I believe, I may be wrong, but Texas is the only entity that is LEGALLY able
to secede from the Union. It was in our agreed to and accepted contrat with
the USA in 1845, to allow us as a REPUBLIC, duly constituted and won by
force of arms on the field of combat, to have this rigth or worse yet for
the rest of the country, to divide into five total states. 2 senators each
and a number of representatives. Talk about justice. I bet we got the idea
from our Virginia roots.
JPAdams
Texas
-----Original Message-----
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tarter, Brent (LVA)
Sent: Friday, April 17, 2009 7:18 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Secession
Thursday night's comments on the legality of secession:
From Jeff Southmayd:
Excuse me, but Virginia left the Union in a very peaceful and democratic
manner, as did all the Southern states. It held a convention (the
second one after Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to invade the South,
having rejected secession in the first convention), the vote was
decidedly in favor of secession, and it withdrew. The violence
commenced when the Union brought troops into the state as an invasion
force intent on hostilities and Virginia was forced to defend herself.
I know of no Constitutional provision giving the Federal government the
power to wage war on a peaceful nation. You might point that out to me
in case I am missing something.
From Ann Pemberton:
Mr. Waddell,
Applause, applause!
Once the South Carolinians fire on Fort Sumpter they took out the chance
of a peacable change in the government.
I have never read of heard what, if anything, the secceeded states did
before Fort Sumpter to illustrate that they were making a peacable
change in their government. Certainly declaring that federal
installations were now state property and ordering the fed out, was not
a very peace-suggesting move. And, when the feds weren't moving fast
enough, to withhold supplies including food to the Fort, and then to
fire on the fort, would convince anyone that the south was spoiling for
a fight.
From Kevin Hardwick:
The political leadership of Virginia in the 19th century surely included
a number of military leaders trained at West Point. But it is equally
the case that it included a great many individuals who learned their
constitutional law in a great many other places. If we are interested
in the thought that inspired the politically active population of
Virginia, William Rawles' contribution strikes me as a foot note. It
may be an interesting foot note, but it is nonetheless a footnote.
Mr. Southmayd is a lawyer--he treats matters of constitutional
interpretation in the fashion that lawyers do. But he is not a
historian, and does not think like an historian. On the difference
between the way that lawyers read the past, versus the way historians
do, see John Phillip Reid's essay on "Forensic History" in his
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
At any rate, my concern is not which line of constitutional
interpretation is correct. Indeed, to my reading, the arguments for
state sovereignty are superior, as matters of constitutional law, than
are the arguments for perpetual union. But my judgment about which
argument is better is irrelevant to our discussion, because we are not
talking about our own personal values here. As an historian, I am
necessarily and properly interested in which line of constitutional
interpretation people in the past, at various points in time, thought
was correct. Whether I agree with them is not the point.
So whether or not, today, we believe that, as Mr. Southmayd puts it
"there were no good reasons to assume the Union was perpetual," it is
manifestly not the case that large numbers of Virginians thought so in
the decades before the Civil War. There were plenty of Virginians
making the perpetual union argument--starting in the Philadelphia
Convention, and extending all the way through the 1860s. Whatever we
may make of their arguments, THEY thought they were right. And not only
did they think so, they managed to persuade a good many other Virginians
to agree with them.
Let me name some names here. The strongest argument for the notion that
the union was perpetual and indivisible made by a Virginian prior to
1800 was written in 1799 by Richard Henry Lee, in response to the
Virginia Resolutions. Another strong case for perpetual union was from
Thomas Ritchie--long time editor of the Richmond ENQUIRER in the early
republic, and a major political actor. Ritchie wrote a series of
scathing editorials in 1812 and 1813, denouncing the secessionist
movements in New England. John Marshall, although he never endorsed the
idea of perpetual union explicitly, took every opportunity to affirm the
supremacy of the federal government in the exercise of its federal
powers. In Cohens v. Virginia, Marshall commented on the mechanics of
disunion, remarking that since the Constitution was was created by the
people, the power to unmake the union "resides only in the whole body of
the people; not in any subdivision of them." And lest we forget, one of
the most trenchant objections of the notion of nullification was penned
by James Madison, late in his life.
Hmm. James Madison opposed Nullification and Secession. But what does
*that* matter, eh? He, after all, was just a constitutional law light
weight. So I suppose were Lee, Ritchie, and Marshall. Oh wait. Wasn't
Marshall a judge of some sort? No matter--*he* surely had nothing
authoritative to say about the constitution!
I am not saying these guys were correct. I *am* saying that they
believed the union to be perpetual. And I am also saying that they and
many others like them articulated these ideas consistently, across a
long period of time, persuasively. When Abraham Lincoln argued that the
union was perpetual, he was not saying anything original. He was merely
repeating the earlier arguments of a host of eminent jurists and
statesmen, among whom must be counted a good number of Virginians.
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