But you can’t set one rule for every secession, because circumstances are different each time. You can only follow the same path if you’re at the same starting point, and the starting point in 1776 was very different from the starting point in 1861.
Again, you are the one doing the relativistic argument here: there are millions of different circumstances in every situation, therefore each situation is different. Therefore, you can easily support one secession by deciding that what mattered was Parliamentary representation and every other secession that didn’t reach that arbitrary line is wrong.
I am supporting the absolutist argument, that there is a basic idea behind both types of secession: that groups of people self-identified as such, have an immanent right to rule themselves without interference if they choose to do so.
I also have an absolutist belief: I believe in democracy, and I believe that democratic solutions are always best. By being kept out of Parliament, the colonists were denied a democratic solution; you cannot say the same thing about the South. The situations were not comparable and cannot be judged under similar terms.
And you can’t state which situations are comparable and which aren’t, because everybody will use a different measure. The Southern states also believed themselves under-represented after Lincoln’d victory and therefore considered that they had been denied that solution. The Colonies were offered middle term solutions and rejected them. So what’s the big difference?
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The Southern states also believed themselves under-represented after Lincoln’d victory and therefore considered that they had been denied that solution. The Colonies were offered middle term solutions and rejected them. So what’s the big difference?
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The big difference is that the Southern states, if they said that, were lying. (And they didn’t say that; unfair representation isn’t something mentioned in any state’s declaration of succession.) The South was in no way underrepresented. Their preferred candidates had lost the election, but you do not become “underrepresented” by losing an election. Suffrage is the right to vote, not a guarantee you will vote for the winner. Democracy means you have your fair say; it does not mean you always get your way.
Expulsion would deprive the state of representation, no state may be denied representation without its consent, therefore no state may be expelled without its consent.
Barring a Constitutional amendment, of course.
How so? What in the Constitution supported a right to secede, and don’t you agree that legal cases are a matter for the courts (the Supreme Court in this case), as opposed to declaration that one’s side is correct, then seizing federal property and attacking a federal fort?
They were actually overrepresented, in that white voters got the benefit of three-fifths of a vote per slave in determining representation in Congress, without having to actually let the slaves vote.
I honestly don’t care. I don’t believe the Founders were infallible and the world is so much different today than it was nearly 250 years ago that their intentions are no longer relevant.
Not without permission from the rest of us. I would gladly vote for secession for the entire former confederacy if it came to it. The US would be far better off to split into a progressive portion and a regressive portion.
Bad news, then: that divide is not along state lines.
True enough, but the red parts of Texas, Louisiana etc. are enough to override the blue parts and make the state as whole pretty regressive. Sucks to be a liberal in Texas. A US minus the CSA would still have some Republican strongholds but not enough to screw things up royally.
Understood, just wanted to point out that ejecting red states would not be splitting the U.S. into progressive and regressive portions, but rather just adjusting the relative share of each.
Also, urbanization is still increasing, especially in the South (a 3% increase in urban population between 2000 and 2010, the largest of any region).
When the citizens of the individual states were voting on whether to the ratify the Constitution the Federalist Papers clearly outlined the Federalist argument for the law of the Federal government to outweigh that of any state, and yet that wasn’t written in any of it. The Anti-Federalists had reservations about the document enshrining Absolutism, but were told that it means only what it says. It wasn’t a compromise but was intentionally vague for the sake of expediency, so both sides walked away thinking the line marking the authority of the federal government was where they wanted it to be and the future would bare that out.
Indicting Davis on treason formally would showcase that fact and the onus of proof would be on the prosecution.
As it always is. They’d have to prove that Davis made war on the United States, or gave aid and comfort to those who did. Davis would of course be free to mount a defense based on the proper powers of the federal government and whatnot, but when you ask what law Davis broke, the answer is the law against treason.
Treason is a criminal act against ones own nation, the prosecution wouldn’t have to prove it’s authority over Davis?
Exactly. Nations rarely have the right to secede. The issue is usually whether they have the power to secede.
They’d have to prove that he “owed allegience” to the U.S., per 18 U.S.C. § 2381. Davis was a natural-born citizen.
Which it would easily have done. It was the consistent principle throughout the Civil War that the Confederate States was not a legitimate country and the seceding states were still part of the United States.
You have to realize the court only had to prove its authority to itself - it didn’t have to convince Davis. He could have remained defiant but he would have been no different than some Free Man on the Land claiming that he doesn’t recognize the authority of the court that is trying him.
Not really. To hold otherwise would basically mean that government couldn’t continue during a rebellion of sufficient size. That may be something the Founders should have thought of, but no court is ever going to say, “yeah, you need to fix that next time.”
I don’t know what you mean. The rebellion was over by '66.
Then think of it this way: If one state can secede, then presumably 49 states can secede together, right?