SOLUTIONS FOR AMERICA: How to Preserve the Constitution and the Land of Liberty Our Founding Fathers Gave Us

by Diane Rufino, September 1, 2021

Why do I say that we need to preserve our country?  Why does America need saving? 

As I made abundantly clear, in my article “A Re-Declaration of Independence,” which I posted on January 23 of this year, [https://forloveofgodandcountry.com/2021/01/23/a-re-declaration-of-independence/ ], the history of the federal government has been a history of repeated abuses and usurpations, all having in direct effect the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the fifty states. Please read the article. It will certainly wake you up, if you aren’t already woken up. At stake is the future of our country.

In short, what was once “a government of the people, by the people, and for the people” has become anything but that. The government, which, according to the Declaration of Independence, is merely but a temporary institution, existing only so long as it serves its primary purposes, which are to secure the individual’s inalienable and God-given rights and to provide safety and security to the States and to its citizens. Once that government becomes destructive of those ends (in other words, fails to serve those purposes effectively), the states have the right to withdraw from their allegiance to it and the people have the natural right to “alter or abolish it.”  Does anyone think that the current federal government would ever allow any state to leave the union? Does anyone think that the current federal government would ever allow any group of citizens, let alone an overwhelming majority to “alter or abolish it”?  The government spies on anyone it considers a troublemaker. One only needs to read the guidance that Obama’s Homeland Secretary, Janet Napolitano, put out just 2 ½ months after he took office, on April 7, 2009, in which his administration targeted conservative individuals and groups (those who “cling to their guns and religion”) as being most likely to become “homegrown terrorists.” The guidance was titled: “Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment” [https://fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf ] to know that will never be allowed to happen. The government is in the business, first and foremost, of preserving itself and its power….  not securing the rights of the People.

If we are to preserve the country and the government system that our Founding Fathers gifted us, and if we are to preserve and secure the US Constitution, as written and intended, we need to look into some very serious solutions.  I have come up with four that I think are worthwhile: 

1.  Nullification & Interposition

2.  Exercise of State Sovereignty per the 10th Amendment –  State Escrow Accounts

3.  American Citizens Acting Together to Withhold Federal Income Taxes (What are we getting in return for the taxes the government demands, other than to support others who don’t want to work?)

4.  An Article V Convention of States – to break up the country into two new Unions (in order to end the incessant bickering and hatred between the two radically different, opposed political ideologies).

But first, I think it wise to address the notion that Abraham Lincoln, with his Civil War, has forever changed the country and forever changed the government in Washington DC.

A BRIEF HISTORY: The Civil War —

As a eulogy, President Abraham Lincoln delivered these words on November 19, 1863 on the hallowed grounds of Gettysburg, PA: “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal……..  that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

That was 148 years ago. The portion of the speech (The Gettysburg Address) that I’ve noted is probably the only truth in the memorial message that most Americans consider as one of the most important speeches of all time. To be sure, to be accurate, the speech was indeed strong on style but it was weak in substance.

In 1787, indeed, our forefathers conceived of a land of Liberty, inspired its people to declare their independence from Great Britain, and drafted the most critical and revolutionary documents on earth to secure freedom and liberty for its people. And yes, indeed, they designed a government system “of the people, by the people, for the people” which was explained in the Declaration of Independence as the natural law form of government.

American journalist H.L. Menchen (1880-1956) offered this excellent critique of the Gettysburg Address: The Gettysburg Address is poetry, not sense. It’s doctrine is that Lincolns’ soldiers sacrificed their lives for the course of self-determination; “that government of the people, by the people, for the people” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. Lincoln’s soldiers actually fought against self-determination. It was the Confederates who fought for the right of the people to govern themselves   Many Southerners know this to be true.

Before getting into the meat and substance of this article, which is how to reign in the unconstitutional government that now sits in Washington DC and how to reclaim our country, let’s first address the misconception that the so-called Civil War changed forever the American concept of “Union” and the notion of “limited government.” 

THE GREAT WAR THAT “FOREVER CHANGED THIS COUNTRY” —

To serve his desire for power and that of the newly-created Republican Party, Abraham Lincoln aligned himself with radical elements in the North (and the western states) and especially with the “money men” (northern businessmen) to distort the meaning and intent of both the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution and to stir discord throughout the country. He divided and conquered. With respect to those states (Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri),, the border states, that were still on the fence regarding secession, Lincoln sent in the military to prevent them from leaving the Union. To those states which had already left, he invaded them, destroyed their land, destroyed their economy, destroyed their way of live, and conquered them. He not only divided their loyalties but he tried to divide the races as well, which the Reconstruction-era Radical Republicans of the North did so effectively after Lincoln was assassinated. He eagerly and dishonestly started America’s bloodiest war, waged it in violation of the established laws of war, killed at least 700,000 of the people he was tasked to protect, and killed the constitutional republic of our Founders. A fourth to a third of Southern soldiers were counted dead, with the Union Army suffering similarly (although many of its soldiers were paid European mercenaries), and not counting the vast amount of citizens who died later. Civilian deaths were pandemic and impossible to classify, and perhaps up to one fourth of colored people, slave and free, died as a result of the War. By using the Emancipation Proclamation (issued in Jan. 1863 purely for political expedience, in order to prevent European powers from entering the War on the side of the South), he thought he could incite the slave population to rebel against their slave masters and their families and demoralize and dissuade Confederate soldiers from fighting. Again, the seeds of Lincoln’s use of slaves as pawns to gain the upper hand in the War (which up until that point they were losing) has had long-lasting, detrimental effects on our country. With Reconstruction as a means of retribution against the South, the handling and managing of the “defeated Confederate states” served to usher in an era of segregation and discrimination and a legacy of racism that continues to divide our country today. As George Mason said during the Philadelphia Convention of 1787: “Every master of slaves is born a petty tyrant. They bring the judgment of heaven upon a county. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes nation sins, by national calamities.”  How prophetic !

If the War was fought to “Preserve the Union” or “Save the Union,” as Lincoln explained, why was almost all the fighting done in the South. Why was all the physical, geographical damage confined to the South?  The Southern states just wanted a simple and peaceful separation from the Northern states, just as the 13 colonies wanted such from Great Britain (hence the reason for the Declaration of Independence). In fact, they followed all the exact same steps that the colonies followed in the years 1776 – 1787. The Southern states believed the federal government was supposed to be a “common government,” to serve all of the states equally, not one region over another. But yet, the government was not “common”; rather, it had become a government to serve Northern moneymen, northern businesses, and northern interests, at the expense of the South. Hence, Congress continued to impose punishing tariffs on the South, using a portion to fund the government and the rest to funnel to the North, for Northern interests and projects. And so, as the Declaration articulates: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That 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…,” the South separated from the Union, abolished their allegiance to the Northern states and to the federal government, and instituted a new government.

From the South’s point of view, leaving the Union was simple. The blueprint has been laid out when the 13 original states decided that “the history of the present King of Great Britain was a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the States” and therefore, according to the “laws of Nature and of nature’s God,” they were entitled and within their sovereign right to leave the Union with the North, declare their independence, and establish a new country. 

There were, however, very basic and foundational problems with the effort to “preserve the Union.” But Abraham Lincoln didn’t care. For his own political benefit, he changed the national dialogue: Instead of the Constitution creating “a more perfect union” (as its very words explain), according to Lincoln, it created “a perpetual union” and as such no state had the right to secede and leave it.  That was his rationale for waging war on the Confederate States.

Before leaving his seat in the US Senate, Jefferson Davis, who would soon become the first president of the Confederate States of America, made this plea: “Let us go in peace.” 

The North fought because their president – a single man – started a war. He started a war unconstitutionally. Lincoln had promised to enforce a high tariff during his campaign of 1860. On March 2, 1861, Congress passed and then-president James Buchanan signed into law the Morrill tariff, the highest ever tariff – 50% of some articles and 60% on other ones. On March 11, the Confederate States of America enacted a 5% tariff. The following day, the “money party” (ie, the Republican Party – the party of Northern merchants, manufacturers, and bankers) demanded war. To note, these money men originally were happy to see the southern states go; “let them go,” they said. But once they realized the money situation, they quickly changed their mind and pushed for war.  “Bring them back!”  It was bad enough that an independent South would deprive them of the protective tariff revenue and their own tax-free existence, but far worse, the tariff differential would move Northern trade to low-duty Southern ports. Southern independence could not be allowed !! The only way to prevent losing Southern money was by war.  The money men applied pressure to the Republican Party, and therefore to Lincoln. The Republican Party (ie, the Northern mercantile party) used its majority control in Congress to enact measures that subsidized Northern commerce and infrastructure at the expense of the Southern farmer. The tariff, the national bank, and the so-called “internal improvements” (the hallmark issue of the Whig Party, which resurrected itself with the newly-established Republican Party in the 1850’s) that so injured the South, were examples of party greed, ambition, and factional aggression.

James T. Pace writes in his book ‘SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE: WHY WAR?”:

    “Over and over again, Abraham Lincoln declared that he went to war for one reason and one reason only – to ‘preserve the Union.’ The claim is impossible, absurd. Impossible because nothing is preserved by destroying it. Absurd and a lie because he pursued office by agitating dis-union; when elected, he blocked all negotiation (repeatedly refused to acknowledge and speak with delegations from the newly-independence South Carolina), and as soon as he was sworn in, he went immediately to work to design a strategy and to direct a conspiracy to make war.

     Lincoln’s invasion of Charleston Harbor (deceptively explained as the need to reinforce the men there), calling up an army, demanding the remaining southern states to provide troops to wage violence on their neighbors, declaring war upon the seceded states – caused six more states to secede. How did that ‘save the Union’?  If he had not made war, those states would have remained in the union. They refused to join his unconstitutional war because the Constitution, as well as the Declaration of Independence, still mattered to them. Lincoln sent in troops, established military control of border state governments (including Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri), arrested state officials, scattering them in unknown prisons. He ordered the arrest of Maryland’s legislators, and when the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court protested, Lincoln ordered his arrest. Kentucky and Missouri did eventually vote in convention to secede, but they could not exercise that sovereign decision because of Lincoln’s army occupation.”

Abolitionist Wendell Phillips, a resident of Massachusetts wrote in April 1861: “Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter. A series of states think they should have a separate government. They have a right to decide that question without appealing to you and me. Standing with the principles of 1776 behind us, who can deny that right?”  The “Principles of 1776” that he was referring to include the Lee Resolution and the Declaration of Independence.  The plan for our American independence was initiated on June 7, 1776, when Richard Henry Lee of Virginia introduced a resolution in the Second Continental Congress proposing independence for the American colonies.

The Lee Resolution contained three parts: an official declaration of independence, a call to form foreign alliances, and “a plan for confederation.”  On June 11, the Congress appointed three concurrent committees to address each part. The committee we are most familiar with was the one tasked for drafting the Declaration of Independence, with Thomas Jefferson appointed to do the actual drafting. Our early history remembers that the

Declaration of Independence was itself a secessionist document. It could have easily been called a Declaration of Secession and Independence.”

Charles Pace continues in his book: “How did this war save the Union? How can Lincoln claim to be defending the Union when the South was merely pulling away?  The South was running away and the North was invading and bringing war. The Southern people were never a threat to the peace and security of the North. The Southern economy was never a problem for the North. Who was Lincoln defending? What was he defending?  Secession was a right specified and expressly reserved (or inferred) by all the ratifying parties (the States) to the Constitution, denied by none, claimed several times by New England (with support given them by the South), and even taught at West Point.”

Love of money was the root of the evil that injured the nation. There was no valid reason for war. And it certainly wasn’t fought over slavery. “The Union must be preserved” was merely a righteous slogan for what was really on Lincoln’s mind, which was that “the Tariff must be preserved.” 

Lincoln didn’t save the Union. He killed it. He forced on the American people the most evil enemy of liberty – an aggressive, unrestrained, and consolidated government.

As author Mr. Pace wrote: “From the ashes of death a new life always arises, and so it did in America. The old country, governed by an institution of limited power, was done. Rising in its place was not a phoenix of hope, of re-uniting brothers once again in love and harmony, but a bird of prey.” For political power, for a resumption of the money train from the South (tariff revenues) to the northern money men, the victors, the Northern states, the Republican Party, destroyed their own country.

Robert E. Lee, the gentlemanly general, gave us this dire warning: “Everyone should do all in his power to collect and disseminate the truth, in the hope that truth may find a place in history and descent to posterity. History is not related to campaigns and battles and generals, but those events which display principles” (and character).

And Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, told his troops in January 1865: “There is another reason to persevere. If we are defeated, to our punishments will be added the injury of truth. We shall be forced to drain the last bitter dregs from our cup of humiliation and read the story of our struggle written by New England historians.”  (In other words, they can’t let the North win; the victors always have the benefit of ‘telling the story’)

Charles Pace writes in his book “Southern Independence”:  Lincoln had changed forever the nature of the American Union.”  I don’t understand why he has concluded that Lincoln changed it forever. One man alone, taking government in his own hands, acting unconstitutionally and weaponizing it for his own political purposes and in doing so, destroying the southern states, destroying their economy, and killing almost 700,000 of his people does not – CANNOT – earn him our praise. We are still a nation of freedom-loving individuals, the majority always being thankful to our Founding Fathers for the country they gave us and believing we still have that country. It doesn’t mean we have to accept Lincoln’s new vision of “union” or of government (a consolidated government). Acting unconstitutionally doesn’t make Abraham Lincoln a great president. It makes him a tyrant, It makes him a traitor. And he should have been treated as such by Congress, instead of its members supporting him in his political war and overlooking all his many unconstitutional acts.  Likewise, he should be treated as such by history. Instead, he is given perhaps the largest and most impressive of national monuments on the national mall in Washington DC.

FEDERAL TYRANNY: The Reason We Need  Solutions

From the years 1765 – 1776, Great Britain not only enacted many tax measures on the American colonies (such as the Stamp Act and the Tea Act – “No taxation Without Representation!”), but also took punitive measures against them (such as the Intolerable Acts, the Quartering Act, the disbanding of colonial legislatures, the confiscation of firearms and colonial stockpiles of ammunition, the imposition of martial law, etc). The colonies were tired of petitioning and appealing to the King, appealing to Parliament, asserting their rights as British subjects, and in general, being treated like insolent children. And so, what did they do about it?  They made the decision to separate from Britain (to secede from Britain) and to declare their independence.

In the Declaration of Independence, written in a style that copies the protest documents throughout England’s history, Jefferson used these eloquent opening words: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

He then declared the fundamental principles on which the 13 states (the colonies had organized into states at that point) would base their independence and base their sovereignty. It was called “individual sovereignty” and we all know how it was defined in paragraph two of the Declaration. (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness; That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That 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..”)

Jefferson then explained: “But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world…..”  With those words, he listed 27 grievances against King George III. Those grievances, the original states believed, were serious enough to warrant secession.

And that brings me to the history of the united States. Has history repeated itself? 

I go back to the national tragedy that was the Civil War and the duplicitous reasons President Lincoln gave for refusing to let the southern states go in peace. Its consequences were so transformative that I have a hard time letting the event (and the events that followed) go.

It is said that a large government, a consolidated government (like the one Lincoln ushered in) always breaks the law. It always assumes powers that it believes it must have, taking them away from their original depositories, which are the States and the People. And I have to agree. History has repeated itself.  The history of the federal government, all three branches, has been a history of repeated abuses and usurpations, all having in direct effect the establishment of an absolute tyranny over the 50 States and over the People.

Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”

The question is this: With Lincoln’s unconstitutional invasion of the Southern states, newly and peacefully organized into the Confederate nation, in order to beat them and subjugate them back into the Union (thus violating the Tenth Amendment, destroying the concept of “States’ Rights), and wholly ignoring the core principles of the Declaration of Independence – the right of secession and the right to form a “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”) and with the new, all-powerful federal government that Lincoln waged war for, who will the watchmen? Who CAN be the watchmen?  Who will govern the governors?

Tyranny is an arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; a despotic abuse of authority. Tyranny is when a government or its ruler exercises power unconstitutionally.  Government, especially the government that Lincoln fought his war to create, has the means to take such power. He alone made that scenario perfectly clear. It has the purse and the pen, and it also has the sword; it has the money to buy “friends” and supporters, the pen to write unconstitutional laws and to create unconstitutional agencies, and the sword to force and to punish those who pose opposition. Power can only be controlled, or checked, by an opposing power – one of equal standing. Every government must be designed and constructed so that power is limited by an opposing power, or it will ALWAYS end in tyranny. Our Founding Fathers knew this; they understood this concept. And that’s why our government system is based on dual sovereignty – the federal government versus the States. That is why federalism (the division of power between two equal sovereigns) is a unique American feature. That feature is so important that the States demanded that it be restated and re-emphasized in the Tenth Amendment.

The States were tasked, and I argue must continue to be tasked, with the most important of government functions – to check the power of the federal government. If they fail to do this, as they have since the earlier years, the antebellum years, then tyranny will be the result. And tyranny has been the result.  [Refer to my long article “A RE-DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE,” posted on January 23, 2021 – https://forloveofgodandcountry.com/2021/01/23/a-re-declaration-of-independence/ ]

As the topic of this article is “Solutions for America: How to Save the Land of Liberty Our Founding Fathers Gave Us,” let me finally get to its substance. I have four solutions, as I mentioned at the very beginning of this article, to help save our country and to preserve our most precious founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and our US Constitution (original meaning and intent). Three solutions involve the States, which are tasked to be the most powerful and important of “checks and balances” on the federal government, and one solution involves the will and the concerted action of the People.

SOLUTION 1 – NULLIFICATION & INTERPOSITION

Nullification is, as Thomas Jefferson wrote and explained, the “rightful remedy” to address unconstitutional acts by the federal government. The States, under the concept of dual sovereignty, as defined by “federalism,” and as emphasized in our US Constitution by the Tenth Amendment, are the parties who have the sovereign power and right to serve as the ultimate check on the actions of the federal government. No other constituents have such power and ability to do so, unless the American people, en masse, act in concert or otherwise revolt.

But using the term “federalism” and citing the Tenth Amendment…  these are merely words; they are merely context. What gives life to our Founding Father’s government design (its designed of limited government and checks and balances) is ACTION. Inherent in federalism and in the Tenth Amendment is the understanding that States, in their sovereign capacity, have the right and the responsibility to stand up against the government in DC should it abuse its powers and should it act unconstitutionally. That action is known as “nullification” and “interposition.” 

Nullification means “null and void,” and essentially what the term means is that when the government acts outside the Constitution, in abuse or disregard of the powers expressly delegated to it (by the States and the People), it acts without authority, without the legal right to do so, and therefore such actions are “null and void” and “without any power to be enforced.”  The question is, who has the standing and the authority to make such a call?  The States do.  That is precisely their role in our system of federalism and in our system of checks and balances. The government itself would never admit they’ve violated the Constitution, and certainly, as we all know, we can’t count on the federal courts or the US Supreme Court to call out their violations.

Nullification is as much a Jeffersonian doctrine as the doctrine that says that all individuals are endowed the alienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and that governments, instituted among Men and deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, are responsible, above all else, to protect those

rights. Thomas Jefferson, who not only authored of perhaps our most important morally-defining founding document, the Declaration of Independence, but he also authored the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom (1786), and he strongly advised James Madison to introduce the Bill of Rights as the first set of amendments to the newly-adopted US Constitution.

I’ll explain how Jefferson introduced the term “nullification” into our lexicon below, in his Kentucky Resolves of 1799.

“Interposition” is the other tool inherent in each State’s arsenal of sovereign responsibilities. It goes hand-in-hand with nullification. It is the more effective tool in restraining the federal government. “Interposition” means “to intervene between two parties; to insert between one thing and another” (Webster’s dictionary). Once a State identifies an unconstitutional act by the federal government and declares such to its citizens, its duty does not end there. Oh no. It must address the second part of nullification, which is to prevent the enforcement of such unconstitutional action (whether it be an act of Congress, and executive order, the creation of an unconstitutional department, such as the Dept. of Education, the EPA, etc etc, or even an unconstitutional or arbitrary ruling by the federal courts or Supreme Court (we call this “judicial activism,” which explains such cases as Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Obamacare ruling, the Obergefell ruling regarding gay marriage, Roe v. Wade, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, Wickard v. Filburn, and many more).  Interposition was articulated by James Madison, “the father of the Constitution,” in his Virginia Resolves of 1798 and takes such forms as preventing the arrest of anyone who violates an unconstitutional act, arresting any federal officer who enters the state to enforce such law, preventing the state courts from adjudicating said violation, etc.  Nullification and Interposition essentially mean “notice and action,” which is the only course of action that ensures that a free people are not subject to the abuse and over-reach of government.

As an aside, many people believe that the so-called Civil War put an end to the sovereign right of secession and the Jim Crow era put an end to the sovereign right of nullification. As a constitutionalist, any ruling by any federal court that invalidated nullification and interposition is, in and of itself, unconstitutional and therefore to be nullified and ignored and rendered unenforceable by interposition. The federal courts are only limited to the “interpretation” of the Constitution. Nullification and interposition, as explained, are inherent sovereign rights, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence. They supersede the Constitution; if nothing else, they are inherent in the Tenth Amendment.

Here is a bit of history to explain how and why the doctrine of Nullification meaningfully entered into our American experience: 

After the Constitution was ratified and our first US Congress was established, Thomas Jefferson wondered how the country would respond in the case its government passed a law that was clearly unconstitutional. As Secretary of State under our first president, George Washington, he already witnessed the wheels of government try to enlarge provisions in the Constitution to give the administration unchecked powers to tax and spend. Washington would establish the first National Bank. Jefferson knew the trend would continue. And it did.  Our second president, John Adams, signed the Alien & Sedition Acts into law, which were laws addressing the Quasi War (undeclared) with France at the time. The French Revolution just killed off the monarch and his family and tensions flared up between the new French republic and its old rival, England. There was an influx of French immigrants and Americans were split in their support of the old French system or the new republic. Although the Alien Acts (3 of them) were offensive, it was the Sedition Act that was most glaringly so. The Sedition Act made it a crime (fines and jail sentences) should any person “write, print, utter, or publish, OR cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered, or published, OR assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering, or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either House of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States….”   The Constitutional red flags went up at once.  The immediate violations jumped out to men like Jefferson and Madison, and many others. While the Alien Acts violated the 10th Amendment and the Due Process clause of the 5th Amendment, the Sedition Act was a blatant violation of the 1st Amendment and its guarantee of Free Speech (most importantly, political speech!)  John Adams, a Federalist, saw nothing wrong with any of the laws.  Neither did his Federalist co-members of government or his Federalist judges.  Thomas Jefferson, the Vice President at the time (since he got the second highest votes in the election of 1796) wasn’t a Federalist. He was a Republican-Democrat (a party he founded).  [Notice that the Sedition Act protected everyone from slander EXCEPT the VP !!].  The Checks and Balances didn’t work. Political power was more important than the rights the government was created to protect!

And so, convictions quickly followed. Journalists, publishers, and even congressmen were fined and jailed. Not a single person targeted was a Federalist. The only ones targeted were Republicans.  The men who wrote our founding documents – Jefferson and Madison – began a series of correspondences to discuss what should be done to prevent such unconstitutional laws from being enforced on people who had a rightful expectation of exercising the liberties promised in the Declaration and in the Bill of Rights. (And of course they had to be very careful lest they be convicted under the law!)  Jefferson saw that there are 3 possible remedies when a government tries to enforce unconstitutional laws.. (1) Seek an opinion from the Judiciary; (2) Secession; or (3) Nullification (including Interposition).  Jefferson advised against the first two remedies.  He said the first was unpredictable and unreliable. He believed justices were men motivated by the same passions, political motivations, thirst for power and legacy, and personal opinions as politicians and could not be counted on to be impartial interpreters of the Constitution. He also realized that the judiciary was only one branch of government (the least powerful at the time), and although it would render an opinion, Congress and the President were not required to abide by its ruling. Furthermore, the courts were all Federalists at the time and were part of the problem!.  Jefferson said secession was certainly a legitimate option (after all, the Declaration itself was a secessionist document), but said it was far too extreme and every effort should be made to keep the union together in a workable fashion.  The third option, he said, was “the rightful remedy.”  Nullification, he said, was the remedy inherent in the states’ ratification of the Constitution, inherent in the doctrine of federalism, a remedy grounded in law itself, and the remedy that would allow hot tempers to cool and would prevent states from threatening to leave the Union.  Madison agreed. 

Nullification is the doctrine which states that any law that is made without proper legal authority is immediately null and void and therefore unenforceable. Laws have to be enforced by officials – federal and state. When the government passes a law pursuant to its powers, it is supreme and binding. Every level of enforcement recognizes the law. States are obligated to uphold it and help enforce it.  An example are the federal immigration laws.  When the government passes a law that it has no authority to make – such as the Sedition Act, which offends the 1^st Amendment which is a strict prohibition on the government with respect to individual speech (political speech) – then in terms of legality, the law is null and void.  For a government to try to enforce it would be an act of tyranny. (Tyranny is defined as a government that abuses its powers and enforces unpopular laws).  Since the law is null and void, no enforcement agency should force the law on the people. Government will never admit its law is unconstitutional or unenforceable and so it is up to the states and the communities (and their enforcement agencies) to prevent such law from being enforced.  The states are the rightful parties to stand up for the people against a tyrannical act of government. When the government assumes power to legislate that it was not granted in the Constitution, it usurps (or steals it) from its rightful depository, which are either the States or the People (see the 10^th and the 9^th Amendments).  Every party must always jealously guard its sphere of government; it’s bundle of rights.  States have their powers of government and people have their rights of self-government (ie, control over their own lives, thoughts, actions, and property). Again, if we look at the Sedition Act, the government under John Adams passed the law by attempting to steal the rights of free speech from the People.

Well, immediately, Jefferson and Madison got out their pens and drafted the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and of 1799 (Jefferson, for the Kentucky state legislature) and the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 (Madison, for the Virginia state legislature).  Both states passed them, declaring that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable in their states.  The Virginia Resolutions were especially forceful because they announced that the state of Virginia would take every step possible to prevent the enforcement of the laws on its people.

In the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, Jefferson wrote:

       1. 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 a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general 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 part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

In the Kentucky Resolutions of 1799, he wrote:

       RESOLVED, That this commonwealth considers the federal union, upon the terms and for the purposes specified in the late compact, as conducive to the liberty and happiness of the several states: That it does now unequivocally declare its attachment to the Union, and to that compact, agreeable to its obvious and real intention, and will be among the last to seek its dissolution: That if those who administer the general government be permitted to transgress the limits fixed by that compact, by a total disregard to the special delegations of power therein contained, annihilation of the state governments, and the erection upon their ruins, of a general consolidated government, will be the inevitable consequence: That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers: That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy……

In the Virginia Resolutions of 1798, James Madison wrote:

       RESOLVED……. That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that 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 for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.

The government hates the doctrine of Nullification and has used every opportunity to discredit it.  And it makes sense.  And doctrine that gives power to the States is offensive to the federal government. It makes them harder to control. We all know how angry the government gets when any state criticizes or attempts to frustrate the government’s laws, policies, and agenda.  Nullification, like secession, is a fundamental sovereign power reserved to each state. Since the states did not form the Union by unlimited submission to the common government they created, certain powers remain vested in them.  Despite what Lincoln claimed, the states did NOT create, or attempt to create, or even envision creating a “perpetual” Union by ratifying the Constitution.  Those words are merely wishful thinking by a despot and traitor.

SOLUTION 2 – EXERCISE OF STATE SOVEREIGNTY PER THE TENTH AMENDMENT (Specifically, the Creation of State Escrow Accounts)

One of the hallmarks of a tyrannical government is a bloated budget. We see this to be true of our current federal government; federal spending is insanely out-of-control. We complain about it, politicians make it one of their campaign issues, but no one seems to want to focus on a meaningful remedy.  Rather, most spend their time blaming one political party or the other, demanding a balanced budget amendment, or calling for an Article V Convention to amend the Constitution to include a balanced budget amendment. The latter two are totally unnecessary if one is willing to simply acknowledge that the Constitution itself, by its very word and spirit, requires limited spending.  Any amendment will merely affirm the government’s incorrect assumption that it has broad and unlimited taxing and spending powers. And once that amendment is added, our government will no longer be a limited one.  The Constitution will be one that is incapable of reigning in the powers that be.

Any real remedy to the out-of-control spending that plagues our nation and threatens to burden our children and grandchildren must address the reason for that spending.  The reason we have this problem is that the federal government believes the “Welfare Clause” is a separate grant of power (not true) and had been enlarging its sphere of control through the creation of endless departments and agencies (and their associated bureaucracies).   

For example, there are the more than 1,100 “grants-in-aid” programs (“conditioned” federal grants, usually for a specific purpose) that spend one-sixth of the federal budget on matters that are the exclusive business of state and local governments. Social Security and Medicare spending have increased greatly, owing to advancements in the science and healthcare field allowing Americans to live longer, and entitlement programs have been enlarged, owing to the unrelenting waves of immigrants and refugees flowing into our country and to the great many Americans who are having children outside wedlock or otherwise simply don’t want to work

According to a 2014 article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “How Congress Bribes States to Give Up Power,” author James L. Buckley wrote:

    “Those programs, which provide funding for Medicaid as well as everything from road and bridge construction to rural housing, job training and fighting childhood obesity—now touch virtually every activity in which state and local governments are engaged. Their direct cost has grown, according to the federal budget, to an estimated $640.8 billion in 2015 from $24.1 billion in 1970.

       Their indirect costs, however, go far beyond those numbers both in terms of dollars wasted and the profound distortions they have brought about in how we govern ourselves. Because the grants come with detailed federal directives, they deprive state and local officials of the flexibility to meet their own responsibilities in the most effective ways, and undermine their citizens’ ability to ensure that their taxes will be used to meet their priorities rather than those of distant federal regulators. The irony is that the money the states and local governments receive from Washington is derived either from federal taxes paid by residents of the states or from the sale of bonds that their children will have to redeem.

       Congress finds the authority to enact those programs in the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Constitution’s general-welfare clause in Steward Machine Co. v. Davis (1937). More recently, in the court’s 2012 NFIB v. Sebelius decision upholding the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Congress may use federal funds to “induce the States to adopt policies that the Federal Government itself could not impose,” so long as participation by the states is voluntary. To put it another way, Congress is licensed to dabble in areas in which it is forbidden to act, which it does by bribing the states to adopt Congress’s approaches to problems that are the states’ exclusive responsibility.

      It is impossible, in this article, to detail all the costs imposed by those programs, but here are some of the most egregious ones: They add layers of federal and state administrative expenses to the cost of the subsidized projects; distort state priorities by offering lucrative grants for purposes of often trivial importance; and undermine accountability because state officials bound by federal regulations can’t be held responsible for the costs and failures of the projects they administer.

      Finally, and of prime importance, those programs have subverted the Constitution’s federalism, its division of federal and state responsibilities, that was intended to prevent a concentration of power in a central government that could threaten individual liberties.

      The states are free to decline to participate in the programs, but that has proved very hard to do. Money from Washington is still regarded as “free,” and state officials are delighted to accept grants, strings and all, rather than raise the extra money that would be required to pay the full cost of the projects they freely undertake with federal subsidies. What makes declining grants particularly difficult is the fact that if a state does not participate in a program, its share of the money—derived in whole or part from its own taxpayers—will go elsewhere.”

[Source: http://www.wsj.com/articles/james-l-buckley-how-congress-bribes-states-to-give-up-power-1419541292.  Mr. Buckley is a retired federal appellate judge and a former U.S. senator.]

As the wise man, Thomas Jefferson, once explained: “The policy of the American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.

I have proposed a remedy. Borrowing from Jefferson, I like to call it the “Rightful Remedy” for curbing federal spending. The remedy relies on the sovereignty of the states, on the federal nature of our government system, and on the Tenth Amendment. 

In short, the remedy summons the states to step up to their unique and historical responsibility to act as the last safeguard of their citizen’s individual’s liberty.  The remedy would have each state, through their Treasury Department, establish an “Escrow Account” or “Escrow Fund” into which it would deposit its citizens’ federal income tax withholdings or funds.  To be clear, citizens of each state will direct their federal income tax withholdings to go to the state Escrow Account rather than to the IRS.  Similarly, citizens who don’t receive a salary but have other assets that the government taxes will send their federal income tax check to the same state Escrow Account instead of to the IRS.  The funds will remain in the Account while the State Treasurer (either as a solo effort or in collaboration with other state treasurers) evaluates the federal budget for constitutionality.  The Treasurer will review each item of spending and evaluate it according to the original meaning and intent of the Constitution (as it was debated, understood, and adopted by the People of each state, acting in convention in the years 1787-1790 to establish the Union of states) to see if it consistent or inconsistent with Article I, Section 8.  After reviewing each item, the NC Department of State Treasurer will determine the percentage of the federal budget that is constitutional (as opposed to that portion that is unconstitutional and should rightfully be reserved to the states).  The State Treasurer will then re-calculate each individual’s federal income tax burden according to its determination of constitutionality. 

The State Treasurer will then forward to the IRS that portion of each individual’s tax burden that corresponds to the constitutional purposes of the budget and the remainder will remain in the State Escrow Account.  The state can then determine what it should do with the amount remaining in the Account.  It may choose to keep it there (“just in case”).  But preferably, it will offer the taxpayer a choice: to have the remaining amount returned to him or her, or to allow the state to keep it to help fund state projects that normally would have required federal funding, including “conditioned” grants. The latter option will give a huge boost to States’ Rights, freeing them up from their dependence on the federal government.

The State could also have its citizens direct their FICA withholdings to a state Escrow Account (a different one, perhaps – a state “Social Security Escrow Account”) rather than to the IRS in order to protect their interests when they enter their retirement years.  The State Treasurer could research the best investment scheme to invest the funds for the citizen so that when he or she reaches the age of retirement, the retirement funds that he or she receives will be secure and plentiful.

This remedy, in general, achieves several goals:

• It reminds Congress that not all of its spending is constitutional.
• It divests Congress of the broad interpretation of its taxing (and spending) powers that the Supreme Court has generously provided over the many years.
• It puts an important check on the scope of the federal government by the sovereign that was always intended to provide that check – the states (under the Tenth Amendment and under Compact and Agency theories).
• It helps States break free of their dependency on the federal government and hence resume their sovereign responsibilities and sovereign status.
• It forces government to divest itself of the functions and agencies that it can no longer ‘pay for.’
• It forces government to “exist within its means” (just as ordinary people are required to do).
• It provides an element of transparency and accountability in government.
• It reduces the individual federal income tax burden and allows citizens to keep more of their own money, or at least to have it spent in their “own back yard” (in their own state, to accomplish goals that benefit them more directly).  
• The reduced federal income tax burden allows the states to tax according to their own schemes in order to fund directly their own projects, as they themselves see fit for their people.
• The scheme introduces a degree of innovation and creativity on the part of the state (“50 independent laboratories of innovation”) which will serve to make our government system most efficient.
• If the federal government becomes too abusive and continues to usurp reserved state powers or if it threatens individual liberty, it is much easier to shut it down and effect the remedies provided to the People in the Declaration of Independence (“to alter or abolish” government) by withholding tax funds completely. 

If our country doesn’t get its finances in order, and if we, as a People, don’t get our government back to work for us instead of for itself and its longevity and get it back within reasonable boundaries in our lives, in our livelihoods, and on our property (all forms), then we will lose everything good about the experiment that was started by those who reached our shores to escape various types of persecution from their own governments and who instigated for independence.

Thomas Jefferson was optimistic about the country he so intimately helped to form: ““I predict future happiness for Americans, if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Forcing the federal government to tax and spend for constitutional objects only will force it to reduce in size and in spending, and to concentrated on those objects it is constitutionally tasked with. Henry David Thoreau said it best: “Government is best which governs least.”

SOLUTION 3 – AMERICAN CITIZENS ACTING TOGETHER TO WITHHOLD FEDERAL INCOME TAXES

Money talks…..

This is a simple solution but would take a great effort to get a majority of citizens on board to act.

Ronald Reagan once said: “The American people are not undertaxed, the government in Washington is overfed.”  I interpret this statement as meaning that the federal government is doing a lot of unconstitutional taxing and spending.

The government cannot financially support itself, fund its programs, fund our armed forces and security services, take care of citizens (healthcare, medicare, Medicaid, and other entitlement programs; including to immigrants, including illegals and refugees), support international organizations such as NATO, support other countries, etc without the tax dollars that it demands from working Americans and others who have taxable assets.  If Americans simply make a concerted decision NOT to pay their federal income tax by April 15, then government will shut down.  No government; no problems !! The States can easily join together and pick up the functions that government was carrying out. No government, no tyranny.

If the People choose to use this solution, the must first plan ahead:

First, each person must go to their human resources department and decline to have their federal income tax, and other mandatory taxes, automatically taken out of their paychecks. (Before doing so, be sure to record the withholding taxes taken out of the paycheck)

Second, when depositing one’s paycheck, take the amount corresponding to the withholding taxes and put it in a separate account or one’s savings account.

Third, when April 15 comes around, Americans send nothing to the IRS and the government will be forced to go very lean or shut down altogether.  (A dangerous notion, perhaps, but an honest and constitutional government is better any day of the week than a tyrannical one).

Fourth, we condition our compliance with the federal taxation laws only when taxes are lowered (to meet only constitutional objects of government) and when the government agrees to divest itself of unauthorized authority (when it gets rid of the US Dept. of Education

Ideally, this solution, this plan, must reach all taxpayers.  But how might this be accomplished and organized??

I look back to 2009, when a simple rant by CNBC commentator Rick Santelli from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange was the single spark that ignited the entire Tea Party movement.  Tea Party groups sprang up almost overnight in towns and cities all over the country.

If people are given hope that they can make change and show government who’s in control, it might just work, If We the People hold back our federal income taxes, we show how much power we can actually have. We take back the sovereign power inherent in our humanity and which is clearly articulated in the Declaration of Independence.  

It’s time for us to be the people that our Founding Fathers expect us to be. They gave us an incredible country and a brilliant government design but they entrusted us, the people, to guard it and protect it, so that succeeding generations will always enjoy the blessings of liberty.

Jefferson offered some wise words: “When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.’

SOLUTION 4 – AN ARTICLE V CONVENTION OF STATES (to Break Up the Country into Two New Unions (in order to end the incessant bickering and hatred between the two radically different, opposing political ideologies)

Above I talked about Jefferson’s advice on how to address palpable abuses (ie, unconstitutional actions) by the federal government. Jefferson offered three possible solutions: (1) Challenge the action in federal court; (2) Secession; or (3) Nullification (with Interposition). The first, Jefferson said, was unpredictable and unreliable. He believed justices were men motivated by the same passions, political motivations, thirst for power and legacy, and opinions as politicians and could not be counted on to be impartial interpreters of the Constitution. Today we know that although the judiciary is one of three branches of government which are supposed to check one another, it has merged with the others to form a federal monopoly on the meaning, scope, and intent of the Constitution, and hence the scope of its powers. In Jefferson’s time (as Secretary of State under President John Adams), the courts were all Federalists and were part of the problem!. The second, according to Mr. Jefferson, is always a legitimate option but argued that it was too extreme. The third option, as he articulated, is the “rightful remedy.”

With respect to the second option, it should be noted that support for secession has grown steadily over the years. In fact, support was so palpable in 2012 after Barack Obama was elected to a second term that the White House website received secession petitions from all 50 states, including such progressive states as New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, California, and Illinois. The Petition for Secession submitted by Texas was the most popular, with more than 125,000 signatures. Two years later, when Reuters conducted a poll, it found that nearly one-quarter of Americans said they supported the idea of their states breaking away, a position most popular among Republicans and rural westerners. Most recently, we have heard of counties in California that wanted to secede from the rest of the state (claiming that they didn’t want to be subject to the progressive politics of big cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles), And just this year, 5 counties in Oregon petitioned to secede and join with their neighboring state of Idaho (again over progressive politics). The point is that when the time is right, secession becomes the most viable (and legitimate, despite what Lincoln said!) option to enjoy a government that actually represents them.

Back to government tyranny. What happens if the federal government has acted outside the legitimate bounds of the Constitution and has gotten away with it?  Some examples might include the Obamacare ruling, declaring that government has the authority to mandate healthcare insurance; the issue of term limits, requiring Congress to balance the federal budget every year, requiring Congress to cite a specific provision in the Constitution granting authority for each law it proposes, and the unconstitutional granting of taxpayer funds to states in the form of grants), I would submit that there is a fourth option which is an Article V Convention. Congress will never pass legislation that limits its powers or that personally limits representatives in their political ambitions or political benefits, and so it must be up to the States to permanently rectify the offensive conduct. And thru an Article V Convention, the States can seek to amend the Constitution to right the wrongs of the federal leviathan, the federal “machine.” This option, most will admit, although legitimate in spirit, can be tricky and unpredictable. The reality is that it can become a “runaway convention,” just as the Philadelphia Convention (ie, the “Constitutional Convention”) was in 1787, which resulted in a new US Constitution (to replace the Articles of Confederation) with a completely new government design.

A brief review of history shows that, upon the advice of several states following the Annapolis Convention of September 11, 1786 (they submitted an official report from the Convention), the US Congress called for a convention of the states in Philadelphia, to begin on May 14, 1787, to address the defects in the Articles of Confederation – ““to render the constitution … adequate to the exigencies of the Union.”  Although the work of the convention was officially to amend the Articles of Confederation, the Virginia Plan (Madison as author) began with the phrase “Resolved that the Articles of Confederation ought to be so corrected & enlarged as to accomplish the objects proposed by their institution; namely, “common defense, security of liberty and general welfare.”

As we all know, and I hope students are being taught this in our public schools, the delegates did the very opposite. From the very beginning (thanks to the scheming of James Madison and his Virginia delegation), they scrapped the Articles altogether and drafted a completely new blueprint for their “common government.” This blueprint was the US Constitution.

In short, and to reiterate, the remedies to saving our republic lie with the States, or to the People.

US Presidents like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump acknowledged this in their inaugural addresses to the American people:

When Ronald Reagan promised to reduce Washington’s influence over state and local government in his first Inaugural Address (1981), he said: “All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government.”

And when Donald Trump was sworn in, he echoed Thomas Jefferson and said:

     “Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning, because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another, or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the people.

      For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government, while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs, and while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. That all changes, starting right here and right now, because this moment is your moment — it belongs to you. It belongs to everyone gathered here today, and everyone watching, all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration, and this, the United States of America, is your country. What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people. January 20th, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again. The forgotten men and women of our country, will be forgotten no longer.”

There are provisions in the US Constitution which recognize the sovereign power of the People and the States. There is the Ninth Amendment (which recognizes additional, unlisted rights reserved to the People), the Tenth Amendment (the powers reserved to the States), amendments one – eight of the Bill of Rights (inalienable and civil rights that the People are entitled to), the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments (the Reconstruction era amendments primarily for African-Americans, abolishing slavery, acknowledging US citizenship and equal rights, and granting them the right to vote), the Nineteenth Amendment (women shall not be denied the right to vote), and the Twenty-First Amendment (citizens who are age 18 and older shall not be denied the right to vote).  And then there is Article V…..  

Article V (the “Amendment Process”) reads:

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, OR, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

The Philadelphia Convention of 1787 provided two methods of proposing amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In the first, Congress, by two-thirds vote in both houses, proposes amendments to the states. If three-fourths of the states (38 at present) vote to ratify the amendment, it becomes part of the Constitution. Since 1789, Congress has proposed 33 amendments by this method, 27 of which have been adopted. In the second method, if the legislatures of two-thirds of the states (34 at present) apply, Congress must call a convention to consider and propose amendments, which must meet the same 38-state ratification requirement. This alternative, known as the Article V Convention, has not been implemented to date. Several times during the 20th century, organized groups promoted a convention that they hoped would propose amendments to the states, or to “prod” Congress to propose amendments they favored. The most successful was the movement for direct election of Senators, which helped prod Congress to propose the 17th Amendment. The most recent, which promoted a convention to consider a balanced federal budget amendment, gained 32 applications, just two states short of the constitutional threshold. When the balanced budget amendment campaign failed in the 1980s, interest in the convention option faded and remained largely dormant for more than 20 years. (Note that some states – Delaware, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado – have rescinded their Article V applications).

In just the last five years, the Convention of States resolution has passed in 15 states: Georgia, Alaska, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Indiana, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arizona, North Dakota, Texas, Missouri, Arkansas, Utah, and Mississippi.

Reviewing the history of the Article V Convention alternative, the record of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 clearly demonstrated the founders’ original intent. During the convention, they agreed that a second mode of amendment was needed to balance the grant of amendatory power to Congress. This method, clearly identified in Article V as co-equal to congressional proposal of amendments, empowered the people, acting through their state legislatures, to summon a convention that would have equal authority to propose an amendment or amendments, which would then be presented to the states for ratification. In other words, it provides a mechanism for the States to bypass Congress. (This alternative has never yet been used).

Only the states can summon an Article V Convention, by application from their legislatures. Some of the issues concerning this process include procedures within the state legislatures, the scope and conditions of applications for a convention, steps in submitting applications to Congress, the role of the state governors in the process, and limitations on what changes or amendments should be made to the Constitution.

“The Great One,” Mark Levin, advocates for this approach.  Mr. Levin wrote a book back in 2013 entitled “THE LIERTY AMENDMENTS: Restoring the American Republic,” in which he proposes what he believes is the only viable solution to restoring constitutional governance, which is an Article V State Convention.

In his book, Mr. Levin writes: 

       I undertook this project not because I believe the Constitution, as originally structured, is outdated and outmoded, thereby requiring modernization through amendments, but because of the opposite – that is, the necessity and urgency of restoring constitutional republicanism and preserving the civil society from the growing authoritarianism of a federal Leviathan.  The Statists have been successful in their century-long march to disfigure mangle the constitutional order and undo the social compact. To disclaim the Statists’ campaign and aims is to imprudently ignore the inventions and schemes hatched and promoted openly by their philosophers, experts, and academics, and the coercive application of their designs on the citizenry by a delusional governing elite. Their handiwork is omnipresent, for all to see – a centralized and consolidated government with a ubiquitous network of laws and rules actively suppressing individual initiative, self-interest, and success in the name of the greater good and on behalf of the larger community. The nation has entered an age of post-constitutional soft tyranny…

      Unlike the modern Statist, who defies, ignores, or rewrites the Constitution for the purpose of evasion, I propose that we, the people, take a closer look at the Constitution for our preservation.  The Constitution itself provides the means for restoring self-government and averting societal catastrophe in Article V.  Article V sets for the two processes for amending the Constitution [the second of which I have included above].

The fact is that Article V expressly grants state legislatures significant authority to rebalance the constitutional structure for the purpose of restoring our founding principles should the federal government shed its limitations, abandon its original purpose, and grow too powerful, as many delegates in Philadelphia and the state conventions had worried it might.   [Levin, pp. 1-13]

In this excerpt from Levin’s book, we see that he tacitly admits that it is possible for an Article V Convention to turn into a “runaway convention.” Additionally, the petite constitutional attorney Publius Huldah says the same. She takes Levin to task in her article, “Mark Levin Refuted: Keep the Feds in Check with Nullification, Not Amendments!,” by claiming that while he believes that such a convention is safe and legal and can be controlled, he never explains why Article V can effectively prevent it from happening and turning into a runaway convention. (In her opinion, Nullification and Interposition are the most effective ways to curb the actions of the federal government).   

And then there are the opinions of some of the greatest legal minds in the country who agree that Article V doesn’t provide enough details to be able to control a convention of states. {See their quotes and comments in the ADDENDUM section]. I’m not a great legal mind, but I too agree and perhaps that’s what our Founding Fathers envisioned.  Perhaps they left the language in Article V open to give states the option of radically changing their common government.

In fact, five years ago, in September 2016, the group pushing this option, Convention of States, held a mock convention to come up with proposed amendments to the Constitution. The results show how they plan to use a convention to implement an extreme agenda into the Constitution and how a convention CANNOT be limited. The changes they proposed would drastically alter the federal government and put civil rights and needed programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, at risk. (Some might say that Medicaid needs to be re-addressed due to the ease of claiming it fraudulently)

And that is what I propose SHOULD happen…  A Runaway Convention.  Either the states state the exact intention of their convention in their applications (although I’m not sure 34 states will be on board) or they do what Madison did and sabotage the intended purpose and push for a different agenda.

What is the “agenda” I am talking about?  I propose using an Article V Convention of states to divide our country into at least two distinct and independent unions.

Why do I propose a “runaway convention”?

Let’s face it, our country is hopelessly divided. One can feel revolution in the air. The country is so divided that we may not long endure as a constitutional republic. Our US Constitution may not endure. It certainly doesn’t mean today what our Founders, and the states which ratified it, intended.  And so, as Sasha Issenberg asks in her 2018 Intelligencer article, “Divided We Stand….:”: If our country is so hopelessly split, why don’t we go ahead, make it official, and break it up?  As she wrote: “Let’s just admit that this arranged marriage isn’t really working anymore.”   I have written on this subject many times myself.

And who honestly hasn’t also thought this would be a perfect solution to the chronic division, the hatred, the mistrust, the abuse, the attacks, the hassles, the accusations, the smear campaigns, the name-calling, the illegality and fraud in elections (to totally erode public confidence in elections), the government harassment and spying (on political opponents, that is), the barrage of fake news, the political agendas in public schools, the attacks on our Founding Fathers, the incessant accusations of “racism.” the assaults on our nation’s image, the protests, the mobs, the endless looting and burning of cities, the rise in violence, etc etc. The futility of having ideological opposites constantly grinding away at one another is just too much to bear. One can almost finally imagine the futility on the part of the southern states of remaining in the Union with the northern states which essentially despised them and used the government to plunder their wealth. It was simply better to leave, they said.

It’s not only unbearable, it’s threatening the very fabric of our country. It is threatening every one of the foundations our country was built on. The Church – gone. Family – gone.  Education – essentially gone. The Constitution – transformed.  Honest elections – gone.  Honest politicians – unheard of (except for a few good ones).

Clearly, the big ideological rift is between the Democrats and the Republicans. Democrats have become even more a party of cities and upscale suburbs whose votes are inefficiently packed into dense geographies and who share an extreme leftist political opinion; many are socialist and/or Marxist and want more government. And Republicans are the party of suburbs and rural areas; they tend to be conservative, cling to their religion, guns, and family values. The ideologues do not see eye-to-eye. Each side accuses the other of derailing the country, of interfering with the changing social dynamics or forcing social change. The truth is that the two political parties have divided the American people along sharply ideological lines. The are, in truth, enemies.

Nate Cohen wrote in his article “Why Political Sectarianism is a Growing Threat to American Democracy” (April 2021):

“This threat to democracy has a name: sectarianism. It’s not a term usually used in discussions about American politics. It’s better known in the context of religious sectarianism — like the hostility between Sunnis and Shia in Iraq. Yet a growing number of eminent political scientists contend that political sectarianism is on the rise in America.

Whether religious or political, sectarianism is about two hostile identity groups who not only clash over policy and ideology, but see the other side as alien and immoral, (as an enemy).  It’s the antagonistic feelings between the groups, more than differences over ideas, that drive sectarian conflict.

Any casual observer of American politics would agree that there’s plenty of hostility between Democrats and Republicans. Many don’t just disagree, they dislike each other. They hold discriminatory attitudes in job hiring as they do on the Implicit Association Test. They tell pollsters they wouldn’t want their child to marry an opposing partisan. In a paper published in Science in October by 16 prominent political scientists, the authors argue that by some measures the hatred between the two parties “exceeds longstanding antipathies around race and religion.”

More than half of Republicans and more than 40 percent of Democrats tend to think of the other party as “enemies,” rather than “political opponents,” according to a CBS News poll conducted in January. A majority of Americans said that other Americans were the greatest threat to America……….

But the two parties have not only become more ideologically polarized, they have simultaneously sorted along racial, religious, educational, generational and geographic lines. Partisanship has become a “mega-identity,” in the words of the political scientist Lilliana Mason, who claims the clash is between white, Christian conservatives and a liberal, multiracial, secular elite.”

And so, I conclude that aside from revolution (violence) and aside from secession (which might become violent), an Article V Convention might be the way to peacefully divide our country into at least two separate and independent countries (or perhaps two separate and independence “territories,” each with sovereign rights and powers).

I think that scholars – men and women who are as intellectual and with the same moral and religious character as our Founding Fathers, who have the same enduring faith and loyalty to the Constitution and to the principles and values upon which our country was founded – should come up with a strategic plan

Again, at stake is our constitutional republic, our nation’s founding values, and our very precious founding documents, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.  They must survive. The common government, as devised and intended by our Founders and by the individual States, must survive. Dividing the country up might be the only way to save them.

References:

Charles T. Pace, SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE. WHY WAR?  Shotwell Publishing (Columbia, SC), 2015.

Diane Rufino, “A Re-Declaration of Independence,” Forloveofgodandcountry’s Blog, January 23, 2021.  Referenced at:  https://forloveofgodandcountry.com/2021/01/23/a-re-declaration-of-independence/

Diane Rufino, “The Rightful Remedy to Curb Federal Spending:  State Escrow Accounts,” Forloveofgodandcountry’s Blog, November 8, 2015.  Referenced at:  https://forloveofgodandcountry.com/2015/11/09/the-rightful-remedy-to-curb-federal-spending-state-escrow-accounts/

Diane Rufino, “Nullification vs. Article V Constitutional Convention: Where is the Honest and Open Discussion?” Forloveofgodandcountry’s Blog, January 5, 2014.  Referenced at:  https://forloveofgodandcountry.com/2014/01/10/nullification-vs-article-v-constitutional-convention-where-is-the-honest-and-open-discussion/

Diane Rufino, “NULLIFICATION – The Power to Right Constitutional Wrongs,” Forloveofgodandcountry’s Blog, July 9, 2015.  Referenced at:  https://forloveofgodandcountry.com/2015/07/09/nullification-the-power-to-right-constitutional-wrongs/

“Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” issued by Secretary of Homeland Security on April 7, 2009.  Accessed at: https://fas.org/irp/eprint/rightwing.pdf

James L. Buckley, “How Congress Bribes States to Give Up Power,” Wall Street Journal, December 25, 2014.  Referenced at: http://www.wsj.com/articles/james-l-buckley-how-congress-bribes-states-to-give-up-power-1419541292.  Mr. Buckley is a retired federal appellate judge and a former U.S. senator.]

“The Article V Convention for Proposing Constitutional Amendments: Historical Perspectives for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, updated Oct. 22, 2012.   Referenced at:  https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R42592   [a companion report, CRS Report R42589, The

Article V Convention to Propose Constitutional Amendments: Contemporary Issues for Congress,

identifies contemporary issues for Congress and analyzes the congressional role in the Article V Convention process in greater detail]

Jay Riestenberg, “US Constitution Threatened as Article V Convention Movement Nears Success,” Common Cause, March 21, 2018.  Referenced at:  https://www.commoncause.org/resource/u-s-constitution-threatened-as-article-v-convention-movement-nears-success/

Amos Perkins, “OPINION: The best way to save America may be to break it up,” The Wichitan, October 23, 2020.  Referenced at:  https://thewichitan.com/68290/uncategorized/68290/ 

Sasha Issenberg, “Divided We Stand: The Country is Hopelessly Split. So Why Not Make it Official and Break It Up?”, Intelligencer, November 14, 2018.  Referenced at:  https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/11/maybe-its-time-for-america-to-split-up.html  

List of State Partition Proposals –  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_partition_proposals

Nate Cohen, “Why Political Sectarianism is a Growing Threat to American Democracy,” The New York Times, April 19, 2021.  Referenced at:  https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/us/democracy-gop-democrats-sectarianism.html

Margaret Wood, “May 1787: The Beginning of the Constitutional Convention, Library of Congress, May 25, 2016.  Referenced at:  https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2016/05/may-1787-the-beginning-of-the-constitutional-convention/

Full text: 2017 Donald Trump Inauguration Speech Transcript, Politico, January 20, 2017.  Referenced at:  https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/full-text-donald-trump-inauguration-speech-transcript-233907

FULL VIDEO – Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address (Jan. 20, 2017) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRBsJNdK1t0&ab_channel=ABCNews

FULL VIDEO – Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address (Jan. 20. 2017) – https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000004863342/donald-trump-full-inaugural-address-2017.html

ADDENDUM:

I.  The war of 1861-1865 could not rightfully be called a “civil” war because:

(1)  A civil war is two groups within a country fighting for possession of government. One group wants to take power and control away from the other group. The southern states (13 in all) had seceded peacefully from the Union and immediately formed a new sovereign country, the Confederate States of America, and adopted its new constitution.. The South, the Confederacy, had no desire to overthrow, possess, or even destroy the federal government because they had legally and willfully separated bonds with it. They just wanted to escape and live in peace.

(2)  Sovereign states cannot engage in a “civil” war. The States were pronounced “sovereign” by the British King and Parliament in the Treaty of Paris (1783), by other foreign nations, and by their own documents (ie, the Declaration of Independence, the Lee Resolution). No State surrendered its sovereignty or was thought to have done so. Nobody suggested (except Lincoln) that membership in the Union was compulsory and perpetual. In fact, three states – New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island conditioned their ratification of the US Constitution upon their absolute right to “reassume the powers delegated, withdrawing from the union entirely.” These were known as Resumption Clauses. In short, no state surrendered their independent sovereignty in joining the Union of 1788.  And according to compact theory (ie, contract law), if one member to the federal union had the right, it would also apply to all the others.

New York’s Resumption Clause declared, “That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness.”

Virginia’s Resumption Clause read: “We, the delegates of the people of Virginia…Do, in the name and in 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, be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power, not granted thereby, remains with them, and at their will…”

And Rhode Island’s version read, “That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness.”

Question: Could there ever be secured freedom and liberty in an association without the right to withdraw over abuse and tyranny? Do you think any state would have voluntarily joined the Union if such a right were forever denied?

(3)  By joint resolution of both houses, on March 28, 1928, Congress established that the official name of the War of 1861-65 shall be “The War Between the States.”  (still not a correct name). The correct name for the War would be “The War to Prevent Southern Independence.”

II.  FULL TEXT OF LINCOLN’S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS:

“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

III.  SECESSION

The Declaration of Independence, the British Government, and the Articles of Confederation defined the people of each state as sovereign. They formed a federal republic whose aim was liberty (“to secure the blessings of liberty”) – freedom from tyranny, freedom from outside rule. They did this by delegating to the federal government (the “creature”) only those powers which were expressly delegated by the US Constitution and confirmed by each State’s ratification of it. It was a compact of separate states who joined voluntarily, with never a thought that their right to leave it would be questioned. Nowhere in the document does it say the Federal Government has the power to force States to remain in the Union.

In fact, three states—New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia included “Resumption Clauses,” which would allow the states to leave the union to “resume” their status as independent states.

New York declared, “That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness.”

Rhode Island said, “That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness.”

Virginia stated, “Do in the name and in 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 or oppression.”

If even one state made its ratification conditional upon the right to resume its sovereign powers (ie, the right of secession), and that ratification was counted towards the adoption of the Constitution and the creation of our second American union, then that same right applied to every other state who ratified the Constitution and joined the Union.  All states come into the Union on equal footing.

IV.  WHAT LEGAL SCHOLARS HAVE SAID ABOUT AN ARTICLE V CONVENTION:

“There is no way to effectively limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda.  Congress might try to limit the convention to one amendment or one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey.” – Warren Burger, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1969-1986)

“I certainly would not want a constitutional convention. Whoa! Who knows what would come out of it?” – Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (1986-2016)

“There is no enforceable mechanism to prevent a convention from reporting out wholesale changes to our Constitution and Bill of Rights.” – Arthur Goldberg, Associate Justice of the US. Supreme Court (1962-1965)

“Questions about such a convention have been debated for years by legal scholars and political commentators, without resolution. Who would serve as delegates? What authority would they be given? Who would establish the procedures under which the convention would be governed? What limits would prevent a “runaway” convention from proposing radical changes affecting basic liberties?…With these thorny issues unsettled, it should come as no surprise that warning flags are being raised about a constitutional convention.” – Archibald Cox, Solicitor General of the United States (1961-1965) and special prosecutor for the U.S. Department of Justice (1973)

“Any new constitutional convention must have the authority to study, debate, and submit to the states for ratification whatever amendments it considers appropriate…If the legislatures of thirty-four states request Congress to call a general constitutional convention, Congress has a constitutional duty to summon such a convention. If those thirty -four states recommend in their applications that the convention consider only a particular subject, Congress still must call a convention and leave to the convention the ultimate determination of the agenda and the nature of the amendments it may choose to propose.” –  Walter E. Dellinger, Solicitor General of the United States (1996-1997) and the Douglas B. Maggs Professor Emeritus of Law at Duke University

“First of all, we have developed orderly procedures over the past couple of centuries for resolving [some of the many] ambiguities [in the Constitution], but no comparable procedures for resolving [questions surrounding a convention]. Second, difficult interpretive questions about the Bill of Rights or the scope of the taxing power or the commerce power tend to arise one at a time, while questions surrounding the convention process would more or less need to be resolved all at once. And third, the stakes in this case in this instance are vastly greater, because what you’re doing is putting the whole Constitution up for grabs.” –Laurence Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard Law School

“The bigger threat is that a constitutional convention, once unleashed on the nation, would be free to rewrite or scrap any parts of the U.S. Constitution. Do we really want to open up our nation’s core defining values to debate at a time when a serious candidate for the White House brags about his enthusiasm for torture and the surveillance state, wants to “open up” reporters to lawsuits, scoffs at the separation of powers and holds ideas about freedom of religion that are selective at best?” – David Super, professor of law at Georgetown University

“Note what [Article V] does not say. It says not a word expressly authorizing the states, Congress, or some combination of the two to confine the subject matter of a convention. It says not a word about whether Congress, in calculating whether the requisite 34 states have called for a convention, must (or must not) aggregate calls for a convention on, say, a balanced budget, with differently worded calls arising from related or perhaps even unrelated topics. It says not a word prescribing that the make-up of a convention, as many conservatives imagine, will be one-state-one-vote (as Alaska and Wyoming might hope) or whether states with larger populations should be given larger delegations (as California and New York would surely argue).”- Walter Olson, senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Constitutional Studies

“Danger lies ahead. Setting aside the long odds, if California and 33 more states invoke Article V, there’s a risk that we’d end up with a “runaway” convention, during which delegates would propose amendments on issues including abortion, gun rights and immigration.” – Rick Hasen, Chancellor’s Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of California, Irvine

“Holding a Constitutional convention when the U.S. is embroiled in extremely toxic, uninformed and polarized politics is a really, really bad idea.” – Shelia Kennedy, professor of law and policy at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis

“But no rule or law limits the scope of a state-called constitutional convention. Without established legal procedures, the entire document would be laid bare for wholesale revision. Article V itself sheds no light on the most basic procedures for such a convention. How many delegates does each state get at the convention? Is it one state, one vote, or do states with larger populations, like California, get a larger share of the votes? The Supreme Court has made at least one thing clear — it will not intervene in the process or the result of a constitutional convention. The game has neither rules nor referees.” – McKay Cunningham, professor of law at Concordia University

“The result will be a disaster. I hate to think of the worst-case scenario. At best, the fight over every step along the way would consume our country’s political oxygen for years.” – David Marcus, professor of law at the University of Arizona

“At present, there are no rules regarding who can participate, give money, lobby or have a voice in a constitutional convention. There are no rules about conflicts of interest, disclosure of who is giving or expending money. No rules exist that address political action committees, corporate or labor union involvement or how any other groups can or should participate. Not only might legitimate voices of the people be silenced by convention rules, but special interests may be given privilege to speak and affect the deliberations…there are no rules limiting what can be debated at a constitutional convention. Given the potential domination by special interests, who knows the result?” – David Schultz, political science and election law professor at Hamline University

“An Article V convention might propose an amendment to restore or expand the liberties of the American people, but it also could propose an amendment that diminishes the liberties of the American people, or of some of the people. “ – John Malcolm, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies

“But nothing in the Constitution limits such a convention to the issue or issues for which it was called. In other words, anything and everything could be on the table, including fundamental constitutional rights. Nor are there any guarantees about who would participate or under what rules. Indeed, for these reasons, no constitutional convention has been called since the first in 1787.” – Helen Norton, professor and Ira C. Rothgerber, Jr. Chair in Constitutional Law at the University of Colorado

“The lack of clear rules of the road, either in the text of the Constitution itself or in historical or legal precedent, makes the selection of the convention mechanism a choice whose risks dramatically outweigh any potential benefits.” – Richard Boldt, professor of law at the University of Maryland

“We live in deeply partisan times. There are no certainties about how a constitutional convention would play out, but the most likely outcome is that it would deepen our partisan divisions. Because there are no clear constitutional rules defining a convention’s procedures, a convention’s “losers” may deem illegitimate any resulting changes. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, the process itself would likely worsen our already vicious national politics.” – Eric Berger, associate dean professor of law at the University of Nebraska College of Law

“There are no such guarantees. This is uncharted territory…We should not now abandon the very document that has held us together as a nation for over two and one quarter centuries. Rewriting the Constitution is a dangerous errand that would not only unravel the legal ties that have kept us together for so long but would also undermine our sense of national identity and the way that view ourselves as a people.” – William Marshall, professor of law at University of North Carolina

“Terrible idea…Today’s politicians don’t have the timeless brilliance of our framers. If we were to rewrite our constitution today, we wouldn’t get a particularly good one.” – Adam Winkler, professor of constitutional law and history at the University of California, Los Angeles

“I believe it’s a time for constitutional sobriety. It’s a time to keep our powder dry and not to move on an uncharted course. We are not the founding fathers. This would be disastrous.” – Toni Massaro, constitutional law professor at the University of Arizona

“Having taught constitutional law for almost 40 years, and having studied constitutions from around the globe, I have difficulty imagining anything worse.” – Bill Rich, professor of law at Washburn University in Topeka, Kansas

“There are no constitutional limits on what the convention could do, no matter what the states say going into it.” – David Schwartz, professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School

“The Constitution allows for the calling of conventions on a petition of enough states, but not limited conventions of enough states. If the delegates decide they don’t want to be bound by the (state) resolution, they are right that they can’t be bound.” – Richard H. Fallon Jr., constitutional law professor at Harvard University

“Once you open the door to a constitutional convention, there are no sure guidelines left. This is the constitutional equivalent of opening a can of worms.” – Miguel Schor, constitutional law professor at Drake University School of Law

“Thus, neither the states nor Congress may limit the convention to specific subjects. While the goal to propose a balanced budget amendment may provide guidance to the convention, it would not have the force of law…Put simply, the rewards of any constitutional change is not worth the risks of a convention. ” – Sam Marcosson, professor of law at the University of Louisville

“Even more frightening is that the entire Constitution will be in play during a convention. The First Amendment could disappear, so could gun rights. There is no guarantee that any of our current constitutionally protected rights would be included in a new constitution. The only guarantee is that all of those rights would be imperiled.” – Mark Rush, the Waxberg Professor of Politics and Law at Washington and Lee University in Lexington

“Most significantly, we advise the Legislature that a federal constitutional convention called with this resolution could potentially open up each and every provision of the United States Constitution to amendment or repeal. In other words, a federal constitutional convention could propose amendments to eliminate the protections of free speech; the protections against racial discrimination; the protections of freedom of religion; or any of the other myriad provisions that presently provide the backbone of American law.” – March 2018 legislative testimony of Russell Suzuki, Acting Attorney General, and Deirdre Marie-Iha, Deputy Attorney General, of the state of Hawaii

“Whatever one thinks about these proposed amendments, trying to pass them through an Article V convention is a risky business. The Constitution does not specify how the delegates for such a convention would be chosen, how many delegates each state would have, what rules would apply at the convention or whether there would be any limits on what amendments the convention could consider. A convention that was called to address a specific issue, such as budget deficits, might propose changes to freedom of speech, the right to keep and bear arms, the Electoral College or anything else in the Constitution. There is no rule or precedent saying what the proper scope of the convention’s work would be.” – Allen Rostron, associate dean for students, the William R. Jacques Constitutional Law Scholar, and a professor at the University of Missouri

“Whether I like or dislike the specific proposal is not the point — the point is that a constitutional convention is a risky and potentially dangerous way to propose amendments.” – Hugh Spitzer, professor of law at the University of Washington School of Law

“A Constitutional Convention could be dangerous and destructive to our country, and citizens should approach the idea with the same wariness the founders did…Do we really want to tinker with this nation’s fundamental rights – especially at a time when our country is deeply divided politically? Let’s not risk opening what could be a Pandora’s box of chaos and an existential crisis for the country.” – Dewey M. Clayton, professor of political science at the University of Louisville

“If a national constitutional convention were held, all of our rights under the current Constitution, and all of the government’s reciprocal obligations, would be up for grabs. Nothing in the Constitution constrains the process that would apply if a convention is actually called. Anything could go, including the process for ratification itself, and there would be no Constitution cop on the block to ensure that things don’t go seriously haywire.” – Kim Wehle, professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and a former assistant U.S. attorney and associate independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation

“Amendment by convention has never been attempted and little is certain about the powers and prerogatives of such a convention. The basic problem is that there appears to be no effective way to limit the convention’s scope once it is called.” – Stephen H. Sach, Attorney General of Maryland (1979-1987)

“It is unclear, for instance, what the agenda of the convention that the states would call would be. Some people even think that the scope of the convention would be unlimited, and that makes a lot of very rational people wary of making the whole Constitution up for grabs.” – John O. McGinnis, the George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law

“The dangers stem largely from the fact that it is an uncharted course…The alternative route in Article V is one that has never been taken. This route is obviously legitimate, but it is an unknown…Moreover, the convention would have a plausible case for taking an even broader view of its agenda. Convention delegates could claim that they represent the people who elected them, and that they are entitled to deal with any constitutional issue of major concern to their constituency. The states, quite unthinkingly and without consideration of the implications, have started a process that may eventually produce a shock to them and to the country. It is a process of undeliberate constitution making that would make James Madison turn over in his grave.” – Gerald Gunther, constitutional law scholar and professor of law at Stanford Law School

“In these contentious times, democratic institutions, norms, and views are under unprecedented stress. When debating whether to adopt a resolution to apply to Congress to call for an Article V Convention, Maryland legislators should keep in mind the possibility that the call could add to a widespread perception of national disarray and push the American Republic closer to a breaking point. The perils of an Article V Convention running amok and altering the core framework of the American Republic are high. This method of reform should therefore be used only as a last resort.” – Miguel González-Marcos, professor of law at the University of Maryland

“There is a risk of a runaway convention.” – Michael Gerhardt, constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law

“So the fear among some people is that if we were to have such a constitutional convention that the whole Constitution would be up in the air again. It might be possible that the whole thing would be undermined, and no one would know going in what might replace it.” – Daniel Ortiz, constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia

“First, the national convention method may not result in any amendment, because it generates many uncertainties that can defeat the passage of an amendment. These uncertainties include what the legal rules are that govern the amendment process, what actions the other states will take, what role the Congress will play, and what amendment the convention will propose. Second, this method may result in a different amendment than the one that the state legislature desired through a runaway convention. Even if the state legislature specifically provided that the convention should only address a particular amendment, it is quite possible that the convention could propose an entirely different amendment and that amendment would then be ratified by the states.” – Michael B. Rappaport, professor of law at the University of San Diego

More Proof that the Government is Altering our History of the Civil War

Based on the article “Revisionism” by Andrew P. Calhoun, with an introduction by Diane Rufino

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love history and how much time I spend reading and researching historical events. I don’t want to read some liberal historian’s take on history or some progressive professor’s view of history. I want to know exactly what happened, why it happened, and the conditions, the views, the cultural norms, the customs that defined the particular time period. I look to primary documents and recordings/documentation at the time of the event, by those who were involved, who were affected, or who were witnesses.

For example, I know for a fact that the Civil War (the War of Northern Aggression; aka, the War to Prevent Southern Independence; aka, the War Between the States) was NOT started over slavery and Lincoln did not initiate hostilities with the South or invade the South in order to subjugate those states back into the Union for the purpose of abolishing slavery. Addressing slavery only became a war measure later in the war when the North realized it was losing and needed to re-energize its effort and to prevent any European powers from entering the war on the side of the South (which they were likely to do). Yet, when my husband and I visited Fort Sumter in Charleston two summers ago, I was stunned to see that the museum focused primarily on slavery and its role in the starting the war, as well as the glorification of Abraham Lincoln – the president who bravely “saved the Union.” In the book store, were there any books on why the South chose to secede? NO. Were there any books on the bravery of Jefferson Davis in his decision to head the Confederate States and to defend the principles of the Declaration of Independence? NO. Were there any books on General Robert E. Lee and his bravery in deciding to defend the rights of his state and the new union Virginia had joined rather than in subserviently going along with Lincoln’s scheme to force the southern states back into the union with the northern states? NO. Were there books on slavery? YES. Almost all the books were about slavery or about particular slaves.

I asked the woman who looked to be in charge of the museum and asked why the history presented was so clearly skewed, so biased against the South, and so historically inaccurate. She told me that the museum was run by the US Parks Service and out of the hands of South Carolina or Charleston.

There it was – government indoctrination…. a dishonest government trying to convince Americans, especially our youth and un-informed adults, that the North had only the most noble reasons for pursuing war against the South and that the South was evil and seceded for the sole purpose of protecting and preserving slavery. Of course, I should have expected this from our government. The victors get to tell the story. They get to tell the story that supports their action and conduct (including all the unconstitutional and tyrannical government action) while demonizing those they defeated.

Here is an article I found by the Abbeville Institute that explains WHY our Civil War sites are pushing the slavery narrative:

REVISIONISM, by Andrew P. Calhoun, Aug. 12, 2019 [https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/revisionism/]

Does anyone remember United States Congressman Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.? I mean, for something other than being the son of The Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. and for being sentenced to 30 months in jail for violating federal campaign finance laws.

Well, I do. It was Jackson, Jr who, in 1999, amended an appropriation bill for the Department of Interior. The language in his amendment required that the National Park Service (NPS) include mention of the ”unique role that slavery played in the cause of the (civil) war” in all their Battlefield Park presentations. Jackson’s amendment reasoned that the NPS battlefield tours were long on battle history, but short on the history of the cause of the war. He also concluded that African-American attendance at the Parks was sparse because the history made them feel uncomfortable. But, alas, there is no constitutional right to feel comfortable.

With the passage of this amended bill, the United States Government opened a historical Pandora’s Box and inserted itself into the arena of revisionism. The NPS initiated a program at their Battlefield Parks that presented the war as a fight to end slavery rather than a war between two regions of the country that were hotly divided politically and economically. By mandating their personnel promote slavery as the reason for the war, the NPS ignored a century and a half of irrefutable historical facts to the contrary.

It is well documented that the seeds for the War Between the States were sown in the 1820’s and 1830’s when Northern industrial capitalism began disrupting Southern agricultural capitalism through the imposition of discriminatory taxes and tariffs. A series of tariffs on imported goods almost led to Southern secession, and war, after the Tariff of Abomination was passed in 1828 followed by the Force Bill in 1833. Other tariffs ensued and little, or none, of the revenue generated by these tariffs ever returned to the South in the form of investment or infrastructure. By late 1860 the South had enough and South Carolina led the secession movement.

In his March 4, 1861 Inaugural Address, President Abraham Lincoln expressly declared that he proposed no interference with slavery in the States. Two days earlier, the Corwin Amendment was put forward to change the United States Constitution so as to shield “domestic institutions” in the states from any further constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. Although the Corwin Amendment did not explicitly mention slavery, it was designed to protect slavery from federal power. Congress proposed the Corwin Amendment on March 2, 1861, but it was not ratified by the requisite number of states because of the outbreak of the war. If slavery was the sole cause of the war, why didn’t the Northern Congress pass a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery instead of one that would protect it forever.

Four days after the first major battle of the War Between the States, the Union Congress enacted a resolution on July 25, 1861, known as the War Aims Act. It declared that the War would be fought by the North only to preserve the Union and not to abolish the South’s “peculiar institution” of slavery. Therefore, Lincoln’s own words and the actions of his government confirm slavery was not the cause of the war.

Two years after the war started, Lincoln issued his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation to announce the freeing of slaves in the North and in Union occupied areas of the South. This was a war measure designed to cause panic in the ranks of the Confederate soldiers hoping they would desert and return to their homes and farms fearing a slave rebellion. The Confederacy was not subject to Union law, a slave rebellion never materialized, and the Proclamation freed very few slaves.

Considering the foregoing, it should have been historically difficult for the NPS to proclaim that it was slavery that divided the North and South and caused a war. Nevertheless, the NPS took that position and promoted a misguided storyline whereby the North equaled good and the South equaled bad despite the fact slavery had legally existed in both regions of the country for almost 200 years by the time of the war.

To avoid potential budgetary conflicts, the NPS quickly moved forward with Jackson’s strong arm plan to revise the Battlefield Parks’ history lessons. Afterward, many social justice groups started their own versions of the “North/good—South/bad” narrative. Before long, all things Southern (in general) and all things Confederate (in particular) were attacked as racist and offensive symbols, or “reminders” of slavery. Monuments were vandalized or taken down, artwork removed, streets renamed, and some groups even suggested that certain cities be renamed. History and facts aside, the social justice warriors (SJW) forged ahead with their campaign to expunge these “reminders.” However, the reality is that one must actually experience something in order to be reminded of it and, obviously, none of today’s SJW have ever experienced slavery.

These symbols are lifeless objects that have no ability to offend or remind. People must be taught what to think about them. Through their constant moral posturing, SJW are instructing their followers how to interpret these symbols This trend continues today and is a growing social justice cancer that has now morphed into “presentism” whereby historic events of the past are deceitfully judged by current social ideologies.

In the two short decades since Jackson engineered the federal government’s foray into historical revisionism, social justice warriors have intensified their shameless politically correct efforts to transform our past and eradicate Southern history. As 18th century British statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke said: “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” It is long past time to push back, resist those efforts, and reestablish that Southern history is American history.

Oh yes, I remember Jesse Jackson, Jr.

 

***  Please check out the ABBEVILLE INSTITUTE BLOG for the outstanding articles their members and contributors write, as well as for the invaluable history lessons it teaches.  The legacy of the South will live on only as long as successive generations learn and then teach that truthful legacy.   The Abbeville Institute blog – https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/ 

 

Reference:

Andrew P. Calhoun, “Revisionism,” Abbeville Institute,” August 12, 2019. Referenced at: https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/revisionism/

SECESSION: Both a RIGHT and a REMEDY

by Diane Rufino, September 23, 2018

Gene Kizer Jr. is a brilliant historian. He has written an excellent account of the causes of the War of Northern Aggression (aka, the War to Prevent Southern Independence; aka, the War Between the States; aka, the Civil War), in his book, Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, and he has written some excellent articles as well, including on the right of secession. In his book and in his articles, he makes the case (most effectively) that secession was a reserved right of the states and that it was, in fact, exercised legitimately.

At the heart of the “Civil War” (which is, by the way, a most incorrect term for the conflict) was the right of the southern states to secede from the Union. That is, the lens through which we should look at, and assess, the war is whether Abraham Lincoln and his administration pursued a legal war by asserting that the eleven southern states that seceded from the Union had no constitutional right to do so.

The answer is that the southern states absolutely had the right to dissolve their union with the northern and more western states and their political bond to the federal government. Every state had and continues to have that fundamental right. Acknowledging this and therefore acknowledging that Lincoln incorrectly assessed the situation, he unconstitutionally assumed powers that were not granted to him, nor to the federal government in general.

Secession is a viable option to each state under three essential theories, and perhaps even others:

(1)  Each state has an essential right to determine its own form of government, under the natural right of self-determination. This natural right is articulated clearly in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (“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…”), and in fact, forms the basis for the decision of the thirteen American states to secede from Great Britain. The first paragraph of the Declaration makes this point quite clear:

       When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

The Constitution does not prohibit nor limit the natural right of secession, even in Article I, Section 9 which is the provision that puts limits on the sovereign power of the states, but rather includes the very powerful and declaratory Tenth Amendment which states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” In other words, because the Constitution did not expressly prohibit the right of secession, that right is reserved (continues to be reserved) to the states. And to make it absolutely clear that the right of secession is a state right, the states demanded that the Tenth Amendment be added to the Constitution as a restatement of that fact.

So, the states have the RIGHT to secede.

(2)  Secession is also a REMEDY, reserved to the states by the very nature of the Constitution. The Constitution is a social compact, which essentially is a contract, or an agreement, among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, such as mutual protection and to regulate relations among members. For example, a typical social compact calls for the sacrificing of some individual freedom for state protection and other public services. Social Compact was a theory articulated in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries by philosophers such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of explaining the origin of government and how an organized society is thus brought into being.

As we all know, every contract and every agreement can be broken. There may be consequences, usually monetary, but no contract is absolutely unbreakable. A contract or agreement can be broken by a breach of obligations (for example, a person doesn’t make his obligatory mortgage payments; the lending bank can then foreclose under a breach of contract) which is an affirmative breach, it can be broken because the purpose for the contract has been eliminated (for example, an entertainer is contracted to perform once monthly at a Las Vegas casino but the casino is destroyed in a fire), or it can be broken simply because a party wants out. Contract remedies are essentially designed to put the non-breaching party in a position had the breach not occurred  (for example, a contractor quits a job in the middle of building an extension on a house; the contractor must pay to have the job finished, by another contractor) and they usually involve monetary damages. Sometimes, however, money cannot make the non-breaching party “whole” (put them back into a position had the breach not occurred) and a court will order “specific performance,” which means that the breaching party will be compelled to perform some service by the court.

When the states were debating the Constitution in their Ratifying Conventions, three states (Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island) included “Resumption Clauses” as specific conditions upon their ratification – clauses asserting the right to secede from the Union at a future time.

Virginia’s Ratification document (June 26, 1788) included this Resumption Clause: “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 or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will.”

New York’s Ratification document (July 26, 1788) included this Resumption Clause: “That the Powers of Government may be resumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness; that every Power, Jurisdiction and right which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the government thereof, remains to the People of the several States, or to their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same.”

Rhode Island’s Ratification document (May 29, 1790) included this Resumption Clause: “That the powers of government may be resumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness: That the rights of the States respectively to nominate and appoint all State Officers, and every other power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States or to the departments of government thereof, remain to the people of the several states, or their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same.”

Essentially, these clauses reserved the right of the state to leave the Union and resume all their sovereign powers and rights. With these clauses, the states simply put into writing a right they thought naturally belonged to their respective states. In fact, the right of secession was understood and agreed to by the other states, including George Washington who presided over the Constitutional Convention and served as a delegate from Virginia.

These clauses, because they were included in the ratification, and because they were accepted when the states formed into the Union, became applicable to every state that joined the Union. The fact that the states expressly reserved the right to secede (for no specific reason other than it may be “necessary to their happiness…”) shatters the notion and the argument by Abraham Lincoln in 1860 that the Union was intended to be perpetual and no state could secede.

Reserving the right to secede is an express reservation of the part of each state to un-make its agreement to join the Union. It is an express right to terminate its association with the compact (the Constitution), and thereby no longer be a party to the Union. Put simply, it is an express right of termination.

In contract law, the express right of termination is referred to as a Right of Rescission. Since it is a right to un-do the contract (to get out of the contract), it is a contract remedy.

Thus, the states have reserved secession as a REMEDY. (As a remedy to leave the Union, or secede from the Union) at some point when they deem it necessary for their happiness.

Rescission is defined as the unmaking of a contract between parties or the unwinding of a transaction. As mentioned above, it applies where a party to a contract exercises a Right of Termination that he or she had expressly included, or reserved, in that contract. In contract law, it is sometimes said that the party has included (or exercised) a right to rescind the contract. It is exercised in order to bring the party, as far as possible, back to the position in which it was before entering into the particular contract (the status quo ante). If the contract is between two parties, then both parties go back to the position they enjoyed before entering into the contract. If the contract – or compact – is between many parties, then technically only the party exercising the right of rescission is relieved from the compact; the others are free to retain the force of contract/compact.

If there is any doubt as to the intent of Virginia, for example, to take its Resumption Clause seriously, look at the language it used in its Ordinance of Secession, which it adopted in Convention on April 17, 1861 to secede from the Union:

AN ORDINANCE to Repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said Constitution:

The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention, on the 25th day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eight-eight, having declared that the powers granted them under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States.

Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain that the Ordinance adopted by the people of this State in Convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong to a free and independent State. And they do further declare that the said Constitution of the United State of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.

This Ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day when ratified by a majority of the votes of the people of this State, cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.

Done in Convention, in the city of Richmond, on the seventeenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the eighty-fifth year of the Commonwealth of Virginia

(3)  Secession, or the termination of the agreement to remain in the Union, is a viable contract/compact remedy under breach theory.  When one signing member to the agreement violates or breaches its obligations, then the other signing member (or any of a number of other signing members) are relieved of their obligations under the agreement. In other words, the breach by one party, especially if material in nature (that is, if it is enough to fundamentally alter the relationship of the states in relation to one another or to affect the ability of the federal/common government to serve all states in a fair, equal, and impartial manner) is enough to invalidate the entire agreement altogether, thus allowing the other party, or other parties, to walk away and also allowing remaining members to continue to enforce the agreement if they so desire.

In the case of the Southern states, they seceded over several material breaches of the compact – several violations by the Northern states of their obligations under the Constitution:

(a)  They believed the Protective Tariff was an unfair and confiscatory tax on the South, almost completely discriminatory in nature and punitive as well. It was no secret that the North had a great disdain for the South and its values and its “simple” agricultural lifestyle (and even its use of slavery). According to the Southern states (John C. Calhoun of South Carolina articulated it probably better than most), the federal government was a common government that was created and intended to serve each state equally. The North knew full well that the protective tariffs (1828 and 1832) were born almost exclusively and to their detriment, by the southern states. But the Northern states, and particularly northern businesses, benefitted far too greatly from the confiscation of those tariff revenues (more than half of the revenue was funneled almost directly from the South to the North) to ever consider giving them up. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln ran on a platform of increasing and the protective tariff to its highest level ever. That platform issue, together with his promise to prohibit the spread of slavery into new territories and future states, were enough for all of the Southern states to refuse to even put his name on the ballot.  In fact, the Morrill Tariff was passed by the US Congress and signed into law by President James Buchanan in 1861, just two days before he left office and Lincoln was inaugurated. Lincoln kept his promise to enforce that tariff.

If the federal government was not serving the states equally, and if it had merely become a vehicle hijacked by one region of the country to serve its own interests (at the great expense of the other region), then the states of the North had breached their obligations and the very purpose of establishing the Union had become frustrated. The South believed the tariff issue constituted a material breach and thus gave them ample reason (under the Declaration of Independence – “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…”) to leave the Union.

(b)  Lincoln’s inauguration as a purely sectarian president was of great concern to the South. His interests and agenda were solely to further those of the North.  His promise to prohibit the spread of slavery to any new territory and any new state was a violation of the US Constitution.  Article IV guarantees every new state to the Union the right to be admitted on the same footing as every other state. Slavery, unfortunately, was protected under the Constitution, and therefore, every new state added to the Union would be subject to its same terms and conditions. The Southern states believed that Lincoln’s government was acting in abuse of the Constitution and because the North supported his agenda, those states, again, breached the terms of the compact and thus gave the states of the South reason to dissolve their bonds with the Union.

(c)  The Northern states routinely refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Laws, which were laws enacted pursuant to the Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution (Article IV, Section 2, clause 3). To the South, the Fugitive Slave Clause was a valued provision in the Constitution.  The laws were widely ignored or frustrated (were “nullified”) by states, localities, and even by individuals (such as those who organized into mobs in order to free runaway slaves from local prisons).  The states of the South took notice and in fact, in some of the ordinances of secession, they cited the refusal of the North to comply with the Fugitive Slave Laws, as well as its support of violence to stir slaves to revolt (such as the John Brown massacre; Brown was vaulted to martyr status by Northern members of Congress).

The Fugitive Slave Clause of the US Constitution (aka, the Slave Clause or the Fugitives From Labor Clause) required that a “person held to service or labour” (usually a slave, apprentice, or indentured servant) who flees to another state to be returned to the owner in the state from which that person escaped. The provision was rendered moot with the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished slavery. The exact text of the Fugitive Slave Clause read: “No person held to service or labour in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labour, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labour may be due.”  The North refused to help enforce the Fugitive Slave Laws, claiming that it has no obligation as a state, to do so. The Laws were federal laws and if the federal government intended for them to be enforced, it was going to have to do so itself – with its own agents, its own courts, and its own prisons. The states and localities refused to assist – they would not use their officers, their prisons, any state personnel, or even any state court to uphold the laws and return runaway slaves back to their owners.

The states of the South believed the states of the North had a compact (constitutional) obligation to honor its provisions, including those it didn’t approve of.  Because the North refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Laws and frustrated the Fugitive Slave Clause of Article IV, which was included for the benefit of the South, the Southern states concluded that the Northern states committed a material breach of the terms of the compact and hence, they were justified in leaving the Union.

One should read Gene Kizer Jr’s article “The Right of Secession” (link provided below). It provides an excellent overview of the legality of secession, in particular, as a right endowed and reserved to each state. Then one should read his most excellent book, Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States.

 

References:

Stephen C. Neff, “Secession and Breach of Compact: The Law of Nature Meets the United States Constitution,” Akron Law Review: Vol. 45: Issue 2, Article 4 (June 2015).  Referenced at:  https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1067&context=akronlawreview

Virginia’s Ordinance of Virginia (April 17, 1861) – http://www.nellaware.com/blog/virginia-ordinance-of-secession.html\

Gene Kizer Jr, “The Right of Secession,” Bonnie Blue Publishing.  Referenced at:  http://www.bonniebluepublishing.com/The%20Right%20of%20Secession-FULL%20PAGE%20FORMAT-USE.htm

Gene Kizer Jr., Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States;  Charleston Athenaeum Press (November 1, 2014).

Gene Kizer Jr., “Barbarians At the Gate,” Abbeville Institute, March 8, 2018.  Referenced at:  https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/the-barbarians-at-the-gates/

To the Heroes of the Confederate State of North Carolina (1861-65)

 

by Diane Rufino, September 3, 2018

On the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill stood the noble statue of “Silent Sam,” the Confederate soldier who stood vigilant watch over the campus. It stood on McCorkle place, the University’s upper quad, facing Franklin Street.

“Sam” represented those young students who had left the campus when Lincoln’s war came, and who willingly went off to do their duty for their beloved state. More than 1000 students enlisted and fought, representing at least 40% of the total number of students at the university, a record surpassed by only one other institution (North or South) – the University of Virginia. Like her home state in general, Chapel Hill gave more than her share to the defense of the South.

Sam is “silent” because he carries no ammunition and therefore cannot fire his gun.

The monument was given to the campus by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1909 and it was finally erected on campus in 1913. A bronze plaque in bas-relief on the front of the memorial’s base depicted a woman, representing the state of North Carolina, convincing a young student to fight for the Southern cause. The student is shown dropping his books, representing students leaving their studies. A small bronze inscription plaque on the left side of the base read:  “Erected under the auspices of the North Carolina division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy aided by the alumni of the university.”  And another bronze inscription plaque on the right read:

“To the Sons of the University who entered the War of 1861-65 in answer to the call of their country and whose lives taught the lesson of their great commander that Duty is the sublimest word in the English language.”

We can call him “Silent Sam” because of another reason. He speaks no particular message. He conveys no message other than to acknowledge that young men fought for North Carolina and the Confederacy. That is, the monument to the students who left Chapel Hill to fight is a memorial, just like the gravestone or headstone marking the grave of one who has passed is a memorial. It conveys no particular message other than to memorialize the person’s life and to note some particular aspect of that life. It is a historical marker. My father’s gravestone marks the date he was born and the day he passed and acknowledges that he served in the US Navy. Silent Sam, as a statue, merely recognizes the fact that approximately 1000 young men from Chapel Hill left their studies to serve their home-state in a war that was forced upon her. It is a marker, nothing more…. It says nothing about the students, as individuals, who gave up their youth and who, in great part, gave up their lives; we know nothing about their politics, whether they agreed with North Carolina’s decision to secede, or their position regarding the war. We simply know, thanks to the gentle reminder that Silent Sam provides, that Chapel Hill gave heavily to defend her state. Again, 40% of its student body left to defend her principles. That’s quite noteworthy; that’s quite a sacrifice.

Nowadays, most students know very little, if any, of history or the significance of the monument that graces – graced – its campus. After all, Silent Sam is over a hundred years old. And that’s a fatal defect in our state’s public school history curriculum and in the liberal teachings at our universities. In most cases, the only history that people of North Carolina will ever learn is what they are taught by often under-educated teachers in middle school or in high school. That’s it. Many students at Chapel Hill view Silent Sam merely as a really cool statue and as just another place to sit on a warm spring afternoon.

But now there are groups (a very insignificant minority, but loud, obnoxious, violent ones) who all of a sudden construe Silent Sam as a monument representing regional pride and therefore a symbol of ongoing racial oppression. They impute speech to where no speech is spoken. They impute a message where none is expressed. Again, Silent Sam is merely a historical marker. For more than one hundred years, students and other individuals have been able to walk by the statute without feeling oppressed or triggered, but now, all of a sudden, in 2018, an era reaping the fruits of desegregation and full civil rights to African-Americans (to be fair, they are actually given heightened protection of their rights; instead of “Equal Protection,” they are given “Special Protection”), groups wish to rehash the past and dwell on an era long gone. It is an era that you would think most people would love to finally put behind them.

And so, on Monday, August 20, Silent Sam was attacked, vandalized, desecrated, maliciously destroyed, and toppled to the ground.  The bronze statue of the young soldier came crashing down, being pulled down from his post by a howling mob of masked and unmasked protesters, after his pedestal was covered in red paint. There were approximately 250 protesters at the scene, joining UNC-Chapel Hill professor Dwayne Dixon, the de facto leader of the protest and assault on Silent Sam. Dixon is the current cultural anthropology professor at Chapel Hill. Video footage from CNN affiliate WRAL-TV shows protesters putting up poles and banners around the statue during daylight, and then when nightfall came, the statue was tumbled and students were seen cheering. Protesters could also be seen kicking Silent Sam’s head and putting dirt all over the statue. Campus police took orders (from who?) to stand down and allowed protesters to topple the statue without resistance.

So far, three people have been arrested for the literal act of tearing down Silent Sam. Jonathan Fitzgerald Fuller, Lauren Aucoin, and Raul Arce Jimenez have been charged with misdemeanor rioting and misdemeanor defacing a public monument. Seven more activists were arrested several days later, on that following Saturday, when a follow-up protest turned violent, with left-wingers unsuccessfully charging a campus building, assaulting people, and trying to light fire to a Confederate flag. Professor Dixon has not been fired by the university, but he is being investigated and his network of criminal collaborators apparently is unraveling.

According to Big League Politics, the leaders of the protest that resulted in the toppling of Silent Sam are members of Antifa. These same individuals helped organize the fatal Antifa “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. A woman needlessly lost her life at that rally when a protester ran his car into a crowd of people. Big League Politics reported that it obtained information on the suspects which it turned over to Chapel Hill police officers. The evidence, they say, exposes a close-knit sect of left-wing agitators mostly based in Durham, who have links to several high-profile activists, including Chelsea Manning (the trans-woman, born as Bradley Edward Manning and served in the US army where he/she leaked sensitive military information in violation of the Espionage Act, for which he/she was court-martialed and imprisoned for). This network of left-wing agitators operates in part out of the Elevate MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) gym, located in Durham, where they apparently practice combat techniques.

The attack on and then the toppling of Silent Sam sparked outrage from the university’s leaders, from alumni, and from our state legislature, and perhaps most passionately of all from the great many people who love North Carolina, appreciate her history and decision to oppose Lincoln, and who are deeply and horribly offended by the destruction and desecration of her monuments. UNC system president Margaret Spellings and UNC Board of Governors chairman Harry Smith issued a joint statement, which read:

      “Campus leadership is in collaboration with campus police, who are pulling together a timeline of the events, reviewing video evidence, and conducting interviews that will inform a full criminal investigation. The safety and security of our students, faculty, and staff are paramount. And the actions last evening were unacceptable, dangerous, and incomprehensible. We are a nation of laws—and mob rule and the intentional destruction of public property will not be tolerated.”

Speaker of the NC House, Tim Moore, issued a more powerful statement:

       “There is no place for the destruction of property on our college campuses or in any North Carolina community; the perpetrators should be arrested and prosecuted by public safety officials to make clear that mob rule and acts of violence will not be tolerated in our state.”

Let’s look at the lunacy that surrounds this malicious desecration of Silent Sam.

As I mentioned above, the statue of Silent Sam is a marker, a historic marker, essentially no different from a grave marker, or from the World War II Memorial in Washington DC, which is dedicated to those Americans who served in the armed forces and who served the war effort as civilians. It recognizes the sacrifice made by Chapel Hill, which should be acknowledged and should be remembered. Sports achievements and sports figures and coaches are memorialized so why shouldn’t the students who made the ultimate sacrifice be memorialized?

Ignoring the neutrality of the monument, the protesters on August 20, fixated instead on a comment spoken at the dedication ceremony of Silent Sam on June 2, 1913, by alumnus and highly-successful industrialist Julian Carr.  Those words were highly-controversial and extraordinarily racially insensitive.

Carr began his speech with profound appreciation for the students who left the university for the war effort:

       There are no words that I have been able to find in the vocabulary of the English language that fittingly express my feelings in this presence of this occasion. But you know and I know, that though I might speak with the tongue of men and of angels, neither song nor story could fittingly honor this glorious event. The whole Southland is sanctified by the precious blood of the student Confederate soldier. Their sublime courage has thrown upon the sky of Dixie a picture so bright and beautiful that neither defeat, nor disaster, nor oppression, nor smoke, nor fire, nor devastation, nor desolation, dire and calamitous, and I might with truth add, the world, the flesh nor the Devil has been able to mar or blemish it. The tragedy of history fails to record anywhere upon its sublime pages anything comparable to it. All the time will be the millennium of their glory.

       The canopy of the South is studded with stars which shall grow brighter and brighter as the ages in their endless procession succeed each other.

        No nobler young men ever lived; no braver soldiers ever answered the bugle call nor marched under a battle flag.

         They fought, not for conquest, not for coercion, but from a high and holy sense of duty.  They were like the Knights of the Holy Grail, they served for the reward of serving, they suffered for the reward of suffering, they endured for the reward of enduring, they fought for the reward of duty done. They served, they suffered, they endured, they fought, [and died – crossed out] for their childhood homes, their firesides, the honor of their ancestors, their loved ones, their own native land.

          This noble gift of the United Daughters of the Confederacy touches deeply and tenderly the heart of every man who has the privilege of claiming the University of North Carolina as his Alma Mater. It is in harmony with the eternal fitness of things that the Old North State’s daughters of to-day should commemorate the heroism of the men and youths whom the mothers and sisters, the wives and sweethearts of half a century ago sent forth to battle for the South. As Niobe wept over her sons slain by Apollo, so the tears of our women were shed over the consummate sacrifice of their loved ones. And as the gods transformed Niobe into a marble statue, and set this upon a high mountain, as our native goddesses erect this monument of bronze to honor the valor of all those whom fought and died for the Sacred Cause, as well as for the living sons of this grand old University.

Next, Carr gave praise to the women of the South, the noble wives and mothers:

        The war between the states was fought, really, by the women who stayed at home. Had they uttered a cry, had they complained, the morale of Lee’s army would have been dissipated in a day…..

        God bless the noble women of my dear Southland, who are to-day as thoroughly convinced of the justice of that cause. They are the guardians of the sacred honor the departed; they will protect the memory of the hero’s spirit no less than preserve from desecration from the sand of his body.  Nothing in all the marvelous record can equal the fortitude, the constancy, the devotion of the women of the South……”

Being an alumnus of Chapel Hill, and one of those young men who enlisted and fought for the Confederacy, he reminded the audience of the enormous sacrifice born by his university:

        Of the students and alumni of the University of North Carolina, about 1800 entered the Confederate army, of whom 842 belonged to the generation of 1850-1862. The University had in the service 1 lieutenant-general, 4 major-generals, 13 brigadier-generals, 71 colonels, 30 lieutenant-colonels, 65 majors, 46 adjutants, 71 surgeons, 254 captains, 161 lieutenants, 38 non-commissioned officers and about 1000 privates.

        I regard it as eminently appropriate to refer briefly at his point to the magnificent showing made by our state in the military service of the Confederacy. North Carolina furnished 84 regiments, 16 battalions and 13 unattached companies, besides the companies and individuals serving in commands from other states, and 9 regiments of Home Guards. Losses on the battlefield and by disease indicate that her contribution to the Confederate army was somewhat more than 1 to 5, while here military population stood in the proportion of 1 to 9. The entire Confederate loss on the battlefield was 74,524, of which North Carolina’s share was 19,673, or more than one-fourth; 59, 297 died of disease, and of these, 20,602 were North Carolinians.

       And I dare to affirm this day, that if every State of the South had done what North Carolina did without a murmur, always faithful to its duty whatever the groans of the victims, there never would have been an Appomattox; Grant would have followed Meade and Pope; Burnside, Hooker, McDowell and McClellan, and the political geography of America would have been re-written.

And finally, he concluded by lamenting over the difference the soldiers made:

        It is not for us to question the decrees of Providence. Let us be grateful that our struggle, keeping alive the grand principle of local self-government and State sovereignty has thus far held the American people from that consolidated despotism whose name, whether Republic or Empire, is of but little importance as compared with its rule………….

       Why were the stars, in their unapproachable glory, set in the skies above us, if there is no hope? Why was the rainbow ever painted before our eyes, if there is no promise?

       There must be, there IS a land that is fairer than day, where the rainbow never fades, where stars never go down, where these longings of immortality shall leap like angels from the temple of our hearts, and bring us rest; where the good and true, who fall before us like Autumn leaves, shall forever stay in our presence. There, there, fellow comrades, is the Confederate soldier’s paradise, the Confederate soldier’s heaven of eternal rest.

       That for which they battled in memory of this monument is reared, as well as for the survivors of that bloody drama, was not achieved. But the cause for which they fought is not lost, never can be, never will be lost while it is enshrined in the hearts of the people of the South, especially the hearts of the dear, loyal, patriotic women, who, like so many Vestal Virgins (God’s name be praised), keep the fires lighted upon the Altars. Nay, as long as men anywhere pay tribute to the self-sacrificing spirit of a peoples’ ideal.

        Ah! never shall the land forget.

Unfortunately, in his long speech, Julian Carr included this most offensive comment:

        “I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal. One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern Lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.”

The protesters and the criminals who destroyed Silent Sam worked themselves into a frenzy over these few lines taken from a speech that was otherwise a wonderful and stirring testament and tribute to the young Tarheels who fought, to the university itself, and to the South in general. This racist comment was given after  Carr had gone into great deal acknowledging the sacrifice that Southern women made during the war. One can excuse him for defending the honor of a Southern lady, no doubt who had lost several family members in the fighting, but certainly not in the manner he chose and certainly not in the memory he chose to remember.

Nevertheless, one can criticize the comments and even criticize the speaker, who was merely one out of several that afternoon at the ceremony. But the monument is neutral and makes no such statement.

I compare the destruction of Silent Sam to a hypothetical scenario, and that involves Korean War opponents destroying my father’s gravestone just because he fought in that war. My father’s gravestone notes his service to the country, just like the Silent Sam monument. Destroying the Silent Sam monument would be like those protesters destroying my father’s gravestone because he fought in the Korean War, a war that they disagreed with, yet without actually knowing whether, on a personal level, he himself agreed or disagreed with our country’s involvement in that war.

The mob protested at Chapel Hill because they don’t like the side that the students fought for but not knowing whether those boys agreed with or disagreed with the war.  It’s not like the boys had a choice; there was a conscription law in place. Take a minute to look at the face of Silent Sam… so young. His whole life ahead of him yet Lincoln forced him into a war that should not have come and over issues he couldn’t possibly understand.

But the notion that all Southerners, all those who fought for the Confederacy, and all the individual Southern states left the Union for the express purpose of perpetuating slavery and perpetuating white supremacy is ludicrous, reckless, disingenuous, and contrary to the historical record. The movement simply wants to discredit the South, impugn its conservative leanings, and malign the memory of those who gave their last full measure. Simply put, it wants the South to be so disgraced that it has no choice but to sit quietly by as progressives erase its history and maintain its position that the South was comprised of evil white men and was an evil society and of course it was to blame for the war. Simply put, it wants to disgrace and shame the South into succumbing to liberal politics.

Real history supports the South.

The war was not about slavery and it was not about white supremacy.

Writing in December of 1861 in a London weekly publication, the famous English author, Charles Dickens, who was a strong opponent of slavery, said this 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.”

Five years after the end of the War, prominent Northern abolitionist, attorney and legal scholar, Lysander Spooner commented on the disingenuous efforts of the North to re-characterize the war: “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.”

A little-known fact is that President Woodrow Wilson wrote a multi-volume history series titled History of the American People. In it, he offered this explanation as to why the issue of slavery was so exaggerated during and after the war: “It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their independence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery.”

Jay Schalin of the James G. Martin Center wrote, in a recent (Aug. 22) article:

      “Silent Sam, the statue of a weary, stoic Confederate Army foot soldier, came crashing down Monday night, pulled down from his post at the edge of the UNC-Chapel Hill campus by a mob of protesters. But a lot more fell than a Progressive-era statue of a Confederate soldier. Another brick in the wall that separates civilization and barbarism was dislodged. Another small part of the social contract that calls on us to settle our differences through dialogue and consensus disappeared. Another thin thread in the rule of law was severed.

       Even those who feel that Silent Sam was a symbol of racism—as did the mob—should be concerned about his rough treatment. Whether you believe that Sam represented white supremacy, the dignity of the common soldier, or simply the historical record of the state and campus, he now represents the defense of civil society and rule of law. And his rude descent from his perch was an assault on that civility.”

North Carolina has more than 200 Civil War memorials, statues and markers, according to Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina, a project of the UNC-Chapel Hill Library. Most of the 54 statues and 20 memorials honor Confederates. Each of those monuments and memorials gives us an opportunity to learn about the state’s history and to have a dialogue about how that history played out. Each monument is a learning opportunity. And I suggest, strongly, that we need to take advantage of every learning opportunity because education about our state’s history is abysmal.  I had one lady who told me she’s lived in the state for over 30 years and had no idea of the circumstances under which North Carolina seceded and joined the Confederacy. I had a couple just the other night whom I dined with who told me that they moved to NC 13 years ago and assumed she seceded over slavery; that’s what she was always taught. I’ve spoken with many, many people, including elderly folks, who were born in the state and lived here all their lives and they also have been misled about its history.

The victorious North has succeeded in teaching history as it wanted it to be taught. That’s what victors do, right? They have the luxury of telling their version of history – the history that exonerates their cause, and all their evil schemes and crimes, and transfers blame for the war to the vanquished. And that’s why everyone believes that the North perpetrated the war to free the slaves and to save the Union (the heroes!) while the South started the war to protect its right to own slaves and to maintain its white supremist society (the villains!). Yet nothing could be farther from the truth, as I’ll explain later.

In 2015, the NC General Assembly passed a bill protecting the state’s historic monuments and memorials (“objects of remembrance”). See Senate Bill 22 (S22, which amended NC Statues, § 100 (“Statues, Protection of Monuments, Memorials, Works of Art”).  The bill outlines procedures for removing monuments deemed to commemorate “an event, person or military service that is part of North Carolina’s history” and provides that only an act of the General Assembly would permit the removal of such a monument. Several Democrats wanted the monuments to be removed or destroyed and some wanted local authorities to have the authority to decide for themselves. For example, Democratic Rep. Cecil Brockman of High Point argued that Confederate soldiers “were traitors to this country, and they don’t deserve the same respect as those who fought in other wars.”

Tell that to the families who lost their relatives to a war that Lincoln forced on the state.

In signing the bill, Governor McCrory commented: “I remain committed to ensuring that our past, present and future state monuments tell the complete story of North Carolina.”  He believed this was an important and urgent goal, one that needed to be addressed in the growing climate of wonton destruction of all things confederate and the removal and maligning of the name of any person of historical significance who once owned slaves or spoke in favor of the institution of slavery.

Of course, Democratic Governor Roy Cooper wants the statues to come down and wants the bill repealed. (Maybe that’s why, when the statues were desecrated and toppled at the old Durham courthouse and now at Chapel Hill, law enforcement was instructed to stand down and allow the malicious destruction).

When it comes to the Confederacy, the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln, the general public is in desperate need of education. And apparently, so are many members of our state General Assembly. To try to shut down discussions that our historical monuments inspire, to take them down and deny people the opportunity to learn an authentic piece of our state’s history, to misrepresent why North Carolina seceded, to condemn the entire existence and plight of the Confederacy simply because of its acceptance of slavery, and to attribute only horrible motives to the southern states in their decision to separate from the federal government is to prove one’s lack of education.

John M. Taylor, author of Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation, wrote:

        “There is no mystery why lovers of big government strongly loathe the Confederacy and worship Lincoln. The Confederate soldier represents the last true defense of consensual constitutional government, and they were the last real threat to the omnipotent leviathan state. In the Confederate soldier, tyranny saw its most prominent and most dangerous enemy, and the supporters of modern-day Big Brotherism recognize that. They still fear him, and with good reason, because he strikes at them from beyond the grave. He does this through his blood, which still flows through the veins of tens of millions of his descendants.”

The consolidation of all government in Washington DC, resulting from the total subjugation of the States, will not be complete until all reminders of the Confederacy and her defense of self-government and self-determination are removed and/or destroyed and history is completely re-written and the past erased and forgotten. The progressives are using the useless idiots to help this “progress.” Useless idiots willingly drink political kool-aid. They are the ones who are most easily manipulated, the ones unable to think for themselves, the ones incapable of intellectually confronting an opposing viewpoint, the ones who see injustice and victimhood everywhere, the ones who think the most important characteristic about a person is the color of their skin, the ones who are weak of character, and the ones who have no clue whatsoever what free speech really means.  And so they resort to thug-like tactics, screaming, threats, foul and otherwise offensive language, wonton destruction, looting, and public disturbances.

Again, for over a hundred years, monuments and memorials had nothing to fear from people. People used to be mature. People knew that when it came to the Civil War and that era, there are two sides of the story.

Society has certain “progressed,” wouldn’t you say?

I took this pic of the monument at the Pitt County courthouse dedicated to her Confederate soldiers who died fighting in Lincoln’s war of aggression. “Theirs was not to make reply or to reason why, but only to do and die.” Let that sink in. For those who, through sheer ignorance and disrespect, destroy and otherwise mark up and ruin confederate statues, they need to be forced to learn the true history of the inappropriately-termed “civil war.” For those who don’t know, a “civil war” refers to a war between groups in the same country who are fighting over control of the common government. By this very definition, the war between the states cannot technically or truthfully be called the “Civil War.”  First of all, the South seceded and legally formed a separate country, and secondly, it wanted nothing to do with the federal government. In fact, in the states’ individual ordinances of secession, they made it clear that the government had become their enemy, had encouraged and instigated violence against them, had sought to put the interests of the North far above theirs, and had intentionally and discriminately used the sole revenue option (tariffs, duties and posts) as a means to plunder their wealth, and consequently, they wanted to break all bonds with the government of the United States.

It was not a civil war, therefore, but technically, a war of aggression. The North sought to militarily and violently, force the southern states back into the Union. In 1865, at Appomattox, the Union ceased to be a voluntary union of states but rather one of coercion and subjugation.

North Carolina’s history when it comes to the years 1860-1865 is one of honor and loyalty to principle.

It cannot be emphasized enough that North Carolina did NOT want to secede. She had great affection and loyalty to the Union, despite all the efforts the North took to tax her and the other southern states discriminately and punishingly and to frustrate and harm her interests. In fact, she would be the last state to secede.

Her intention was to remain in the Union. As seven Southern states seceded after the election of Abraham Lincoln and prior to his inauguration [SC – 12/24/1860; Miss – 1/9/1860; FL – 1/10; AL – 1/11; GA – 1/19; and LA – 1/26], North Carolina remained loyal to the Union. In fact, she refused to even consider secession. On February 28, 1861, North Carolinian voters decided against convening a convention to consider secession by a vote of 47,322 to 46,672. That’s how strongly they wished to remain a part of the Union, EVEN as hostilities grew against the south and against its institution of slavery, and even as sentiment was growing and getting more heated for its abolition.

On March 4, Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16^th president of the United States, and on March 11, the Confederate Constitution was adopted, officially signaling to the North and to the world that a new and independent country, the Confederate States of America, was established.

But everything changed when Lincoln began to consider the consequences of the loss of the Southern and Gulf states to the United States, the North (and western territories), and to the federal government and its ability to govern effectively. In order to preserve the power of federal government and maintain the wealth and prosperity of the industrial North, Lincoln decided that the states would need to be forced back into the Union. But under what circumstances could he do that?

And thus, Lincoln devised the scheme which would force South Carolina to fire shots at Fort Sumter thereby giving him the moral justification to invade the South and start the war. The Fort was attacked on April 12 and on April 13, Union commander, Major Robert Anderson, raised a white flag of surrender to Confederate Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard.

On April 14, Lincoln demanded troops, including from North Carolina, for his invasion. It was only then that North Carolina found reason to separate from the government of Abraham Lincoln.

The reason, the real reason, North Carolina seceded was because Abraham Lincoln, thru his War Secretary, Simon Cameron, demanded that North Carolina send its share of 75,000 troops to “put down the rebellion” (ie, to invade the South and wage war against her). The Governor of NC, John Ellis, refusing to believe the US Constitution authorizes the government to force one state to take up arms against another, replied on April 15: “I regard the levy of troops made by the administration as a usurpation of authority.  I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country and to the war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina.”

The next month, the state called a convention to consider secession and this time, on May 20, 1861, the people of the state voted to approve an Ordinance of Secession from the United States.

So, the REAL history of North Carolina and the Civil War (more aptly, the War of Northern Aggression or the War to Prevent Southern Independence), is that she seceded ONLY when Lincoln gave her the ultimatum: If she was to remain in the Union, she would need to pick up arms and wage war against her neighbors, the states she was close to and the ones she had far more in common with than any in the North. North Carolina seceded over principle. She seceded over the proper construction of the US Constitution and the authority it granted to each of the branches of government in DC and especially as that power with respect to the sovereignty of each individual state. She did NOT understand the Constitution (nor would she have ever ratified it) to have the power to force or coerce one state to wage war or engage in violence against another state, and MOST especially, to do so for the government’s bidding, to further its ambitious agenda, or to consolidate power in the federal government).

She did NOT secede over slavery, she did NOT secede over any white supremacy agenda, she did NOT secede to further any oppression against black persons…….  She seceded on principle. She seceded in support of the greatest government principle of all — the federal government was created for only limited purposes and when a government exceeds its delegated authority, it becomes tyrannical and ambitious and the people – ANY people – when they so decide, have the natural right to alter or abolish that government and establish a new one that suits them better.

Once North Carolina made the decision to dissolve its political bond to the government of the United States and join her Southern neighbors in the Confederacy, the monument in front of the Pitt County Courthouse is correct – NC soldiers had no opportunity to reason why or make any other reply other than to fight and defend their honor and their principles, including that government cannot demand that States remain in a Union that violates their rights or no longer serves their interest or demand that they wage war against each other for subjugation. North Carolina — we need to remain proud of her. And schools, teachers, and parents NEED to teach our history correctly so that mental midgets and ignoranuses stop tearing down monuments to that history and that struggle.

North Carolina provided more men (133, 905) for the Confederate cause than any other state.  This number comprised approximately one-sixth of the Confederate fighting force. Put another way, every sixth Confederate soldier who lie dead on the battlefield was a North Carolinian.  At the infamous battle of Gettysburg (July 1-3, 1863), North Carolina provided thirty-two regimens. A large statue was erected in her honor, which reads:

To the eternal glory of the North Carolina

soldiers. Who on this battlefield displayed

heroism unsurpassed sacrificing all in support

of their cause. Their valorous deeds will be

enshrined in the hearts of men long after

these transient memorials have crumbled into

dust.

Thirty two North Carolina regiments were in

action at Gettysburg July 1,2,3, 1863.  One

Confederate soldier in every four who fell here

was a North Carolinian.

Of the total number of men North Carolina sent to defend her principles and to support the Confederate cause in general, for independence, one sixth (approximately 20,000) became casualties of war.  Disease took another 20,000 lives. According to historian Paul Escott, the state “had only about one-ninth of the Confederacy’s white population,” yet “it furnished one-sixth of its fighting men.”  In sum, 30 % (approximately 40,000) of those fighting for the Confederacy died during the war.

North Carolina provided numerous generals to the Confederate cause as well.  The most famous include Braxton Bragg, Daniel H. Hill, William Dorsey Pender, Stephen Dodson Ramseur, Robert F. Hoke, and James J. Pettigrew. Less famous yet important generals included L.O.B. Branch and Bryan Grimes.

The university Board of Governors promises that Silent Sam will be restored to its original place on Chapel Hill’s campus within about two and a half months. North Carolina law mandates that a historical monument that is removed from its location must be returned within 90 days.  Meanwhile, police are making some arrests and stating that more arrests could be forthcoming. The Board is visibly outraged at the conduct of campus police, who took orders to stand down and allowed protesters to topple the statue without resistance.

Ben “Cooter” Jones, from the TV show Dukes of Hazzard and an alumnus of Chapel Hill, wrote this about the toppling of Silent Sam:

       “Our South is a land of many secrets and many truths. The radical trash who tore down Silent Sam and those academic idiots who enable them are not worthy to walk on the same ground as Gabriel Jacobs [Jones’ great great Uncle Gabriel Jacobs who died in pursuit of northern General McClellan]. Silent Sam will rise again, and we, not they, shall overcome.”

 

References:

Sam Jones, “Silent Sam and Me,” Abbeville Institute, August 22, 2018.  Referenced at:  https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/silent-sam-and-me/?mc_cid=7e8e1f035b&mc_eid=3c62e340ff

UNC- Chapel Hill Graduate School – Landmarks (“Silent Sam”) –  https://gradschool.unc.edu/funding/gradschool/weiss/interesting_place/landmarks/sam.html

Reverend Mark Creech, “Why the Issue of Confederate Memorials is of Significant Consequence,” Christian Action League, Aug. 24, 2018.  Referenced at:    https://christianactionleague.org/news/why-the-issue-of-confederate-memorials-is-of-significant-consequence/

Ben Jones, “Silent Sam and Me,” Abbeville Institute, August 22, 2018.  Referenced at:  https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/silent-sam-and-me/?mc_cid=7e8e1f035b&mc_eid=3c62e340ff

Leonard M. Scruggs, “Remembering Robert E. Lee: Measuring True Greatness,” The Tribune Papers, January 18, 2018.  Referenced at:  http://www.thetribunepapers.com/2018/01/18/remembering-robert-e-lee-measuring-true-greatness/

Jay Schalin, “Silent Sam’s Last Stand,” James G. Martin Center, August 22, 2018.  Referenced at:  https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2018/08/silent-sams-last-stand/?gclid=CjwKCAjwtvnbBRA5EiwAcRvnpqE764rb-WBb-DQoo-1SeQsjQFHU0JI2tvPeUqzFnKH5PFS73xFO6hoCdoQQAvD_BwE

Patricia Howley, “Silent Sam Destroyers Identified As The Antifa Leaders From Charlottesville,” Big League Politics, August 27, 2018.  Referenced at:  https://bigleaguepolitics.com/silent-sam-destroyers-identified-as-the-antifa-leaders-from-charlottesville/

Julian Carr’s Speech at the Dedication of Silent Sam at Chapel Hill, June 2, 1913 –  http://hgreen.people.ua.edu/transcription-carr-speech.html

Civil War, Day By Day (UNC- Chapel Hill Library) –  April 15, NC Governor John Ellis’ Response to War Secretary Simon Cameron Request for Troops for Lincoln’s Invasion of the South –  https://blogs.lib.unc.edu/civilwar/index.php/2011/04/15/15-april-1861-telegram-exchange-between-n-c-governor-john-ellis-and-u-s-secretary-of-war-simon-Cameron/

Diane Rufino, “To The Protesters of North Carolina’s State Monuments and the Agitators Regarding the State History: The Most Effective Means of Protesting is to MOVE OUT & STAY OUT of NORTH CAROLINA!,” ‘For Love of God and Country’ Blog, Aug. 28, 2018.  Referenced at:  https://forloveofgodandcountry.com/2018/08/28/to-the-protesters-of-north-carolinas-state-monuments-and-the-agitators-regarding-the-state-history-the-most-effective-means-of-protesting-is-to-move-out-stay-out-of-north-carolina/

The War of 1861: Education is the Best Way to Counter the Insanity of the Progressive Movement’s Goal to Destroy Confederate Monuments

 

(This picture is of a toppled confederate statue at the old courthouse in Durham. Notice the reasons for the protest)

by Diane Rufino, August 30, 2018

Let’s be honest. The toppling of the Confederate monuments, the demonization of the Confederate battle flag, the vilification of the names and memories of our treasured white Founding Fathers (and especially anyone of them who happened to own a slave), and the erasing of our history because it happens to be offensive is a POLITICAL movement. It is a contrived political initiative to counter the conservative movement that has been embraced with the election of Donald Trump and which clearly resonated in everyday America.

The movement evidences a serious lack of respect for the plight our country has taken, including the Civil War which ultimately resulted in the abolition of our greatest sin (slavery). Had the South not seceded, the timeline for abolition would have been quite different, as well as a fundamental lack of understanding of what the First Amendment is all about and the overall good and honest progress that honest and respectful civil discourse allows.  What I’m trying to say is that the progressive movement’s goal to tear down confederate monuments is a political movement that once again employs America’s un-educated and makes them into useful idiots for their cause. The cause is to foment dissent and division, that hallmarks of the progressive movement (thanks to Saul Alinsky and his “Rules for Radicals”).

When it comes to the Confederacy, the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln, the general public is in desperate need of education. And I’ve put the following comments and resources together for the purpose to help further education and counter the progressive left with knowledge, understanding, facts, and sound arguments. Remember, there are always two sides to every issue. The side that wins the day is the one that has the facts on its side.

I have been asked by many people where I get my information from about the history of Lincoln’s War (aka, the War to Prevent Southern Independence, aka, the War of Northern Aggression) and the history of North Carolina concerning her secession from the Union.

First of all, I’m the daughter of a Civil War buff. My father studied the war, the generals, the battles, the battle strategies, the cemeteries, the destruction of the South, and the history of the country at the time. I’ve heard him talk about all this stuff all my life. Even though I was taught in school, as most of us were, that Lincoln was the greatest president ever, that he fought the Civil War (which the South started) to abolish slavery and to save the Union, my father always knew differently. It’s because he was always reading, always asking questions of the locals whenever he visited a battle site. He always talked to me about the war and about the generals, and about the savagery of the battles. I remember him constantly saying: “It’s a shame the South lost the war.”  OR, “The South should have won the war.”

My parents divorced when I was 10 years old. and one summer shortly thereafter, he wanted to spend some quality time with my sister and I so my Mom let him take us on a long summer trip out west, to Oklahoma, to visit his best friend. My father turned that trip into a complete tour of all the Civil War battle sites. My sister and I were young. I’m sure my sister was too young to appreciate learning about the war, but I remember a lot from that trip.

I’ve been reading about the war for many years now, certainly a lot more now that I’m living in North Carolina and have more time on my hands; it fascinates me. I had rejected the “Lincoln is Great” history lesson a long time ago, while I was still living in New Jersey.

I wanted to share some books that have recently come out for people to read, if they are interested in learning about the causes of the war (1861-1865) that tore our country apart, about the war itself, and about its lasting consequences. I call it Lincoln’s War, because that’s the rightful name.  I think if everyone does that reading and the research, they will agree with me on this.

Before I list the books and resources, I want to straighten a few misnomers out. The war can neither be termed a “Civil War” or “the War Between the States”:

—  A “Civil War” refers to a war between two groups in the same country who are fighting for control of the same government. The Southern states had seceded and had successfully established themselves legally as a separate and independent country. (1)  So, they were two groups from two separate countries, and mot two groups from the same country;  (2) The south seceded from the federal government; they clearly stated that they wanted to break political bonds with it and wanted NOTHING whatsoever to do with it anymore. And so, the two groups were not fighting for control of the same government. (3) The war only came when Abraham Lincoln tricked South Carolina into firing shots at Fort Sumter to start the war he needed to force the southern states back into the Union. With those shots at Fort Sumter, Lincoln claimed the South was “in rebellion against the United States” and called up troops to invade the south. It was a war for subjugation  of the South and not a war over which party would take control of the federal government.

—  “War Between the States” — As Mike Armstrong, who writes “Southern Reflections,” so aptly put i: “There was no war between the States. It was a war between TWO SEPARATE and SOVEREIGN NATIONS, the USA and the CSA. There was nothing civil about it”

With that, here is a list of some resources and a list of some of the books that have come out in the last 2-3 years or so that give an accurate and historical account of the causes of the conflict:

1.  The Abbeville Institute –  http://www.abbevilleinstitute.org  Check out their articles and their seminar programs. I follow them and attend their seminars when I can. I’m attending one in November in Texas on Nullification & Interposition). The organization is comprised of some of the top historians of the South; their credentials and research are impeccable. They formed the Institute several years ago when protesters started desecrating and destroying confederate monuments, demonizing the Confederate battle flag, and demanding that the names and statues of any Confederate general or leader, any southern leader tied to the confederate cause (like John Calhoun who helped initiate the Nullification Crisis and who defended slavery or Jefferson Davis, president of the CSA), or any person of historical significance who happened to own a slave be taken off college campus buildings and off campus, and then off street signs and public buildings. Those historians, like Donald Livingston and Clyde Wilson and Brion McClanahan new that Americans were sorely mis-educated or un-educated about our American (southern) history.

2.  My Blogsite –  http://www.forloveofgodandcountry.com    (I have written many articles over the years on this topic of the war, on Lincoln, on the right of secession, etc)

3.  BOOK:  The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths, by Leonard “Mike” Scruggs.   (Mr. Scruggs lives in North Carolina. He is a Vietnam vet who writes and speaks about both the Civil War and the Vietnam War)

4.  BOOK:  Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, by Gene Kizer, Jr.   (I couldn’t put this book down; I read it in one day)

5.  BOOK:  Union At All Costs: From Confederation to Consolidation, by John M. Taylor

6.  BOOK:  Is Davis a Traitor? Or Was Secession a Constitutional Right Previous to the War of 1861?   By Albert Taylor Bledsoe (written around 1865, so it’s most contemporaneous. His goal was to make sure the world understood the South’s reasons for secession and wanting to separate from the federal government before the victors of the war, the North, had its opportunity to commandeer the official story)

7.  BOOK:  The Real Lincoln, A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda and Unnecessary War, by Thomas DiLorenzo

8.  BOOK:  Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe, by Thomas DiLorenzo

 

Hope this helps

The Right of Secession, as Reserved by the States in Their Ratification of the US Constitution

by Diane Rufino, June 1, 2018

Louisiana voted to secede from the Union on January 26, 1861. Shortly thereafter, her senators, Judah P. Benjamin and John Slidell, resigned their positions in the US Senate. In his FAREWELL ADDRESS to the Senate, on February 5, 1861, Senator Benjamin expressed perhaps the strongest argument for the Right of Secession. He said:

“The rights of Louisiana as a sovereign state are those of Virginia – no more, no less. Let those who deny her [Louisiana’s] right to resume delegated powers try to successfully refuse the claim of Virginia to the same right, in spite of her [Virginia’s] expressed reservation made and notified to her sister states when she consented to enter the Union. And sir, permit me to say that, of all the causes which justify the action of the Southern States, I know none of greater gravity and more alarming magnitude than that now developed of the denial of the right of secession. A pretension so monstrous as that which perverts a restricted agency [federal government], constituted by sovereign states for common purposes, into the unlimited despotism of the majority, and denies all legitimate escape from such despotism, when powers not delegated are usurped, converts the whole constitutional fabric into the secure abode of lawless tyranny, and degrades sovereign states into provincial dependencies.”

To deny the Right of Secession, as President Abraham Lincoln did (although only AFTER he became president), as powerful orator Senator Daniel Webster did (although only AFTER he realized the financial ruin that secession would reap on northern states), and as too many liberal elites and too many Americans (because of indoctrination in our public school system and at our liberal universities) believe today is to condemn Americans ultimately to tyranny, to subjugation, to an existence far different from the one that the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights had once promised, to the loss of liberty, to the control by political parties (not political movements, which are good and are true expressions of democracy), and to the rule by political elites. In other words, we would have to acknowledge that we are not a free nation anymore, that we are not a free people. We as a country and as a people wear the veneer of freedom and liberty.  The experiment started by those far wiser than any alive today, which established for us in America, and indeed for the rest of the world, the right of self-determination and the right of self-government, and which was predicated on the grand notion – the very revolutionary notion – that those rights were far more important than the right of any government to seek to cement its existence, would be dead. If we give up on our right to secede, then we have lost that precious system and that noble ideal. That noble ideal is what guarantees our freedom and our liberty. If we abandon that right to secede, we are no different from the system we initially separated from, Great Britain, where government was – and still is – superior to the people.

To be clear, the fundamental principle guiding our independence was the right of a people to secede from a political body, exercising the right of self-determination and the right of a people to establish their own government – one that serves their interests and concerns best. We cannot allow the proclamations of one leader, Abraham Lincoln, who did so for purely political purposes (explained historically, accurately, and in great detail in Gene Kizer Jr’s book, SLAVERY WAS NOT THE CAUSE OF THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES, as well as in Albert Taylor Bledsoe’s book, IS JEFFERSON DAVIS A TRAITOR?; references to both provided below) to destroy this great principle of independence and freedom.

It is important to understand that secession was a right implicit with every sovereign body politic and a right expressly and explicitly reserved to the States under the terms of the ratification of the Constitution:

First of all, let’s look at these two very powerful arguments:  [Taken from Mr. Kizer’s article “The Right of Secession,” Referenced at:  http://www.bonniebluepublishing.com/The%20Right%20of%20Secession.htm ]

(1).  There had to be a specific constitutional prohibition on secession for it to be illegal. Conversely, there did not have to be a specific constitutional affirmation of the right of secession for it to be legal. Why? Because of the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which states: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  This amendment states nothing new, but is merely a restatement, as the Preamble to the Bill of Rights explains. It is a restatement of the fact that the federal government can govern ONLY as to the express (and that is made clear also in the Preamble) powers granted/delegated to it by the Constitution, Articles I-III, and States are prohibited from doing certain things ONLY if it states so expressly therein. The power to prevent secession is NOT granted to the federal government and the right to secede is NOT prohibited to the States under our Constitution.

Aside from the fact that there was (and is) no constitution prohibition on secession, there was (and is) also NO constitutional sanctioning of any kind of federal coercion to force a State to obey a federal law when to do so would act to perpetrate an act of war on the offending state by the other states. After all, the federal government was established as a common agent for all States, tasked with serving the interests of each equally.

While we are talking out what the federal government can and cannot do, there is also NO constitutional provision, nor any moral foundation, for the federal government to coerce one or more States to invade or otherwise inflict armed conflict against any other State or States. Again, each State is an equal beneficiary of the agency provided by the federal government.

(2).  The arguments for the right of secession are indeed unequivocal. There is the constitutional right based on the Compact Theory, and the revolutionary right based on the idea that a free people have the right to change their government anytime they see fit. Compact Theory is based on Natural Law – that people, in deciding to live together in communities, decide for themselves the form of government to establish laws for their mutual safety, security, and peace. They decide for themselves the government that will best establish laws for their ordered existence. Compacts are the vehicle by which the people form that government and delegate powers to it. It is a form of Contract. The Compact Theory views the Constitution as a legal agreement between the states – a compact – and if any one state violates the compact, then the entire agreement becomes null and void. Northern states unquestionably violated the Constitution on a number of grounds including unconstitutional Personal Liberty Laws on their books, as well as by deliberately harboring fugitives from justice by protecting the sons of John Brown who were wanted by Virginia for murder at Harpers Ferry. Northern states also made a mockery of the Constitution’s Preamble, which states clearly that the Constitution was established to “insure domestic Tranquility” and “promote the general Welfare.” Certain prominent Northern leaders with the acquiescence of states like Massachusetts were utterly at war with the South and doing everything they could to destroy the domestic tranquility of Southern states by encouraging slaves to murder white people, poison wells, destroy property and commit other acts of rapine. John Brown himself had been encouraged and financed in the North.

The revolutionary right of secession is based on the Declaration of Independence and the philosophy of Thomas Jefferson and John Locke, “that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, ….. ”

These words come directly from the Declaration of Independence. This passage was also used, verbatim, in South Carolina’s Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union. A similar sentiment was expressed by Abraham Lincoln in 1847 on the floor of the United States House of Representatives:

“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.”

And now let’s look at the strongest piece of evidence, of which Senator Judah P. Benjamin referenced in his farewell speech above (“Virginia’s express reservation”):

Three of the original thirteen states were particularly skeptical of the government that the newly-drafted Constitution created and so they ratified it only conditionally. These three states were Virginia and New York, the great powerhouses of the New World, and Rhode Island (tiny, but very liberty-minded). In their ratification documents, adopted at their Ratification Conventions, they specifically and carefully reserved the right of secession. These are referred to as the “Resumption Clauses” or “Resumptive Clauses,” and they are exceedingly important to understand this topic. I attached Virginia’s ratification document at the end of this article. You will see that Virginia conditioned her ratification on several things, including the Right to Secede and on the addition of a Bill of Rights (for which she made a number of suggestions).

Since the other states, which had unconditionally ratified the Constitution, consented to Virginia’s conditional ratification, they “ostensibly assented to the principle that Virginia permissibly retained the right to secede.”  This is an essential element of contract law, of which compact theory follows. All negotiations, all conditions, all limitations, all reservations, etc become part of the compact agreement which affects all parties, as long as those negotiations, conditions, limitations, reservations, etc are not rejected by any of the other signing parties. With the additional acceptance of New York’s and Rhode Island’s conditions (their Resumption Clauses; their right to secede), the existing states of the Union clearly, albeit tacitly, accepted the doctrine of secession. Again, this is a matter of contract law, the most firmly-entrenched area of law. Furthermore, according to the Constitution, all States that joined the Union after the first thirteen also had the right of secession since new states entered on an equal footing with the exact same rights as the existing states.

Virginia was the first state to state explicitly that she would only ratify the Constitution as long as she reserved the right to leave the Union so created by it.  If Virginia didn’t ratify the Constitution, it was very likely that New York, Rhode Island, and certainly North Carolina also would not. The plan for “a more perfect Union” would be defeated. In her “Ratification of the Constitution by the State of Virginia; June 26, 1788,” the state of Virginia included this express provision:  “Do in the name and in 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 or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will.”

To reinforce how strongly Virginia valued that Clause one simply has to look at her Ordinance of Secession from the Union (April 17, 1861). She used the exact wording of her conditional ratification of the US to sever her political bonds with the federal government and to resume all her sovereign powers and rights to determine a new and more favorable government for her people.

A month later, on July 26, 1788, New York conditionally ratified the Constitution. In the ratification declaration adopted at her Convention, New York wrote:

“That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness; that every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the Government thereof, remains to the People of the several States, or to their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same; And that those Clauses in the said Constitution, which declare, that Congress shall not have or exercise certain Powers, do not imply that Congress is entitled to any Powers not given by the said Constitution; but such Clauses are to be construed either as exceptions to certain specified Powers, or as inserted merely for greater Caution.”

And then finally, almost two years later, on May 29, 1790, Rhode Island asserted her own conditional ratification:

“That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness:- That the rights of the States respectively, to nominate and appoint all State Officers, and every other power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States or to the departments of government thereof, remain to the people of the several states, or their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same; and that those clauses in the said constitution which declare that Congress shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply, that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the said constitution, but such clauses are to be construed as exceptions to certain specified powers, or as inserted merely for greater caution.”

Historian Dave Benner explains in his article “Can States Secede from the United States?” (IntellectualTakeOut.org, March 7, 2017):

       During the ratification debates, many figures firmly challenged the suggestion that coercive force could be used to obligate a state’s membership in the union. Melancton Smith of New York suggested that such coercion would be an anathema to the cause of liberty: “Can it, I say, be imagined, that in such a case, they would make war on a sister state?”

       He ridiculed the notion, declaring that “the idea is preposterous and chimerical.” George Mason, known today as the “Father of the Bill of Rights,” also rejected the assumption that war would befall a seceding state. Answering an inquiry regarding whether the government could “use military force to compel the observance of a social compact,” Mason scoffed at such a prospect, declaring that it would be “destructive to the rights of the people.”

Respected professor, author, and speaker (and founder of the Abbeville Institute), Donald W. Livingston noted, in his article “The Secession Tradition in America,” the conclusion offered by famed historian and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville, who spent several years in America studying its political system and societies and who studied the US Constitution on the right of secession. De Tocqueville wrote: “The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and, in uniting together, they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so; and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right.”

Abraham Lincoln intentionally re-characterized the Constitution in order to force the Southern States back into the Union, where its money could continue to fund the federal government and could continue to enrich the Northern states. He also sought to force the Southern States back into the Union because under the Confederate Constitution, protective tariffs (the lifeblood of northern industry) were prohibited and it would interact with other countries on a policy of Free Trade. Free trade would have signed the death of the Union because then only people in the North would have purchased its products and its industry and indeed its economy would have crashed. To that end, Lincoln denied the right of secession and characterized the Constitution as creating a “perpetual union,” which was just plain hogwash. Every compact, just like every contract, can be broken. He said the Southern States were “in rebellion against the United States” even though they made it exceedingly clear that they merely wanted a peaceful separation, and to remain on good terms with their former government. In order to prevent other States (the so-called “border States” and others that were clearly more pro-South than pro-North) from leaving the Union and joining the Confederacy, he sent in the Army of the United States to put them under martial law. Politicians sympathetic to the Confederate States were forcibly removed from office (and many jailed) and their state governments fundamentally changed to force them to be loyal to Lincoln. This was in violation of Section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution (The Guarantee Clause), which states:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and [the United States] shall protect each of them [the States] against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

By removing duly-elected members of State legislatures and altering the governing bodies by force, Lincoln violated the Constitution (just another of the many times he violated the Constitution) and denied the border States the guarantee that the federal government who assure them a republican (the will of the people) form of government. Furthermore, as to all the States, including the border States, the western States (like Kentucky and Missouri), and the Southern States, the Constitution guaranteed them protection AGAINST invasion and was not a license for Lincoln to be the invader.

 

References:

Gene Kizer Jr, “The Right of Secession,” Referenced at:  http://www.bonniebluepublishing.com/The%20Right%20of%20Secession.htm

Gene Kizer Jr, Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, Charleston Athenaeum Press, 2014.  [Chapter: “An Annotated Chronology of the Secession Debate in the South”; pp. 171-72)]  Available as a book, which was the resource I used) and also online at:  http://www.bonniebluepublishing.com/index.htm

Albert Taylor Bledsoe, Is Jefferson Davis a Traitor? (1865).  Reprinted by Forgotten Books (2012).  https://www.amazon.com/Davis-Traitor-Secession-Constitutional-Previous/dp/B008TYU1E4

Dave Benner, “Can States Secede from the United States?”, IntellectualTakeOut.org, March 7, 2017. Referenced at: http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/can-states-secede-united-states),

Donald W. Livingston, “The Secession Tradition in America,” 1998.  Referenced at: http://www.ditext.com/livingston/tradition.html

“Ratification of the Constitution by the State of Virginia; June 26, 1788,” The Avalon Project (Yale Law School) – http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/ratva.asp

 

 

ADDENDUM: 

Ratification of the Constitution by the State of Virginia; June 26, 1788.

Virginia to wit

We the Delegates of the People of Virginia duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from 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 in 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 or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will: that therefore no right of any denomination can be cancelled abridged restrained or modified by the Congress by the Senate or House of Representatives acting in any Capacity by the President or any Department or Officer of the United States except in those instances in which power is given by the Constitution for those purposes: & that among other essential rights the liberty of Conscience and of the Press cannot be cancelled abridged restrained or modified by any authority of the United States. With these impressions with a solemn appeal to the Searcher of hearts for the purity of our intentions and under the conviction that whatsoever imperfections may exist in the Constitution ought rather to be examined in the mode prescribed therein than to bring the Union into danger by a delay with a hope of obtaining Amendments previous to the Ratification, We the said Delegates in the name and in behalf of the People of Virginia do by these presents assent to and ratify the Constitution recommended on the seventeenth day of September one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven by the Federal Convention for the Government of the United States hereby announcing to all those whom it may concern that the said Constitution is binding upon the said People according to an authentic Copy hereto annexed in the Words following; .

Done in Convention this twenty Sixth day of June one thousand seven hundred and eighty eight

By Order of the Convention

EDMUND PENDLETON, President  [SEAL.]

Virginia towit:

Subsequent Amendments agreed to in Convention as necessary to the proposed Constitution of Government for the United States, recommended to the consideration of the Congress which shall first assemble under the said Constitution to be acted upon according to the mode prescribed in the fifth article thereof:

That there be a Declaration or Bill of Rights asserting and securing from encroachment the essential and unalienable Rights of the People in some such manner as the following;

First, That there are certain natural rights of which men, when they form a social compact cannot deprive or divest their posterity, among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring, possessing and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

Second. That all power is naturally vested in and consequently derived from the people; that Magistrates, therefore, are their trustees and agents and at all times amenable to them.

Third, That Government ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection and security of the People; and that the doctrine of non-resistance against arbitrary power and oppression is absurd slavish, and destructive of the good and happiness of mankind.

Fourth, That no man or set of Men are entitled to exclusive or separate public emoluments or privileges from the community, but in Consideration of public services; which not being descendible, neither ought the offices of Magistrate, Legislator or Judge, or any other public office to be hereditary.

Fifth, That the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers of Government should be separate and distinct, and that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression by feeling and participating the public burthens, they should, at fixed periods be reduced to a private station, return into the mass of the people; and the vacancies be supplied by certain and regular elections; in which all or any part of the former members to be eligible or ineligible, as the rules of the Constitution of Government, and the laws shall direct.

Sixth, That elections of representatives in the legislature ought to be free and frequent, and all men having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with and attachment to the Community ought to have the right of suffrage: and no aid, charge, tax or fee can be set, rated, or levied upon the people without their own consent, or that of their representatives so elected, nor can they be bound by any law to which they have not in like manner assented for the public good.

Seventh, That all power of suspending laws or the execution of laws by any authority, without the consent of the representatives of the people in the legislature is injurious to their rights, and ought not to be exercised.

Eighth, That in all capital and criminal prosecutions, a man hath a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation, to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence and be allowed counsel in his favor, and to a fair and speedy trial by an impartial Jury of his vicinage, without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty, (except in the government of the land and naval forces) nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself.

Ninth. That no freeman ought to be taken, imprisoned, or disseised of his freehold, liberties, privileges or franchises, or outlawed or exiled, or in any manner destroyed or deprived of his life, liberty or property but by the law of the land.

Tenth. That every freeman restrained of his liberty is entitled to a remedy to enquire into the lawfulness thereof, and to remove the same, if unlawful, and that such remedy ought not to be denied nor delayed.

Eleventh. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by Jury is one of the greatest Securities to the rights of the people, and ought to remain sacred and inviolable.

Twelfth. That every freeman ought to find a certain remedy by recourse to the laws for all injuries and wrongs he may receive in his person, property or character. He ought to obtain right and justice freely without sale, completely and without denial, promptly and without delay, and that all establishments or regulations contravening these rights, are oppressive and unjust.

Thirteenth, That excessive Bail ought not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Fourteenth, That every freeman has a right to be secure from all unreasonable searches and seizures of his person, his papers and his property; all warrants, therefore, to search suspected places, or seize any freeman, his papers or property, without information upon Oath (or affirmation of a person religiously scrupulous of taking an oath) of legal and sufficient cause, are grievous and oppressive; and all general Warrants to search suspected places, or to apprehend any suspected person, without specially naming or describing the place or person, are dangerous and ought not to be granted.

Fifteenth, That the people have a right peaceably to assemble together to consult for the common good, or to instruct their Representatives; and that every freeman has a right to petition or apply to the legislature for redress of grievances.

Sixteenth, That the people have a right to freedom of speech, and of writing and publishing their Sentiments; but the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and ought not to be violated.

Seventeenth, That the people have a right to keep and bear arms; that a well regulated Militia composed of the body of the people trained to arms is the proper, natural and safe defense of a free State. That standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, and therefore ought to be avoided, as far as the circumstances and protection of the Community will admit; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to and governed by the Civil power.

Eighteenth, That no Soldier in time of peace ought to be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, and in time of war in such manner only as the laws direct.

Nineteenth, That any person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms ought to be exempted upon payment of an equivalent to employ another to bear arms in his stead.

Twentieth, That religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men have an equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, and that no particular religious sect or society ought to be favored or established by Law in preference to others.

 

AMENDMENTS TO THE BODY OF THE CONSTITUTION

First, That each State in the Union shall respectively retain every power, jurisdiction and right which is not by this Constitution delegated to the Congress of the United States or to the departments of the Federal Government.

Second, That there shall be one representative for every thirty thousand, according to the Enumeration or Census mentioned in the Constitution, until the whole number of representatives amounts to two hundred; after which that number shall be continued or increased as the Congress shall direct, upon the principles fixed by the Constitution by apportioning the Representatives of each State to some greater number of people from time to time as population increases.

Third, When Congress shall lay direct taxes or excises, they shall immediately inform the Executive power of each State of the quota of such state according to the Census herein directed, which is proposed to be thereby raised; And if the Legislature of any State shall pass a law which shall be effectual for raising such quota at the time required by Congress, the taxes and excises laid by Congress shall not be collected, in such State.

Fourth, That the members of the Senate and House of Representatives shall be ineligible to, and incapable of holding, any civil office under the authority of the United States, during the time for which they shall respectively be elected.

Fifth, That the Journals of the proceedings of the Senate and House of Representatives shall be published at least once in every year, except such parts thereof relating to treaties, alliances or military operations, as in their judgment require secrecy.

Sixth, That a regular statement and account of the receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published at least once in every year.

Seventh, That no commercial treaty shall be ratified without the concurrence of two thirds of the whole number of the members of the Senate; and no Treaty ceding, contracting, restraining or suspending the territorial rights or claims of the United States, or any of them or their, or any of their rights or claims to fishing in the American seas, or navigating the American rivers shall be but in cases of the most urgent and extreme necessity, nor shall any such treaty be ratified without the concurrence of three fourths of the whole number of the members of both houses respectively.

Eighth, That no navigation law, or law regulating Commerce shall be passed without the consent of two thirds of the Members present in both houses.

Ninth, That no standing army or regular troops shall be raised or kept up in time of peace, without the consent of two thirds of the members present in both houses.

Tenth, That no soldier shall be enlisted for any longer term than four years, except in time of war, and then for no longer term than the continuance of the war.

Eleventh, That each State respectively shall have the power to provide for organizing, arming and disciplining it’s own Militia, whensoever Congress shall omit or neglect to provide for the same. That the Militia shall not be subject to Martial law, except when in actual service in time of war, invasion, or rebellion; and when not in the actual service of the United States, shall be subject only to such fines, penalties and punishments as shall be directed or inflicted by the laws of its own State.

Twelfth That the exclusive power of legislation given to Congress over the Federal Town and its adjacent District and other places purchased or to be purchased by Congress of any of the States shall extend only to such regulations as respect the police and good government thereof.

Thirteenth, That no person shall be capable of being President of the United States for more than eight years in any term of sixteen years.

Fourteenth That the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such courts of Admiralty as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish in any of the different States: The Judicial power shall extend to all cases in Law and Equity arising under treaties made, or which shall be made under the authority of the United States; to all cases affecting ambassadors other foreign ministers and consuls; to all cases of Admiralty and maritime jurisdiction; to controversies to which the United States shall be a party; to controversies between two or States, and between parties claiming lands under the grants of different States. In all cases affecting ambassadors, other foreign ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be a party, the supreme court shall have original jurisdiction; in all other cases before mentioned the supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction as to matters of law only: except in cases of equity, and of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction, in which the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction both as to law and fact, with such exceptions and under such regulations as the Congress shall make. But the judicial power of the United States shall extend to no case where the cause of action shall have originated before the ratification of this Constitution; except in disputes between States about their Territory, disputes between persons claiming lands under the grants of different States, and suits for debts due to the United States.

Fifteenth, That in criminal prosecutions no man shall be restrained in the exercise of the usual and accustomed right of challenging or excepting to the Jury.

Sixteenth, That Congress shall not alter, modify or interfere in the times, places, or manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives or either of them, except when the legislature of any State shall neglect, refuse or be disabled by invasion or rebellion to prescribe the same.

Seventeenth, That those clauses which declare that Congress shall not exercise certain powers be not interpreted in any manner whatsoever to extend the powers of Congress. But that they may be construed either as making exceptions to the specified powers where this shall be the case, or otherwise as inserted merely for greater caution.

Eighteenth, That the laws ascertaining the compensation to Senators and Representatives for their services be postponed in their operation, until after the election of Representatives immediately succeeding the passing thereof; that excepted, which shall first be passed on the Subject.

Nineteenth, That some Tribunal other than the Senate be provided for trying impeachments of Senators.

Twentieth, That the Salary of a Judge shall not be increased or diminished during his continuance in Office, otherwise than by general regulations of Salary which may take place on a revision of the subject at stated periods of not less than seven years to commence from the time such Salaries shall be first ascertained by Congress. And the Convention do, in the name and behalf of the People of this Commonwealth enjoin it upon their Representatives in Congress to exert all their influence and use all reasonable and legal methods to obtain a Ratification of the foregoing alterations and provisions in the manner provided by the fifth article of the said Constitution; and in all Congressional laws to be passed in the mean time, to conform to the spirit of those Amendments as far as the said Constitution will admit.

Done in Convention this twenty seventh day of June in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty eight.

By order of the Convention.

EDMD PENDLETON President  [SEAL.]

Reprinted from Documentary History of the Constitution, Vol. II (1894), pp. 145, 146, 160, 377-385

On the Eve of South Carolina’s Decision to Leave the Union, Horace Greeley Articulates and Supports the State’s Right to Secede

Diane Rufino, May 7, 2018

Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Daily Tribune, was the embodiment of the North. In an editorial for the paper on December 17, 1860 (three days before South Carolina voted in Convention to secede, and amidst rumors that the state would likely secede), Greeley articulated the view of secession that most in government and in the North held. In that brilliant editorial, entitled “The Right of Secession,” he wrote:

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,” etc. etc. 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 million colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the federal union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not someone attempt to show wherein and why we could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation.  We do not think such would be just. We hold the right of self-government to be sacred, even when invoked on 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!” 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.

Of course, when Northern businessmen and northern businesses realized how badly they would suffer without the stream of money coming from the South and its tariff collections and in trade against a “free-trade” Confederacy (the Confederate Constitution prohibited protective tariffs), their view of secession changed.

Even Europe saw the Civil War for what it was. Europe understood that at its core, the American “Civil War” as an exercise of the right of secession. If the South had the right to secede from the Union, which Europe believed it had (articulated to a “candid world” in the Declaration of Independence), then the South held the moral superiority in the conflict and Southerners were the heroes. The North was the great villain, starting a fratricidal war merely for commercial and economic gain.  Certainly Great Britain knew what was going on, for the Confederacy was hoping it would join the conflict on its side and the North was doing what it could to prevent that from happening (ie, the Emancipation Proclamation).  The legendary English writer, Charles Dickens, expressed this view very clearly in commentary during that period.

British Lord Acton (John Dalberg Acton) wrote the following to General Robert E. Lee in November 1866, a year and a half after his surrender at Appomattox:

…… I saw in States Rights the only available check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will (of the federal government), and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the Old World the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore, I deemed that you were fighting the battles for our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo.

The South, unequivocally and without doubt, had the right to secede from the Union. Anyone who believes in the Declaration of Independence and in the debates in the several Ratifying Conventions to determine whether the Constitution (creating a limited government) would be ratified HAS to believe in the right of secession and HAS to respect the decision of the Southern States to seek their independence. After all, the Declaration of Independence is the greatest Ordinance of Secession ever written and the most eloquent expression of the right of and the desire to pursue independence.

 

***  This article is based, in part, on sections from Gene Kizer Jr’s book, Slavery Was Not the Cause of the War Between the States, Charleston Athenaeum Press (2014)

Why the Cherokees Sided With the Confederacy in 1861

(Excerpted from Mike Scruggs’ book, THE UN-CIVIL WAR; Chapter 8: “The Cherokee Declaration of Independence”)

Most Americans have been propagandized rather than educated on the causes of the War Between the States (aka, The War of Northern Aggression; aka, The War to Prevent Southern Independence; aka, the Civil War) in order to exonerate the perpetrators and victors and justify their actions. But the truth is out there for anyone willing to take the time to do some reading.

The true perspective comes from the South, for it was the Confederate states who were the ones standing up and fighting for principle. If the truths and ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence were still going to mean anything, the Confederacy would have to fight for them. In Chapter 8 of his book, THE UN-CIVIL WAR, Mike Scruggs discusses the views of the Cherokees with respect to the splitting of the country in 1860-61 uses those views to support the truth of the war.

In 1861, there were two principal groups of Cherokees in the United States – the Western Band, with a population of slightly over 20,000, and the smaller Eastern Band, located in North Carolina, with a population of only about 2000. Both sided with the Confederacy, but the larger Western Band made a formal Declaration of Independence from the United States.

On August 21, 1861, the Western Cherokee Nation, by a General Convention in Tahlequah (Oklahoma), declared its common cause with the Confederate States against the Northern Union. A treaty was concluded on October 7 between the Confederate States and the Cherokee Nation and on October 9, John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation called into session the Cherokee National Committee and National Council to approve and implement that treaty and a future course of action.

The Cherokee had much more in common with their Confederate neighbors than with the North, but their treaties had been with the government of the United States (now the Northern Union). At first they thought best to honor those treaties. But with the invasion of its neighbors, the repression of free speech and press by Lincoln, the complete trampling of the US Constitution, and the support the North had given to individuals and groups leading up to the war (such as John Brown) who urged violence against the South, the Cherokee soon changed their mind.

The Cherokee were perhaps the best educated and literate of the American Indian tribes. They were also among the most Christian. Learning and wisdom were highly esteemed. They revered the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution as particularly important guarantees of their rights and freedoms, just as Southerners did.  It is not surprising therefore that on October 28, 1861, the National Council of the Western Cherokee Nation issued its own Declaration of Independence –  Declaration of the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Compelled Them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America.

The introductory words of this Declaration strongly resembled the 1776 Declaration of Independence:

       “When circumstances beyond their control compel one person to sever the ties which have long existed between them and another state or confederacy, and to contract new alliances and establish new relations for the security of their rights and liberties, it is fit that they should publicly declare the reasons by which their action is justified.”

In the next paragraph, the Council noted the Cherokee Nation’s faithful adherence to  treaties with the United States its attempts at neutrality in the face of the hostilities between the North and the South. But the seventh paragraph began to articulate their alarm at the North’s aggression and their sympathy with the South: “But Providence rules the destinies of nations, and events, by inexorable necessity, overrule human resolutions.”

Comparing the relatively limited objectives and defensive nature of the Southern cause to the aggressive actions of the North, the Declaration included this observation:

       “Disclaiming any intention to invade the Northern States, they (the Southern States) sought only to repel the invaders from their own soil and to secure the right to govern themselves. They claimed only the privilege asserted in the Declaration of American Independence, and on which the right of the Northern States themselves to self-government is formed, and altering their form of government when it became no longer tolerable and establishing new forms for the security of their liberties.”

The next paragraph noted the orderly and democratic process by which each of the Confederate States seceded. This was without violence or coercion and nowhere were liberties abridged or civilian courts and authorities made subordinate to the military. The following (ninth) paragraph contrasted this with the ruthless and totalitarian trends in the North:

      “But in the Northern States, the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated Constitution, all civil liberty put in peril and all rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In the states which still adhered to the Union, a military despotism had displaced civilian power and the laws became silent with arms. Free speech and almost free thought became a crime. The right of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the Constitution, disappeared at the nod of the Secretary of State or even a general of the lowest grade. The mandate of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was at naught (negated) by the military power and this outrage on common rights was approved by a President sworn to support the Constitution. War on the largest scale was waged and immense bodies of troops called onto the field in the absence of any warranting it, all under the pretense of suppressing a rebellion.”

The tenth paragraph continued the indictment of the Northern political party in power (the Republican Party) and the conduct of the Union Armies:

      “The humanities of war, which even barbarians respect, were no longer thought worthy to be observed. Foreign mercenaries and the scum of the cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on the women. While the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion without process of law, in jails, forts, and prison ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary orders of a President and Cabinet Ministers. The press ceased to be free and the publication of newspapers was suspended and their issues seized and destroyed. The officers and men taken as prisoners in the battles were allowed to remain in captivity by the refusal of the Government to consent to an exchange of prisoners. They left their dead on more than one field of battle that had witnessed their defeat, to be buried and to have their wounded to be cared for by Southern hands.”

The eleventh paragraph of the Cherokee Declaration is a fairly concise summary of their grievances against the political powers then presiding over a new US Government:

      “Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past to complain of some of the Southern States, they cannot but feel that their interests and destiny are inseparably connected to those of the South. The war now waging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude, against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of the States, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those states and utterly change the nature of the general government.”

Finally, appealing to their inalienable right to self-defense and self-determination as a free people, the Cherokee concluded their Declaration with the following words:

      “Obeying the dictates of prudence and providing for the general safety and welfare, confident in the rectitude of their intentions, and true to their obligations to duty and honor, they accept the issue thus forced upon then, unite their fortunes now and forever with the Confederate States, and take up arms for the common cause, and having complete confidence in the justice of that cause, and with a firm reliance upon Divine Providence, will resolutely abide the consequences.”

The Eastern Band of Cherokee made no such formal declaration, but considered themselves North Carolinians and were anxious to join Confederate forces in defending their state and the Southern cause. The Eastern Band Chief, Col. William H. Thomas, a North Carolina State Senator, gathered 416 Cherokee braves to form the core of what later became the Thomas Legion. They were joined by about 1,900 North Carolina mountain men. Thomas, of Welsh descent, was the adopted white son of the late Eastern Band Chief, Yanaguska (“Drowning Bear”). He is said to have spoken the Cherokee language better than any white man that ever lived. The Cherokees had come to have great respect for his wisdom and relentless hard work on their behalf in North Carolina. It should be noted that the Cherokee braves that served in the Thomas Legion represented almost every single male of military age in their small population. They served very faithfully with only about a dozen known to have deserted.

Both Cherokee bands proved their courage and loyalty. The last shot fired in the war east of the Mississippi was fired on May 6, 1865. This was in an engagement at White Sulfur Springs, near Waynesville, NC, in which part of Thomas’ Legion fought against Union Army Colonel George W. Kirk’s infamous Union Raiders. Kirk’s Raiders had engaged in a campaign of murderous terrorism and destruction on the civilian population of western North Carolina. It took some effort at the end of the war for Thomas to persuade his Cherokee braves to surrender rather than continue guerrilla warfare against the Union.

In the West, Confederate Brigadier General and Cherokee Chief, Stand Watie’s mounted infantry regiments became a legend for their guerilla cavalry tactics, baffling and diverting a great number of Union troops. On June 23, 1865, in what was the last land battle of the war, Brigadier General Watie finally surrendered his predominantly Cherokee (Oklahoma) Indian force to the Union.

The issues as the Cherokees saw them were many-fold:

(1)  The Right of Self-Defense, against Northern aggression, both for themselves and their fellow Confederate neighbors and friends

(2)  The Right of Self-Determination by a free people, recognized in the Declaration of Independence

(3)  Protection of their Government of Law (their Rule of Law)

(4)  Preservation of their political rights under a constitutional government

(5)  A strong desire to retain the principles of limited government and decentralized power guaranteed by the Constitution

(6)  Protection of their economic rights and their welfare

(7)  Dismay at the despotism of the party (Republican Party) and leaders in command of the US government

(8)  Dismay at the ruthless disregard of commonly-accepted rules of warfare by the Union, especially their treatment of civilians and non-combatants

(9)  A fear of economic exploitation by corrupt politicians and their supporters based on observed past experience (harsh protective tariffs)

(10) Alarm at the self-righteous and extreme, punitive, and vengeful pronouncements on the slavery issue voiced by the radical abolitionists and supported by many Northern politicians, journalists, and social and religious leaders

The Cherokee Declaration of Independence of October 1861 uncovers a far more complex set of “Civil War” issues than most Americans have been taught. Rediscovered truth is not always welcome. Indeed, some of the issues addressed by the Cherokee Nation are so distressing that the general academic, media, and public reaction is to rebury them or to (intellectually) shout them down as politically incorrect.

The notion that slavery was the only real or even principal cause of the war is very politically correct and widely-held, but not historically correct. It amounts to historical ignorance. The version of the war taught to our children in the public schools and even in our universities – that slavery was the cause of the Civil War – has served, however, as a convenient ex-post facto justification for the North’s decision to instigate war on the Confederate States and its brutal conduct in prosecuting its war. Slavery was an issue, of course, but it was by no means the only issue, or even the most important underlying issue. It was not even an issue in the way most people think of it. Only about 25% of Southern households owned slaves. For most people, North and South, the slavery issue was not one that touched them in their personal or economic lives. The slavery issue was not so much whether to keep it or not, but how to phase it out without causing economic and social disruption and disaster. Unfortunately, since slavery was an institution in the Southern States and since it was protected in the US Constitution, those states believed that the decisions as to how to phase it out and to deal with the resulting economic and social issues should have been left to them – not to radical abolitionists or to the federal government.

After the (unconstitutional) Reconstruction Acts were passed in 1867, the radical abolitionists and radical Republicans, both equally evil-intentioned, were able to issue in a shameful era of politically-punitive and economic exploitative oppression in the South, the results of which lasted many years, including the birth of the Jim Crow/segregationist era.  The sins that the country often associate with the South are often, in reality, the policies and actions of the North.

The Cherokee were – and are – a remarkable people who have impacted the American heritage far beyond their numbers. As this commentary shows, they were remarkably patriotic as well. We can be especially grateful that they made a well-thought out and articulate Declaration of Independence in support of the Confederate cause in 1861 and in joining their defense.

 

To Purchase Lawrence (“Mike”) Scruggs’ book, THE UN-CIVIL WAR:  Amazon –  https://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Shattering-Historical-Myths/dp/098343560X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517505890&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=Lawrence+Scruggs%2C+The+Un-Civil+War

The Truth About the 13th Amendment

Excerpted from Lawrence “Mike” Scrugg’s book, The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths (Chapter 7: “The First Thirteenth Amendment”). 2011, Universal Media (Charlotte, NC) –  with some additions and commentary by Diane Rufino

Mike Scrugg’s book, THE UN-CIVIL WAR, is an excellent book – an excellent reflection on the causes, treatment, and aftermath of the Civil War. I am posting this excerpt, which is the entire seventh chapter of the book (“The First Thirteenth Amendment’) for the primary purpose of introducing you to this book and encouraging you to purchase it and read it.

Ludwell H. Johnson used the words The American Illiad in the subtitle for his comprehensive book on the American “civil war,” entitled NORTH AGAINST SOUTH. The Iliad analogy is very appropriate for two reasons. First, the war was a traumatic, bloody, and nation-changing event. The enormous casualties and destruction alone would sear its battles, personalities, and tales of heroism into America’s memory. Second, what most Americans know about the causes of the war is pious myth.

Most Americans are at least vaguely aware that the 13^th Amendment to the US Constitution passed by Congress and approved by the States in December 1865 following the “civil war” abolished slavery. But this was actually the second 13^th Amendment. The US House of Representatives had passed, with the required 2/3 majority, a 13^th amendment on February 28, 1861. This same amendment was passed by the US Senate on March 2, 1861. It was then send to the States for final approval. As per Article V of the Constitution. 3/4 of the States must approve the amendment before it can officially become part of, and hence “amend,” the Constitution. Two days after the Senate’s approval of the amendment, the newly-elected president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, promised to support it in his inaugural speech.

But what was this first 13^th Amendment and what became of it?  Here is the wording:

“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of such State.”

The first 13^th Amendment would have forever prohibited any Constitutional change that interfered with slavery in any state!

Lincoln endorsed this amendment, which would have permanently engraved slavery into the Constitution by two statements in his inaugural address:  First, self-quoting what he had written earlier to New York Tribune editor, Horace Greeley: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Later in the speech, he specifically promised to support this first 13^th Amendment with these words: “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution has passed Congress to the effect that the federal government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

In other words, Lincoln had no problem with an amendment which would have prohibited the federal government from interfering with slavery in the States!  In addition, he felt the Constitution already prohibited the federal government from interfering with slavery in the States !!!

The reason for this first 13^th Amendment was, of course, to reassure the Southern States that were threatening to leave the Union that there was not and never would be any danger of Congressional or federal interference with slavery in the States. [Remember that by the time the Senate approved the amendment, seven Southern States had already seceded from the Union – South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas]. The slavery question was a concern to the Southern States, of course. The South had an agrarian society and its economy was supported by the exporting of its crops. The Northern States had gradually phased out slavery, but then again, there had been but a few slaves in the North. Phasing out slavery in the North was a much less daunting social and economic endeavor. It would be an enormous undertaking in the South. The calls of radical abolitionists in the North for immediate abolition of slavery regardless of the economic cost to the South and heedless of the hardship it would suddenly inflict on the slaves themselves, though not really a prevalent Northern sentiment, was a worry to the South. Slavery was by no means universally popular in the South, and many Southern States and individual Southerners were already struggling with how they might phase out the institution of slavery without devastating the Southern economy. But Southern States preferred to handle the slavery question when, if, and however they saw fit. Like Lincoln and many other political leaders in the North, the South considered how to handle the slavery question to be the Constitutional right of each State respectively.

Slavery was an issue that caused tensions between North and South, but it was by no means the only issue. If slavery was the only crucial issue, the South had no reason to secede. The first 13^th Amendment would have guaranteed the question in their favor.

But there were other important issues to the South… more important ones.  One enormous issue was the question of the protective tariffs and in particular, the Morrill Tariff that had been passed by the predominantly Northern Congress with the support of only one Southern congressman. It was passed by the Senate and signed by President Buchanan only two days before Lincoln took office, and Lincoln pledged to support it. The Morrill Tariff, like others in the past, was a severe economic hardship to the agricultural South (in particular to South Carolina and the Gulf States), but a protective benefit for the industrial North – for its manufacturers. To make matters worse, most of the revenue was collected at Southern ports but subsequently used to the benefit of Northern States. In other words, the South was being plundered for the benefit of the North. To look at it a different way, the federal government, which was supposed to be a common government for ALL the States, to serve their interests equally, was effecting policy to benefit only one section of the country, while knowingly and intentionally harming another. Southern States were furious over this tariff, which had just been raised from an average under 20% to an average which would reach 47% (and would affect more items). The Morrill Tariff was part of Lincoln’s and the Republican Party’s campaign platform. In fact, Lincoln further endorsed the Tariff in his inaugural speech and strongly implied that even if the South seceded, the tax would be collected by the Union Navy at Southern ports.

There were other issues as well. North and South had developed different views of government. The South favored the limited and decentralized federal government of the Constitution, but the North was strongly tending towards a powerful centralized government. Early in the years of the American republic, the South and especially Virginia had dominated national politics. But massive waves of immigration to Northern manufacturing States now made them much more populous and politically dominant. Between 1845 and 1855 more than 1.5 million Irish adults and children alone emigrated to America (because of the great potato famine).  And then there was the outright hostility and even violence towards the South. John Brown and his sons butchered 5 pro-slavery settlers in Kansas and then led a raid on Harpers Ferry. The radical abolitionists exhibited unmitigated hatred of all things southern and continued to aggravate tensions.

The first 13^th Amendment became a moot issue, though, after the firing on Fort Sumter and then Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops to invade the South. The outbreak of the “civil war” that would claim the lives of over 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers and as many as 50,000 Southern civilians effectively cancelled the first 13^th Amendment.

On March 2, 1861, the same day the first 13^th Amendment was passed by the Senate, another Amendment to the Constitution was also proposed. This amendment would have outlawed secession. This is a good indication that most of Congress indeed realized that the right of secession was implied when the Constitution was originally ratified by the States and effectively reinforced by the 10^th Amendment. If that wasn’t so, why would they attempt to outlaw it?  In fact, textbooks used at West Point for years before the war had explained the validity of the right of secession.

Indeed,  most members of Congress understood each State had a fundamental right to secede (as the colonies did from Great Britain in declaring their independence). Lincoln himself, at one time, believed the same. As a junior representative from Illinois, Lincoln addressed Congress on the Mexican-American War, asserting that the US should take only that portion of the Texas territory that represents the desire of the people to secede from Mexico (and not the additional 500,000 square miles of land from Mexico it was seeking – territory comprising Arizona, New Mexico, and California; otherwise, the US would be imperialistic).  On January 1848, he spoke these words: “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.”  [http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-war-with-mexico-speech-in-the-united-states-house-of-representatives/ ]

Yet, when the Southern States actually exercised this fundamental of sovereign states’ rights and left the Union, Lincoln had a change of heart. All of a sudden, he no longer recognized secession as an “inherent” or “natural” sovereign right. And this was a problem, because he was the president and as it always seems to be, the views of the president become the views of the government.  In his first Inaugural Address, he articulated his “new understanding” of the right of secession:

“I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it–break it, so to speak–but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?   Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was “to form a more perfect Union.”  (First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861; http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp ]

The notion of a States’ right of secession – to withdraw from the Union – HAD to be dispelled and de-legitimized if Lincoln was to be able to claim power to preserve the Union and then make good on that promise. There could be no rightful exercise of federal power to force the States to remain together when the States possessed (reserved) the supreme sovereign power, restated by the 10^th Amendment, to withdraw from the Union.

On July 22, 1861, the now Northern only Congress passed a joint resolution (“The Crittenden-Johnson Resolutions on the Objects of the War, 1861”) defining the federal government’s goals in the war:

“Resolved.. That the present deplorable civil war has been forced upon the country by the dis-unionists of the Southern States now in revolt against the constitutional Government and in arms around the capital; that in this national emergency Congress, banishing all feelings of mere passion or resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole country; That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, not for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.”

In other words, the Northern Congress stated in that resolution that preserving the Union and NOT interfering with the institution of slavery was the purpose of the war.

Later, on August 22, 1861, Lincoln explained his thinking on the war to editor, Horace Greeley, an abolitionist:

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it 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 an leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps save the Union.”

Nearly two years into the war, in September 1862, Lincoln found it expedient to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. This proclamation actually freed no slaves in any territory under Union control. It was done primarily as a war measure. Lincoln hoped that the Proclamation would encourage slave uprisings in the South, thus causing Confederate troops to be diverted. The overwhelming majority of the slaves, however, proved remarkably loyal to the families of their Southern masters, most of which were away in the Confederate Army. Some say that it was also to please the anti-slavery British and thus keep them from coming into the war on the side of the South. The British did not come into the war on the side of the South, but they were also not so stupid as to be fooled by this ruse. The North, after all, imposed the protective tariffs on the South, which had harmed trade with Great Britain. Though the Proclamation had disappointing military results, and only made the British more skeptical of Northern intentions, it did please those radical abolitionists who did not seem to mind the hypocrisy of a document that did not free a single slave in Southern territory occupied by the Union Army. After a period of discontent in the North and in the Union Army over the Proclamation, the abolition of slavery began to be used to bolster the moral purpose of the war. Ever since then, it has been a prime propaganda tool justifying and glorifying the war as a just and noble and moral cause.

However, as can easily be seen in the first 13^th Amendment, Lincoln’s speeches, and Congressional resolutions, slavery cannot be said to have been the cause of the war. It was an issue causing much tension, but it was not the cause of the war. These tensions are very much misunderstood today. Contrary to current misinformed public opinion, most Northern objections to slavery were not really of a high moral tone. Many Northern States, such as Lincoln’s Illinois, severely restricted the possibility of any Blacks, free or slave, taking up residence within their borders. Ohio and Indiana even prohibited free Blacks from even entering their states. Northern attitudes towards Blacks that drove much of the “Free State vs. Slave State” controversy can best be summarized by an October 16, 1854 quote by Abraham Lincoln himself:

“Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted with them.”

A common, but practical solution of what to do with the emancipated slaves was colonization (repatriation). That meant sending them back to Africa or to Central America. Lincoln himself was strongly in favor of colonization. Lincoln was a great admirer of Senator Henry Clay, who first proposed the colonization solution in 1827. Lincoln frequently stated his advocacy of colonization and spoke to black pastors and leaders about it, and on December 1, 1862, in a message to Congress, stated: “I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization.”

This was undoubtedly spoken to reassure Northern politicians who were uneasy with the possible migratory consequences of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln opposed slavery and was in favor of gradual, compensated emancipation and colonization. But he obviously considered the Union (preserved) and Northern business interests a much higher priority than eliminating slavery. To his credit, he recognized and hated the dangerous fanaticism of the radical abolitionists. But all the current and post-war talk (propaganda) about the war being a noble crusade to free the slaves and of Lincoln being the great Emancipator is a shameless fraud.

Preserving the Union was the principal purpose stated by the North. That might be called noble – if using violence, killing 620,000 young men, killing women and children (civilians), starving families by killing livestock and scorching the land, and forcing states to bear a subservient and exploited status in an unwanted and, to them, an unprofitable Union at gunpoint can be called ‘noble.” The North had more than just territory in mind when it said it wanted to preserve the Union. Loss of the Southern States would mean loss of most of the tax revenue, of which over 90% came from the tariff duties that were paid by the South States and so burdened them. They would also have to compete with the South’s proposed free-trade policies, which would have wreaked economic havoc on the North, just as the protective tariff had wreaked economic havoc on the South. The South would have gained economically by independence, whereas the North would have lost considerably both in tax revenues and in trade.

The real reason Lincoln sought to preserve the Union was to preserve the ability of the federal government to continue collecting tariff revenue from the Southern States. He admitted as much when he was sworn in as president.  Referring back to the section of his first Inaugural Address above where he dispelled the right of the States to secede from the Union, he continued:

“It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it……   I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.  In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.”

Notice that when he spoke the words “the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself” he is really declaring that the federal government has as its primary purpose the obligation to ensure its preservation. This is in absolute, direct contradiction to the cherished principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Despite the tension that divided the South from the North, beginning in 1828, over the protective tariffs (recall the Nullification Crisis which nearly precipitated secession in 1832) and the concerns of South Carolina over Lincoln’s (and the Republican Party’s) platform in the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln chose to ignore such concerns in his Inaugural Address. He said: “One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.”

The so-called “Civil War” was not really a civil war after all. A civil war implies that both sections of the “same country” were fighting for control of the same government. The South had seceded from that government; it wanted nothing more to do with it. Two names for the war are fare more appropriate:  For the South, it was the “War for Southern Independence” and for the North, it was the “War to Prevent Southern Independence.” It was not a glorious crusade to free slaves. Unfortunately, most Americans today accept the pious fraud that the “Civil War” was all about ending slavery. The first 13^th Amendment, however, provides shattering documentary evidence disproving that cherished humbug.

 

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