the
opinion that it would be wise to make the effort to provision Fort Sumter.
(Secretary Chase) then proceeded to declare that, if such a step would produce
civil war, he could not advise in its favor, but that, in his opinion, such a
result was highly improbable, especially if accompanied by a proclamation from
the President, reiterating the sentiments of his inaugural address. "I,
therefore," concluded Secretary Chase, "return an affirmative answer
to the question submitted to me."
It will be seen...that five of the seven members of the
Cabinet concurred in the opinion that no attempt should be made to provision or
reinforce Fort Sumter, and that such an attempt would in all probability
precipitate civil war.
As Mr. Seward expressed it, "We will have inaugurated a
civil war by our own act without an adequate object"; or, in the language
of Secretary Welles, "By sending or attempting to send provisions into
Fort Sumter, will not war be precipitated?"...I am not prepared to advise
a course that would provoke hostilities."
If such were the opinions of leading members of President
Lincoln's Cabinet, expressed in confidential communications to their chief, as
to the character of the proposed action, can it be deemed unreasonable that the
people of Virginia held similar views?
Fourteen days later, the President made a verbal request to
his Cabinet for an additional expression of their views on the same subject.
Seward and Smith adhered to their former opinions. Chase and Blair were joined
by Welles. Bates was noncommittal, and no reply was made by Cameron, so far as
records show.
In the light of the facts and arguments presented by the
members of the President's Cabinet, men, not a few, will conclude that, if the
explosion occurred at Fort Sumter, the mine was laid at Washington.
End block quote
(Source: Virginia's Attitude Toward Secession, Beverley B.
Munford, L.H. Jenkins, Richmond Virginia, 1909, pp. 285-289)
Also, it is presumed by all but the most informed students
of history that Ft. Sumter was an established and operating military
instillation in 1860, but this is not so. A federal garrison had been at Ft.
Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island prior to the secession of South Carolina from the
Union, and six days later (December 26, 1860) that garrison abandoned Ft.
Moultrie and moved out to the yet incomplete installation at Ft. Sumter.
Ft. Sumter is clearly within the territorial limits of the
State of South Carolina, so to prove that South Carolina provoked war by firing
on that fort, it must be proved that South Carolina did not have the right to
declare its independence, for no sovereign state anywhere in the world would
permit any other sovereign state to maintain an armed fort right in the middle
of its principal harbor.
Moreover, the following excerpt seems to show that, even if
South Carolina had not seceded from the Union, the United States government had
no legal right to occupy Ft. Sumter:
South Carolina in 1805 (Statutes at Large, Volume V, p. 501)
provided as follows in regard to the cessions in Charleston Harbor:
That, if the United States shall not, within three years
from the passing of this act, and notification thereof by the governor of this
State to the Executive of the United States, repair the fortifications now
existing thereon, or build such other forts or fortifications as may be deemed
most expedient by the Executive of the United States on the same, and keep a
garrison or garrisons therein, in such case this grant or cession shall be void
and of no effect.
Paul Graham of Columbia, South Carolina, reminds us…that
“Fort Sumter not only was not completed within the three-year limit stipulated
in the contract, but was not completed in 1860 when Major Anderson transferred
his garrison from Fort Moultrie. Moreover, it had never been garrisoned until
he occupied it. So that, having neither been completed nor garrisoned according
to the contract, either within the three years specified time, or, for that
matter, by 1861, Major Anderson occupied a piece of property that the United
States had not the vestige of a right to occupy, and which was under the
ownership, jurisdiction, and sovereignty of the State of South Carolina
exclusively. In other words, he invaded the State of South Carolina with his
troops---unwittingly, it is true, and on orders, but in fact, at any rate.
Adverse possession even could not lie here in behalf of the United States,
since the United States had not garrisoned it.”
(Source: Confederate Veteran, September 1926, page 325.)
_____
Addendum 3: Treason
Though it touches on a lengthy argument that goes beyond the
scope of this document, I will add that when the great contest of arms was
over, the further exploitation of the South—that of black people as well as
white—under the guise of so-called “Reconstruction” led to the awful and shameful
backlash that resulted in segregation and racial discrimination throughout the
South that has only recently begun to pass away. And having said that, I will
also say that similar phenomena—usually ignored or defined in more gentle
terms—existed at the same time in the North as it did in the South. And it can
be argued that there was generally a more paternalistic attitude in the South
on the part of white people toward black people; though I would not go to war
to defend that hill.
As for the question of treason, those who so tenaciously
hang onto that weak thread as sufficient evidence to justify the war that
caused such terrible loss of life and destruction of property have neither
Constitutional nor legal warrant for it. The radical Republicans who came to
power in 1860 at no time showed the slightest evidence of any intention other
than that of punishing the South in every way possible for what they claimed to
have been treason, but not a single Southerner was ever brought to trial on
that charge. (Some historians argue that it may have been Lincoln’s softening
on the matter of “punishing the rebels” as inferred from his second inaugural
address that led to his assassination.) The idea that the pardoning of Southern
leaders was an act of mercy on the part of Northern leaders collapses when
compared with the merciless manner in which they carried out “unlimited
warfare” against the South.
Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court and
former Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln’s cabinet, said in 1867: "If
you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the
Constitution, secession is not a rebellion. His capture was a mistake. His
trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason."
Civil War historian Clint Johnson elaborates further on the
subject:
“Chase made a deal with Davis's attorneys in order to free
Davis from ever having to face trial on the question of secession. In short,
Chase suggested that Davis’s attorneys argue in front of him in a two-judge
panel in Nov. 1868 that Davis had suffered enough punishment under the 14th
Amendment, which bans people who have rebelled against the federal government
from holding future offices.
“Davis's attorneys argued just that, and Chase voted to free
Davis. In effect, Chase, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, met with the
attorneys of only one side that would be arguing a case before him. He told
them the strategy to use; they did; and Davis's case would have been kicked up
to the full U.S. Supreme Court as the other federal judge voted against that
argument. Tied 1-1, the Supreme Court would have gotten the case.
“The U.S. Attorney General, realizing that the Chief Justice
had already expressed his opinion and had signaled that he would vote with Davis,
made a deal for Davis's attorneys to drop all efforts to bring the case to the
Supreme Court. In short, the Federal government finally freed Davis because
they were afraid that the U.S. Supreme Court would declare that the War was the
fault of the North and not the South.”
This is discussed in greater detail in Johnson’s latest
book, Pursuit: The Chase, Capture, Persecution and Surprising Release of
Confederate President Jefferson Davis, Citadel Press, June 2008. This is a very
scholarly work that is well worth reading by all serious students of the War
Between the States.
Davis was never brought to trial, a nolle prosequi being
entered by the government in his case in December, 1868, and he was also
included in the general amnesty of that month.
Gene H. Kizer, Jr., in a lengthy article entitled “The Right
of Secession,” summarizes the U.S. government’s position regarding the
prosecution of Southern leaders for treason: “It is a virtual certainty that if
the North's case had been strong, they would have taken it to trial and
vindicated their war against the South once and for all. That the Federal
government did not go to court against the Confederate president after keeping
him in jail for two years, charged with treason, is more strong evidence that
there was indeed a legal right of secession and that the South had exercised it
properly. There were no other treason trials against former Confederates,
because any one trial would likely prove the legal right of secession, and
imminently practical Northerners were not about to lose in a court of law what
they had won on the battlefield.”
_____
I can think of no better words for summary than those
expressed by H. Newcomb Morse in the Stetson Law Review when he wrote that the
War Between the States did not prove that secession was illegal because many
incidents both preceding and following the War support the proposition that the
Southern States did have the right to secede from the Union. Instances of
nullification prior to the War Between the States, contingencies under which
certain states acceded to the Union, and the fact that the Southern States were
made to surrender the right to secession, all affirm the existence of a right
to secede. He adds that the Constitution's "failure to forbid
secession" and amendments dealing with secession that were proposed in
Congress as Southern states were seceding strengthened his argument that
"the Southern States had an absolute right to secede from the Union prior
to the War Between the States." (Morse, op. cit. Vol. XV, No. 2, 1986, p.
420)
My sentiments are with Irish-born Maj. Gen. Patrick R.
Cleburne, who, on January 1864, wrote: "Every man should endeavor to
understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late... It means the
history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth
will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school
books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history
and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans
as fit objects for derision... It is said slavery is all we are fighting for,
and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny,
slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to
establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and
to deprive us of our rights and liberties."
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