The Civil War

[Derek]

That's good.

Edited to remove off topic material.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

There is nothing wrong with States rights or limited gov't. But the worst thing that has ever happened to the Conservative movement was an attempt by some to use it as a shield to cover a most embarrassing epsiode in history. The continued use of it to hide that blemish will lead to its destruction if not challenged and destroyed by those trully concerned with either a limited gov't or states rights. There was and is nothing that Conservatives have in common nor anything that they sould be concerned with defending, with regards to that. Those people proved clearly they didn't care about states rights once they formed the CSA, and as such I see no purpose in risking the entire movement in an effort to legitmize what they did or cover their true motives, not the to mention the numerous historical revision by "lost cause" mongers to make the attempt at the connection, which draw my ire as they would any true student of "real" history. This is what has guided my arguements in this thread and motivated me to take part in the discussion.




If you will look closely at the arguements of the James Madison and others at the Constitutional convention the effort and the final compromise over the structure of the Congress was to balance the interest of the states (senate) with those of the people (the House). Hence why people say the House is closest to the people and considering that Senators were elected by State Legislatures the arguement made perfect sense. And so that was clearly not the intention of the framers that the States and the People would be the same thing. They were clearly viewed as seperate by the founders and by most people who trully understand the document. And hence the use of the word People in the preamble declares the goal of the document to create a union of the people not the states.

There was no provision to break that union ever included in the Consitution. Meaning the intent was to create a perpetual union by creating the means to Amend the Consitution when necessary but not at the whims of simple majority but a widespread number of the people (Through the House) and the States ( though the Senate and the ratification process) as well as granting protections to political minorities and restricting the powers of the gov't to the point where leaving the union would be unecessary. Hence why a provision giving states the right to succeed was not included. It is why the VA and KY resolutions were incorrect assertions about a document which James Madison should have better understood considering his intimate involvement in its creation and likewise, Calhoun 30 years hence and Davis 30 years after that were also wrong when asserting that the states have the power to secede.

The 10th Amendment reverts all authority to the States and if the Consitution stated that it was a union of "states" then secession would have been lawfull, but it clearly puts the union out of the touch of the states by making clear that it was a union of the people not the states and by creation of the amendments process but not a means to break the union, indicates that power to the ever break the union was restricted from all concerned as long as the terms of the Constitution and the protections granted within are not infringed upon and there is no clear evidence of their violation in either 1799, 1806, 1812, 1832, or 1861. The people can theoretically end the union by amending the constitution out of existence. But that requires a vast majority of the people not the whims of a 51% majority or loud politically defeated Minority like the South whose rights were protected still by the Constitution but who had lost a political fight and couldn't stand it and deceided to try and leave and cover their tracks with faux reasons and misinterpreted sections of the Constitution.

The Founders wanted to create a democractic republic that would stand the test of time and not fly apart at the first political fight that was lost. All five of those years were motivated by political defeats not violations of the constitution.

Its called a Lost Cause for a reason. Let it go.

The schools teach states rights alright and thats the problem and why many young people are so anti-Conservative. The Schools fail to show the hypocracy of Confederates who hastilly wrote a consitution then proceed to sh**t on it at every turn. Tariffs on exports as well as imports, a draft (a year before the US resorted to one), no supreme court (mandated but never formed, how convenient). Like I said, contrary to being something to be defended by the right, the CSA is an anvil weighing the movement down and a clear effort should be made to expose the confederacy for the hypocracy on which it existed not to distort the historical record to defend it.

[cpeeks]

The goverment gets that right to govern by the consent of the people, and when in the course of human events that goverment encroaches on the rights of the people, then they have the right to throw off a tyrannical goverment and start over. And  if your saying the people never have a right to scrap a document and start over, then we never had the right to break away from England in the first place, and the Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the others had no right to break away from the Soviet Union.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Leaving aside the issue of whether restricting slavery in the territories really was tyranny, what you saying is that the South was using the right of revolution, not a right of secession when it attempted to form a separate government.

[J. J.]

Leaving aside the issue of whether restricting slavery in the territories really was tyranny, what you saying is that the South was using the right of revolution, not a right of secession when it attempted to form a separate government.

In some state constitutions, the right to rebellion is included.  It is n Pennsylvania's.

I think that a state could secede, with the consent of the other states.

[cpeeks]

Leaving aside the issue of whether restricting slavery in the territories really was tyranny, what you saying is that the South was using the right of revolution, not a right of secession when it attempted to form a separate government.

Ya I believe that sums it up pretty well.