Sovereign, eh? Answer me this: could a state deny citizens of other states the Privileges and Immunities of its own citizens?
That part is missing from my copy of the Constitution. Care to point it out? Mine says:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
So what, did they just forget to put that in the Constitution?
The slave states were very much in favor of federal power over the states. Read about the Fugitive Slave Act. This required all states to capture escaped slaves and return them to their owners. When the free states complained, the slave states pointed to the supremacy clause and forced the free states to comply.
In fact, it was the slave states’ overreach using federal power that made abolition a powerful political force in the free states. Because the slave states wanted to use federal power to enforce slavery, the abolitionists acquired power at the federal level to stop slavery.
You can also peruse the constitution of the confederate states. Their confederate constitution gave their federal government just as much power as the federal government of the United States. And they were not shy at using that power to enforce compliance of the confederate states.
Wrong. This happened not in 1865, but in 1789. That’s when the centralizers conspired to overthrow the Articles of Confederation and replace it whole cloth with something new. Under the Articles of Confederation the federal government was indeed dependent on the States for funding, and had no authority to tax. That was thrown out under the Constitution.
This is certainly true. It would have been far more sensible for the southern states to see the writing on the wall, and accept emancipation of the slaves in return for some sort of buyout by the whole nation. The only problem is the southern states would never agree to that. As Lincoln put it:
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
Why exactly is a central government such a problem? Switzerland has a population of only 8 million people. That’s less than many of our American states. If federal government with strong local control and limited central control was such a good idea, why are the states of California, or New York, or Texas, or Virginia centrally controlled? You don’t see each county of Texas deciding how much power to give to the central government of the state of Texas, do you?
No, Texas is a unitary state, and the county and city governments are creations of the state, not sovereign. If Texas left the United States and became an independent country (which could be done legally simply by passing a constitutional amendment allowing it), Texas would not be a federal state but a unitary state.
Why exactly is a federal state better than a unitary state? It’s better if the constituent states of the federation are sufficiently different from one another that maintaining their own laws and customs is better than the alternative. It’s not inherently better, it’s only better if that’s the only way unity can be achieved. If the individual members of the confederation won’t give up their sovereignty to a unitary state they might agree to a federation where their quirks and peculiar institutions are preserved. Or the members might separate. Or the formerly sovereign members could be unified by military means. History has many examples of all these outcomes.
As people have pointed out, the constitution actually contradicts your claim that states had the power to deny the federal government the power to collect and spend money, so you’re going to need something to back it up, and I doubt you can find an actual source. As far as sovereignty goes, the Confederate states were actually explicitly opposed to state sovereignty and State’s rights in general - they wanted the Federal government to force states to allow and protect slavery over the wishes of the residents and government of the state.
The federal government tried to negotiate a settlement and offered generous terms to any state that voluntarily ended slavery. The slave owners refused to negotiate. They were dedicated to preserving slavery.
It’s not like the OP has even read the Constitution. All he can do is parrot stupid “arguments” that have been disproven time and time again. It’s almost time for recipes!
You are not the first person to suggest this on the SDMB. It is an absolutely preposterous idea, one that ignores rudimentary economics as well as the reality that Southern society was based on slavery.
No amount of money could have bought all the slaves.
The trouble is that, as an economic system, slave-based economics cannot just exist in place. They have to expand. That’s why there was such a fight over slavery in the territories. It was the fact that Republicans were unwilling to allow slavery to expand beyond those states which already had it that was the final straw for the southern planters.
The south believed so strongly in states’ rights that they caused passed the fugitive slave law, one of the largest incursions of federal power into states that had occurred up to then.
I think what the south feared most of all was that unless their “fair” share of the coming western states were slave states, they would lose their power over national policy. The fugitive slave law would be repealed and, perhaps in some distant future time, they would abolish slavery.
A claim explicitly contradicted by the U.S. Constitution:
Nothing in that statement permits the states the ability to deny the Federal government the power to collect money or to spend it.
A claim that would have seemed astounding to the authors of the respective Confederate declarations of independence that resoundingly declared slavery to be the whole point of the exercise.
DC got compensated emancipation. I do think it needs to be pointed out that this was passed at a Federal level after the Confederate states had left (were not voting in legislature). Delaware was offered the emancipated compensation, as was referenced, but refused. D.C. wasn’t a state, and didn’t have the same powers of a state to refuse.
And, as noted in your timeline - Maryland only did any freeing after the Emancipation Proclamation made the future of slavery unlikely. They didn’t actually end slavery until after the Federal government’s offer was off the table (Lincoln’s offer was in fall of 1861). They could have gotten compensated earlier in the war, but by time Maryland did it, the writing was very close to being on the wall and there was no incentive to paying the states/owners to end slavery by then. Don’t know enough about West Virginia to comment, especially given how it split off. This site seems to indicate that WV got ratified as a state as their compensation for the bill, and that WV didn’t ratify the bill until 1863 or perhaps December 1862.
Lincoln would never have touched slavery. He was willing to support the Corwin Amendment in order to keep the Union together. The idea that he would have pursued abolition in the face of Southern threats to secede is not based on a logical assessment of his actions.
The South didn’t start a war for secession. They attempted to secede and blundered into Lincoln’s machinations at Ft Sumter. Demanding that the Union abandon Ft. Sumter was part of that secession attempt.
That said, slavery was under no political threat from the current US government. The slavers were paranoid. Heroic resistance to work and other subterfuge from captive Africans and African-Americans as well as the rise of free-market capitalism was making slavery untenable as an economic and political system. It was failing all over the place.
We’ve had this discussion before – yes, they started a war. They armed themselves and shot at US soldiers. It’s not credible to posit that by trying to secede they (meaning those Southern leaders making this decision for several million people, most of whom did not take part in the decision making) weren’t starting a war.
I have never seen a logical argument or historical example for how slavery had to be ever-expanding, though the claim is repeated often. The confederate aristocracy was notorious for being unambitious and lazy. They were not as driven as their Northern brethren to conquer the frontier for example. Besides that, some of the most successful slave economies were on islands! They didn’t run into too much trouble from being constrained from expansion.
At the same time, the slave states wanted the Federal Government to have the power to compel free states to return slaves to their owners – Fugitive Slave Act – and to maintain ownership even when a slave travels to a free state – Dred Scott.