From Kevin Hardwick:

On to the substance of Mr. Southmayd's email--and ignoring the
irrelevant asides and digressions he makes to distract us from the
question at hand.

In 1860 Virginia voted Constitutional Unionist.  Whatever may be the
distinguished lineage of secessionist thinkers, including perhaps St.
George Tucker or William Rawles (was William Rawles a Virginian?  Did he
teach in Virginia?  If not, who cares what he thought, for our purposes
here?), the inconvenient fact remains that the fundamental premise of
Constitutional Unionism, as a political movement, was hostile to
secession.  Constitutional Unionism rejected the notion that secession
is constitutional.  Come the point where the rubber hits the road, that
is, when Virginians cast their votes in 1860, the majority of them voted
for political parties that were explicitly and fundamentally hostile to
the idea that secession, or nullification, were constitutional.  In
1860, the majority of Virginians opposed secession, and they did so for,
among others, constitutional reasons.  

Mr. Southmayd's grasp of Constitutional history is deficient.  There
were good constitutional reasons for presuming that the Federal Union
was, and should be, perpetual.  The notion that Lincoln ginned up
original constitutional theory to bolster his understanding of Union war
aims in 1861 is just flat out wrong.  One good place to start with this
would be David Hendrickson's excellent study of the Constitution, PEACE
PACT.  Hendrickson takes seriously the writings of guys like Alexander
Hamilton and James Madison, writing under the pseudonym "Publius," in
the early numbers of the Federalist Papers, that a perpetual union is
necessary to prevent the formation of regional confederations, with
seriously negative consequences for the prospect of government
stability, the rule of law, and social order in all of the states.

An excellent, and balanced study of precisely this issue is Kenneth
Stampp's seminal 1978 essay in the Journal of American History, "The
Concept of Perpetual Union," JAH 65:1 (June 1978), pp. 5-33.

 

From J. Douglas Deal:

Good points all. A few more thoughts: you don't say "legally
binding"--that was my unfortunate shorthand to describe a politically
significant ritual. I don't deny that some rituals are politically
meaningful, but I do wonder about exactly what recitation of the pledge
signifies or accomplishes. I still think the majority of those who do
the reciting have little idea what they are saying or why. It would be
nice if all teachers were as responsible and as committed to civic
learning as those you describe. Again, I'm not sure who is "normal" and
who an outlier.

Finally, did the Civil War answer the  question of (in)divisibility?
Maybe it did, but that indivisible union proceeded to craft constraints
that disenfranchised many thousands of workers, divided and conquered
many others, and generally privileged the wealthy over the poor. The
divisions of an earlier era were supplanted by a yawning divide of class
and color that has been awfully difficult to bridge.

 
 

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