The problem here is that you assume secession was an illegal act. It was viewed as perfectly legitimate up until the confederacy lost the war. The corollary to secession being legitimate was demanding Union troops vacate Ft. Sumter.
The idea that you can start a war by defending your harbor is perhaps one of the more absurd ideas about the war.
Yes, therefore modern supporters of “states’ rights” will never have to answer for being supporters of the confederacy from here on out, right?
I’m not certain that you’re correct in saying it was “viewed as perfectly legitimate”. Based on a quick google it appears that it was an actively debated subject without a consensus reached. The formal illegality of secession was cemented by a supreme court ruling in 1861 that secession was unconstitutional - based on the same constitution that was in place prior to the civil war. Which can be reasonably taken as meaning that secession was always illegal, but the courts simply hadn’t weighed in on the matter until then.
The slavers miscalculated badly by seceding. Northern abolitionists, William Lloyd Garrison for example, at times supported secession as a way to hasten the demise of slavery. They understood slavery wouldn’t survive in such proximity to a free country. The South complained about Northern nullification of the fugitive slave law in their secession documents. Here we had both secession and nullification being promoted as tools of liberty as they very well should be.
Lincoln would have arrested the Supreme Court if they hadn’t returned that opinion. He seriously considered arresting Taney after ex parte Merryman. The US was a dictatorship at this time. To suggest that interpretation of the Constitution does not change is a stretch.
Whether secession was legal or not, a bunch of rich white guys deciding for millions to start shooting at US soldiers sounds pretty damn illegal to me.
Dictatorship, huh? Why yes, that doesn’t sound like hyperbole at all.
In any case, in this case there was no change in interpretation. There was an absence of official legal interpretation, followed by the presence of one, which hasn’t changed since then. There is no legitimate reason to assume that a prior court would have ruled otherwise.
Secession by legal means was viewed as possibly legitimate, secession by ignoring the law completely and attacking and seizing Federal assets was never viewed as legitimate. The Confederates chose the second option.
The idea that you can start a war by firing on US troops acting legally is not absurd at all.
I see nothing in U.S. history that suggests secession was ever generally accepted, and at least several instances (Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1799, the Nullification dustup in 1832-1833) where the idea was soundly repudiated.
I can’t actually figure out what you mean to say here. Try again?
Here’s a handy side-by-side comparison of the Constitutions of the United States and the Confederate States. The Confederates really made no radical changes in the balance of power between the states and the central government. In particular, the Confederate Constitution would have still given the Confederate government the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises for revenue, necessary to pay the debts, provide for the common defense, and carry on the Government of the Confederate States”; to “provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Confederate States, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions” (as the author of that website wryly notes, “By keeping this clause the CSA essentially gives itself the right to fight its own Civil War someday”); and to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the Confederate States, or in any department or officer thereof”–essentially the same “Necessary and Proper Clause” (AKA as the “Elastic Clause”) as is found in the U.S. Constitution.
Note there is not one word in the Confederate Constitution about the right of states to secede. On the other hand, the Confederates were careful to entrench the institution of slavery (not counting provisions like the Fugitive Slave Clause, found in both constitutions, where the only difference is that the language of the Confederate Constitution doesn’t bother with euphemisms):
“No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”
“The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States; and shall have the right of transit and sojourn in any State of this Confederacy, with their slaves and other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not be thereby impaired.”
“The Confederate States may acquire new territory; and Congress shall have power to legislate and provide governments for the inhabitants of all territory belonging to the Confederate States…In all such territory the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected be Congress and by the Territorial government; and the inhabitants of the several Confederate States and Territories shall have the right to take to such Territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or Territories of the Confederate States.”
Texas v. White was in 1869, not 1861. By that point Lincoln was in no condition to have arrested anyone.
Actually, one of the few changes to the Confederate Constitution not related to slavery was the addition of the word “permanent” to the description of its federal government. Thus for people who imagine that the US Constitution gives a state right to secession, the Confederate Constitution certainly seems to remove that right.
The Southerner ruling classes saw a threat down the road (the political unsustainability of slavery in the USA) and took the wrong strategy to deal with it, because they really did not want to deal with it.
Of course** the only good, rightful thing for them to do was to accept this way of life had no future, and figure out Plan B before the hammer dropped**. But noooo, the Planter Class just knew they were Entitled by God to their ways. The rational, sensible thing to do would have been to say, “this way of doing things is doomed within a generation, let’s start figuring out something different to do to cut our losses”. But the rulers did not have the mentality, someone bringing up such an alternative would be rudely shown the door as some sort of subversive blasphemer. Though most of the western world had already abolished slavery and outlawed the trade, why, that only meant everyone is wrong while we are right… They operated from a humongous excluded middle where the only alternative to preserving their ways to the last, was that they’d cease to exist.
Take away the specific case of slavery, substitute some other issue that a dominant class sees as the way things should be, and that is not an attitude exclusive to them, then, and there, either. The willingness to actually wage war over it, and the abomination of the “ideal” being defended are what makes it particularly egregious.
Say WHAT??? You came back to provide THIS?
What they said.
Kheee-rist… The way the states had “to deny the Federal government from collecting or spending money” was* the same they still have today: forming a majority to vote it down, or else filibustering it, in Congress.*
Oh, and if you are going to have a united nation, and a Supreme Law of the Land, nullification is a non-starter. Might as well ditch the damn Constitution if the powers of the federal state are merely lent out at-will.
Fort Sumter was property of the federal US government. Even if secession is recognized as legitimate, which is dubious at best, it doesn’t change ownership. They had no grounds to demand the Union troops vacate.
No, there was not any consensus before the war that secession was “perfectly legitimate”. If there had been, then secession wouldn’t have been an issue in 1860. Most people in 1860 believed that secession was an illegal act.
The idea that you can start a war by shooting at somebody is pretty widely accepted.
The basic proposition of the Confederates was that they were an independent nation and the United States was another country. If you shoot cannons at soldiers from another country, it’s generally seen as an act of war. If the Confederates had decided to attack a Mexican fort, would you be arguing it wasn’t an act of war?
Also, property doesn’t magically change hands when governments change. Cuba argues that Guantanamo Bay is theirs, not ours, but the deal made with the previous government stands valid today. South Carolina granted the U.S. the land for Fort Sumter, and they couldn’t just declare that null by a unilateral decree.
(Guns, yes. Decree, no.)
Of course they did. They attempted to negotiate a deal regarding UNion property but Lincoln rejected diplomacy. Lincoln was supplying a fort which existed to collect taxes. Once you start collecting taxes from foreign governments against their will, they are no longer called taxes, but tribute. If Japan’s government turned against US occupation, they would certainly have a right to demand the US vacate.
Most people did not believe it was an illegal act. There is no basis for that claim. There was no desire to punish the South until Lincoln deftly outmaneuvered the confederacy at Sumter.
You can’t start a war in self-defense. Period. Using your logic the US wouldn’t start a war by flying bombers over Moscow if Vladimir squeezed off a shot before they dropped their bombs. Arming a tax collecting fort in a foreign harbor is an aggressive action.
Everyone understood arming Ft Sumter was an aggressive action. His cabinet argued against it. Even Lincoln admirers brag about how Lincoln deceived the confederates.
Who said anything about collecting taxes from a foreign country? The US was collecting taxes from the US.
And even if secession were legitimate, which it very clearly was not, the fort was still US property. The US had no obligation to agree to any deal concerning it, because it was US property.
I always get a kick out of people who try to argue that secession was somehow legally justifiable under the Constitution. But you are so far out of your league with this sentence that it’s mind-boggling.
Texas v White was decided in 1869. Lincoln wouldn’t have been able to do much of anything. And while the President did act to suspend habeas corpus without prior approval of Congress, Justice Taney’s opinion notwithstanding, the law on that was (and is) unsettled. The President was at the time acting to suppress a treasonous rebellion and legal niceties were likely to get shunted aside as needs be. That hardly makes him a dictator, except perhaps in the old, original meaning of the term (the person in Rome chosen to get the city through crisis without needing approval of the legislature).
To assert as you have that there was general agreement that secession was a legal action by the states, I think you should at a minimum provide evidence of that idea. I offer as evidence that it was NOT something held in general agreement (outside of the planter class of the South) the actions not of the Republicans when they took over the mechanisms of government, but that of the Democratic President who occupied the White House at the time of the attempted secessions, and who opposed the legality of those secessions. Even in the South, the question was quite uncertain.
Having attempted to do what the federal government (and the majority of their fellow states) considered illegitimate (in the true sense of the word: not legal or valid), the states of the South were certainly not entitled to think that all property of the United States government legally belonged either to them, or to the asserted new entity, the CSA. They fired upon Fort Sumter because they refused to allow the fort re-supply because they believed that the US government should turn the fort over to them. They fired upon the fort to initiate a war to establish their right to secede by might, diplomacy and legality having failed them. They were not acting defensively; they were acting offensively. Of course, from their standpoint, the practicality of what they did was justifiable (they could hardly allow a foreign fort in the Charleston harbor should they in fact accomplish secession), but it belies rationality to assert it was not an offensive action that initiated the Civil War. :dubious: