The question didn’t ask if they were equally wrong. If course they weren’t.
I was rebutting your claim that you can leave a legal agreement anytime you want as long as you entered it voluntarily by providing several examples of that not being true. Apparently I did so successfully because you have now dropped the volunteerism as the issue and are arguing the duration is the important issue.
I could rebut that argument as well but I suspect you would just start saying that some third issue was now the important point.
I say when you start a country, form an army, and then order that army to fire cannons at the soldiers from another country, you’re declaring war. I don’t see any “decent argument” to the contrary.
You can argue that the Confederacy and the United States had a political disagreement over who should own Fort Sumter. But the Confederacy responded to this political disagreement by declaring war on the United States.
Bit of a hijack from a non-American -
Why Fort Sumter? Were there no other U.S. military facilities in southern states? If there were, why was Fort Sumter the only one fired on?
Was there a specified time duration, express or implied, in the contract when Spectrum and Time Warner merged? If next year a few Time Warner departments decide that they don’t like operating under the Spectrum banner and its policies, could they unilaterally declare themselves independent corporations?
The flaw in the examples is that it is contracts involving individuals, while the Constitution is a contract involving institutions.
You don’t assume that a contract with an individual is forever, as that individual may move on, they may retire, they may(will) die. There is little to bind an individual to a contract, at most, you can have penalties for breach, but compulsion to perform is much rarer. Contracts with institutions, however, have every intent of being perpetual. I can ask a court to compel a business to make good on the terms of their contract.
The Constitution is a contract between the states, not a contract on individuals. As an individual, you are not bound under the contract. You are free to leave. You can find a country with a contract that you find more acceptable, and go sign up there.
If the people of the south (the free people, anyway) decided that they didn’t want to be a part of the nation anymore, they could have gone elsewhere. The states, however, are in for the long run.
It wasn’t the only one fired on, it was just the first that was fired on.
Most of the other forts had surrendered to the confederacy without violence. Sumter was negotiating a surrender, but the confederates were impatient, and decided that shooting at northerners would accelerate the process.
It backfired.
Sumter guarded Charleston Harbor. Charleston at the time was the center of the interstate slave trade. There was a real fear that the North would interdict that trade. Also of importance was import duties. We’ve largely forgotten about it, but the south had serious objections to import and export duties imposed on southern goods and raw materials. Sumter provided essentially a customs checkpoint. In 1860 and 61, the rhetoric from both sides focused heavily on taxation (called Revenues or Revenue Collection in speeches at the time.) Sumter was seen as a choke point to collect those revenues.
Keep in mind that there was not a universal love of slavery in the south, certainly not enough for war. That forced wealthier southerners to rely on other issues to drag along the more reluctant - and unfair taxation provided that device. Customs duties were widely perceived to be detrimental to southern commerce and prices of goods. Railing against those duties served to keep the reluctant in the slaveholder camp. Sumter was seen as a means to continue revenue collection and so served as a very sore spot.
As previously mentioned, Confederates seized multiple federal forts and facilities (i.e. arsenals) prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. Sumter was only the first.
Nope. This represents another ham-handed attempt at revisionism.
“While later claims have been made after the war’s end that the South Carolinian decision to secede was prompted by other issues such as tariffs and taxes, these issues were not mentioned at all in the declaration. The primary focus of the declaration is the perceived violation of the Constitution by northern states in not extraditing escaped slaves (as the U.S. Constitution required in Article IV, Section 2) and actively working to abolish slavery (which South Carolinian secessionists saw as Constitutionally guaranteed and protected). The main thrust of the argument was that since the U.S. Constitution, being a contract, had been violated by some parties (the northern abolitionist states), the other parties (the southern slave-holding states) were no longer bound by it. Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas offered similar declarations when they seceded, following South Carolina’s example.”
I am not changing the argument; this is more question begging regarding the duration of the “contract” between the states in 1787. You seem to assume that it required the duration to be forever and that a state leaving is similar to quitting driving when the contract required a full drive across the country. That was the debate: What exactly was the nature of this compact formed in Philadelphia in 1787? You are “winning” your argument by simply declaring that it was meant to be one of indissoluble union with no escape clause. That was not at all clear.
Nothing in the Constitution specified that joining the Union was irrevocable until the sun went supernova. The 10th Amendment, read literally, reserves the power of secession to the states. There is also no power in the grant of limited, enumerated powers of the national government to compel compliance with force.
I am not suggesting I agree with this argument. I am responding to the assertions that it was “clear” or that there was simply no rational argument to the contrary.
Attempting to reinforce a disputed position with armed troops so that it is impenetrable is also an act of war. If China, in cooperation with Mexico, amassed a million soldiers on the southern border and placed nuclear weapons behind them, all aimed at U.S. cities, nobody would say that we started the war if we attacked first, or even far prior to allowing the million men to amass.
That is pretty close to what happened in the Mexican War. Do you argue that Mexico started that war?
Why would it not be in perpetuity? As I asked earlier, what is the duration of the contract that binds Time Warner to Spectrum?
A state leaving would be like a department of Spectrum/Time Warner who decides to become independent because they don’t like the polices of the parent company.
The constitution give explicit powers put down insurrections, which is what the attempt at succession was.
You put quite a bit of work into an argument that you don’t agree with.
That doesn’t make any sense. Protecting the assets that you already own is an act of war?
But that is nothing like what happened in our civil war, as it was not foreign actors amassing troops on our border.
Again, a state can leave if the other states agree.
But you are wrong: Texas vs White: The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to “be perpetual”. And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained “to form a more perfect Union”. It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?
Articles of Confederation:"The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union — 1777
To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names, send greeting.
Whereas the Delegates of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, did, on the 15th day of November, in the Year of Our Lord One thousand Seven Hundred and Seventy seven, and in the Second Year of the Independence of America, agree to certain articles of Confederation **and perpetual Union **between the States of New-hampshire, Massachusetts-bay, Rhodeisland and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina, and Georgia in the words following, viz. “Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New-hampshire, Massachusetts-bay, Rhodeisland and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina, South-Carolina and Georgia”. Bolding Mine.
“Preamble
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” Bolding mine.
So, then according to you, the Germans had every right to invade France in WW2? :dubious: No, the construction of fortifications along a border is not a act of war. Massing a invasion army can be.
Well, actually, yes. Mexico attacked first.
When that happened, it was a decision of the local commander, who often was a Southerner himself (and later a CSA officer). The shots were fired at Fort Sumter because, for some reason, treason hotheadedness ran hottest in South Carolina, the first state to declare secession (state AG James Pettigru then observed “South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum”.
By the time Lincoln was inaugurated the rebels had seized all but four U.S. military installations in the seceding states*, with no resistance from their tiny peacetime Federal “garrisons”. In addition to Fort Sumter at Charleston, there was Fort Pickens in the harbor of Pensacola (the Confederates did not attempt to seize that one until October of 1861) and Forts Jefferson and Taylor, two remote outposts in the Florida Keys that remained in U.S. control throughout the war.
*Which at that point still only included Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas; Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and (most of) Virginia didn’t throw in their lot with the rebellion until after the Battle of Fort Sumter.
Lots of people would say we started a war if we launched a pre-emptive attack against Mexico and China as you described. And those people would be right.
I’ll also note that this is not what happened to start the Mexican War.
Here is perhaps a better example. China is building islands in what are widely considered as international waters. I’m not sure, but I suspect they have a military presence on these islands. Is the act of fortifying these islands an act of war against the United Nations and signatories to the applicable treaties? Are these signatories justified in attacking the fortifications and saying that China started it?
A better Mexico example would be if they decided that the independence of Texas was invalid (it ran out, perhaps.) They could then consider the US moving troops to the area an act of war and invade fully justified.
Mexico did consider the independence of Texas to be invalid. Santa Anna, the President of Mexico, was present at the Battle of San Jacinto and was captured by the Texans. He signed a treaty with the Texans in exchange for his release.
The Mexican government refused to recognize the treaty as valid. They said that Santa Anna was unable to legitimately negotiate a treaty while he was being held as a prisoner. And they also announced that Santa Anna was deposed from power.
Because of political turmoil in the rest of the country, Mexico mostly stopped trying to defeat the Texans after San Jacinto. There was an armistice seven years later which ended the fighting. But Mexico never officially recognized Texan independence.
Sorta- the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo set new borders in which Texas was on the US side.
It can be reasonably inferred that the framers of the US Constitution were emulating earlier attempts at the formation of a federal republic. Probably the most noteworthy of these attempts would be the United Provinces or Dutch Republic, which grew out of the revolt against the Spanish Habsburgs and continued until the Batavian Revolution. In Federalist No. 20, James Madison made explicit reference as such:
However, it should be noted that even the relatively flabby central state created by the Dutch was not a simple social club that one could join or leave at will:
Do you have any source, any evidence at all, that Fort Sumter was used to collect tariffs?
Fort Sumter wasn’t even finished being built when the Civil War started. Third system forts, of which Sumter was one, were explicitly military installations. Using them to collect taxes would be analogous to claiming that the reason the US Army today has Abrams tanks is to collect cigarette taxes.
But that was a treaty between Mexico and the United States. It recognized that Texas was now American territory. Mexico could claim that Texas had been Mexican territory not an independent nation right up to the transfer.
The United States Supreme Court says you’re wrong. They have said officially that there was never any right to secede contained in the Tenth Amendment or anywhere else in the Constitution. Which means that is what the law is.
As I said above, when you start claiming that there is some special law that the Supreme Court doesn’t know about, you’re arguing the equivalent of gold-fringed flags.