Beyond Ideology: The Breach of 1861

[Thomas777]

I think it is apropos to note Russel Kirk's account of ideology as, "servitude to political dogmas...abstract ideas not founded upon historical experience. Ideology is inverted religion, and the ideologue is the sort of person whom the historian Jakob Burckhardt called the 'terrible simplifier."

If we turn our attention to the American Republic (as is not often discussed in this subforum), it is clear from the historical record that the men who are (properly) credited with the theoretical foundation of Constitutional statecraft were James Madison and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton and Madison understood and appreciated that an accountable, yet largely inflexible, Regime would be required to facilitate the maintenance of an enduring State...however, they also appreciated that the State was a neutral quanta that would ultimately be shaped by the character of the Nation. Conspiculously (or perhaps not), references to Slavery were absent from the Bill of Rights until the ratification and adoption of Amendment XIII, allowing us to glean that responsibility for determining exactly who would be admitted to the National community would be laid at the feet of the People through their representatives. In other words, the National community was not defined by formal statecraft as it was not properly within the mandate of the original Regime to impose upon the People a definition of the Nation and its membership. What was properly within the mandate was clearly recognized rights, privileges, immunities, and protections that attend National Citizenship.

The common reference point of historians, partisans, and theorists of varying dispositions as to when precisely the Regime expanded the scope of its mandate to determine the character and scope of the National community is the Federalist victory 1865...but in reality, it was the secession of 1861 by the anti-Federalist, planter-aristocracy of the declared 'Confederate States of America' that in fact facilitated the expansion of the federal mandate to define the National community.

Hamilton and Madison's vision of a Federally administered United States was contingent upon a Nationally elected Executive as the agent of the People, and accountable only to the People and not the governments of the several States. In other words, the office of the President of the United States, with its broad and expressed power of administration and command, represents a pure manifestation of the leadership principle, as per the Social Contract. States in secession, not acting pursuant to popular mandate in the form of plebiscite, were in material breach of the inviolable Constitutional compact between the People and their only National representative. The breach of the compact permitted the Regime to eschew its responsibilities to the People, in absence of mutuality...and hence, granted the Regime the power to reorder, redefine, and actively dismantle the National community according to new terms, without regard to the interest of the People who had initiated material breach.

In short, the 1861 secession dismantled the National community, not the 1865 victory of Federalist forces. Discuss.

[Hartmann von Aue]

Lincoln's victory was a failure of the electoral college system.

The US should have had dual consuls - one for the north and one for the south.

[WFHermans]

If one of the States would have left the Union in 1790, no one would have dreamt of invading that State, burn its cities to the ground, and let loose the nigger slaves to rape the white women. And when South Carolina left in 1860, president Buchanan didn't consider invading it either. Only the undemocratically elected jewish president Abraham Lincoln (just 40% of the popular vote, 60% voted against him) invaded the Confederacy, more than half a year later.

[Jake Featherston]

Lincoln's victory was a failure of the electoral college system.

This is a very good point. Lincoln only got 39.6% of the popular vote, and yet managed to score 180 Electoral votes (out of 303 total, 152 needed to win). Stephen A. Douglas came in second place with 29.5% of the popular vote, but fell to fourth place in the Electoral College, with just 12 votes. Other than in California and Oregon (which Lincoln carried with a plurality), Lincoln got a majority of the vote in every state he carried, while fell into the single digits in nearly every other state. The Electoral College was designed precisely in order to prevent narrow, regional candidates like Lincoln from being successful, and the one time it failed, we had a civil war.

[Jake Featherston]

In short, the 1861 secession dismantled the National community, not the 1865 victory of Federalist forces. Discuss.

I can't think of much to say. Its difficult for me to imagine it being otherwise.

[ironweed]

Makes sense, Mr. 777. Sorry for hitting you with a c&p, but I'm a bit short for time this week. No semi-independent Bavaria/no semi-independent South Carolina.


The reader of Lincoln Unmasked is in for a great many mischievous pleasures. Consider: Harry Jaffa, the dean of what DiLorenzo calls the "Lincoln cultists," has more than once compared the Southern cause to that of Nazi Germany. DiLorenzo embarrasses Jaffa in this book by pointing out passages in Hitler’s Mein Kampf in which the German leader expressed both his support for Lincoln’s war and his unwavering opposition to the cause of states’ rights and political decentralization (which, as a dictator seeking absolute power, he naturally sought to overturn in Germany). Hitler even adopted Lincoln’s fanciful retelling of American history in which the states were creatures of the Union rather than vice versa.

In Germany, Hitler promised that the Nazis "would totally eliminate states’ rights altogether: Since for us the state as such is only a form, but the essential is its content, the nation, the people, it is clear that everything else must be subordinated to its sovereign interests. In particular we cannot grant to any individual state within the nation and the state representing it state sovereignty and sovereignty in point of political power." Thus the "mischief of individual federated states…must cease and will some day cease…. National Socialism as a matter of principle must lay claim to the right to force its principles on the whole German nation without consideration of previous federated state boundaries." Which side was the Nazi one again, Professor Jaffa?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods58.html



Of course, the practice of the CSA was a different matter than the theory. Jeff Davis asked for and got a national draft long before Lincoln even contemplated any such thing. The issue of how a state could even leave the CSA was never resolved, such a thing is mentioned nowhere in the CSA's constitution. But, at least as to theory of the thing, Hitler walked much closer to Lincoln than he ever did to Jefferson Davis. To say nothing of a Virginiaphile like R.E. Lee. I think you could argue Lee's allegience was never to the CSA, but only to Virginia.

[Thomas777]

Lincoln's victory was a failure of the electoral college system.

Perhaps or perhaps not. I'm not a great proponent of Paul Johnson's interpretation of the Civil War era, but I think that he hits the mark here:

In his inagural, [Jefferson] Davis said the Confederacy was born of a 'peaceful appeal to the ballot box'. That was not true. No state held a referendum. It was decided by a total of 854 men in various secession conventions, all of them selected by legislatures, not by the voters. Of these 157 voted against secession. So 697 men, mostly wealthy, decided the destiny of 9 million people, mostly poor. Davis said he was anxious to show that secession was 'not a rich man's war and a poor man's fight', but the fact is it was the really rich, and the merely well-to-do, both of whom had a major interest in the struggle, who decided to commence it, not the rest of the whites, who had no direct economic interest at all. And the quality of the Southern leadership, intellectually at least, was poor. The reasons for secession, put into the declarations of each states, made no sense, and merely reflected the region's paranoia. Mississipi's said: 'the people of the Northern states have assumed a revolutionary position towards the Southern states.' They had 'insulted and outraged our citizens when traveling among them...by taking their servants and liberating the same.' They had 'encouraged a hostile invasion of a Southern state to incite insurrection, murder and rapine.' South Carolina's was equally odd, ending in a denunciation of Lincoln, 'whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.' But most presidents had been hostile to slavery, not the least Jefferson, the man whose opinions on the subject Lincoln most often quoted.

It became a necessity, Davis wrote to a Northern friend, January 20, 1861, 'to transfer our domestic institutions from hostile to friendly hands, and we have acted accordingly.' Lincoln could not exactly be called friendly towards the South - he was, rather, exasperated and sad. But he was not hostile. Southern leaders like Davis would not accept that Lincoln was hated by many abolitionists, like Wendell Phillips (1811-84), the rich Boston humanitarian ideologue who called him 'the Slavehound of Illinois.' The most the Lincoln Republicans could do, and proposed to do, was to contain slavery. To abolish it in the 1860s required a Constitutional amendment, and a three-quarters majority; as there were fifteen slave states, this was unobtainable. A blocking majority of this magnitude would have still been sufficient in the second half of the 20th Century. It is worth noting that, at the time of secession, Southerners and Democrats possessed a majority in both houses of Congress, valid till 1863 at least. If protecting slavery was the aim, secession made no sense. It made the Fugitive Slave Act a dead letter and handed the territories over to the Northerners. The central paradox of the Civil War is that it provided the only circumstances in which the slaves could be freed and slavery abolished.

Johnson, Paul. A History of the American People. New York: Harper Collins, 2002. 458-59

The US should have had dual consuls - one for the north and one for the south.
The South should have capitalized on their healthy majority on Capitol Hill and labored to guard citizenship against the excesses of the Boston Bramhins and the Radical Republicans. Unfortunately, it seems that such an effort would have required a degree of prescience that was just not possessed by J. Davis and his contemporaries.

[Hartmann von Aue]

Obviously - in hindsight - one can see that their actions were foolish.

If their reasoning seems weak and their response seems extreme - at the same time one must consider that they believed they were acting within their rights and that they did not think the US government would not wage such a massive struggle against them.

Time and time again we see situations where nations are lured into struggles against forces far more powerful than they suspect.

[Jake Featherston]

While slightly off-topic, I just wanted to make a post emphasizing the degree to which the Electoral College's intent was subverted by the results of the 1860 Presidential election.

Abraham Lincoln, Republican: 39.6%, 180 EV
John Breckenridge, Southern Democrat: 18.2%, 72 EV
John Bell, Constitutional Unionist: 12.6%, 39 EV
Stephen A. Douglas: 29.5%, 12 EV

Percentage of the Vote Lincoln Received in States he Carried

Vermont: 75.9%
Minnesota: 63.5%
Massachusetts: 62.8%
Maine: 62.2%
Rhode Island: 61.4%
Michigan: 57.2%
New Hampshire: 56.9%
Wisconsin: 56.6%
Pennsylvania: 56.3%
Iowa: 54.6%
Connecticut: 53.9%
New York: 53.7%
Ohio: 51.2%
Indiana: 51.1%
Illinois: 50.7%
Oregon: 36.2%
California: 32.3%

Percentage of the Vote Lincoln Received in States he Lost

New Jersey: 48.1%
Delaware: 23.7%
Missouri: 10.3%
Maryland: 2.5%
Virginia: 1.1%
Kentucky: 0.9%

States Where Lincoln Didn't Even Appear on the Ballot

North Carolina
Georgia
Florida
Tennessee
Alabama
Mississippi
Arkansas
Louisiana
Texas

Lincoln also did not appear on the South Carolina ballot, by virtue of the fact that South Carolina had already seceeded from the Union, and thus did not participate in the U.S. Presidential election.

[Thomas777]

While slightly off-topic, I just wanted to make a post emphasizing the degree to which the Electoral College's intent was subverted by the results of the 1860 Presidential election.


That is one way to look at it, but the Southern leadership should have had the foresight to capitalize on the situation...but let's be honest here, Southerners have always been quite a bit better at warcraft than statecraft.

It sounds silly to cite a scripted bit of dialogue from a Martin Scorcese picture, but the scene where 'Bill the Butcher' (who is obviously supposed to be William Poole) casually comments to his Know-Nothing comrades during the Emancipation Proclaimation parade in the Five Points, "we should have run a better man against Lincoln when we had the chance" is rather apropos. The Lincoln-Douglas debates are remembered as one of Lincoln's shining moments, but in reality, Douglas alienated a potential Northern constituency (especially in Illinois) with his glibness, bombast, and uncanny ability to wrongfoot the Southern cause. I believe it was in the course of their final debate that Douglas stated "I choose the side of the White man over the Negro, and I choose the side of the Negro over the crocidile". Suffice to say that racialist, barroom humour was not terribly appropriate on the eve of Civil War...and it was that sort of carelessless and arrogance that cost him the election.

Be that as it may, we already established that the legal grounds for the Union invasion of the CSA was the breach of the Social Contract between the Executive and the People by the representatives of the several states (thus materially altering the terms of Executive mandate), that Southerners and Southern interests enjoyed incumbancy on Capitol Hill until at least 1863 (had the Southern states not opted for secession), and that the Radical Republicans and their Bostonian, abolitionist allies were at odds with what they perceived as Lincoln's conciliatory disposition towards the South on the issue of Slavery. These circumstances would have been a fertile ground upon which the South could have negotiated with the President in order to guarantee permanent demographic integrity, permanent White self-determination within the United States, and a firm commitment to equitable modernization of Southern infrastructure with use of Federal funds.

The short-sightedness of the Southern leadership compromised what was, in many respects, an ideal political situation for the South. Lincoln's political weakness, as you noted with your voting percentage chart, would have given the South incredible leverage on the Beltway.

[Jake Featherston]

I've always thought the secession movement was born out of emotionalism (inspired/generated by a Machiavellian assumption on the part of Southern elites, as well as a wrongheaded one, that the Union would permit Southern secession, thus permitting them to lord it over their own national territory without interference from any Bostonian pinheads), rather than any rational understanding of the political realities of the day. Out-going Democratic President, James Buchanan of Pennsylania, was himself a "doughface," which is to say a Northern man of Southern principles, and there were others of his ilk (his predecessor, Democratic President Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, had been one as well) in both Houses of Congress, so there's no question but that the Southern states could have been in a strong political position vis-a-vis the Lincoln administration. Like I said, I think some Southern elites just wanted their own country to lord it over, and took the opportunity to manipulate the poltical process towards that end with disastrous results. Of course, much of the damage could have been undone, had the Democratic Presidential nominee, Gov. Horatio Seymour of New York, been elected in 1868, instead of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. Seymour's campaign slogan was "This is a White Man's Country, so Let White Men Rule." I was using a potrait of Horation Seymour as my avatar until fairly recently.

Seymour polled 47.3% of the popular vote, but only 80 out of 294 Electoral Votes (148 needed to win).

http://www.uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/GENERAL/pe1868.png

NOTE: While California isn't the Electoral College powerhouse it is today (it only had 5 EVs), its interesting to note that Seymour only lost it by 520 votes.

[WFHermans]

If the Southern States had all been allowed to vote, Grant would still have become president, although Seymour would have received more than 50% of the popular vote.

Claiming that a seceding state should be destroyed for "breaching a social contract" is as reasonable as beating up someone for leaving you. It's something a bully would do. There was no provision in any US law forbidding a state to leave the union, just as there were no laws against citizens leaving the territory of the USA. But law doesn't matter. The jews have been able to infringe on both rights.
The South should have capitalized on their healthy majority on Capitol Hill and labored to guard citizenship against the excesses of the Boston Bramhins and the Radical Republicans.
Lincoln would have had arrested them.

[Roland]

Claiming that a seceding state should be destroyed for "breaching a social contract" is as reasonable as beating up someone for leaving you. It's something a bully would do. There was no provision in any US law forbidding a state to leave the union, just as there were no laws against citizens leaving the territory of the USA. But law doesn't matter. The jews have been able to infringe on both rights.

I disagree. The reason for the existence of an individual invested with sovereign power is that no constitution can encompass the totality of all possible events in the life of a state. When the timeless relationship of protection and obedience is broken in some unforeseen way, in this case through secession, then what the sovereign decides to do in order to reconstitute that relationship is the law. A contract that allows the people to do whatever they want, including annihilating the contract through secession, is not a contract at all.

My understanding of civil war history is very limited, but I do know that Lincoln was willing to be conciliatory toward Southern demands. I agree with Thomas.

[WFHermans]

The USA wasn't founded as a state. It started as 13 sovereign states in 1775 that formed a federation in 1789. The contract that was drawn then, also known as the Constitution of the United States of America, didn't "allow the people to do whatever they want", but it did give them a number of rights that the governments could not infringe upon.

The way the President worked around this was by filling the Supreme Court with crooks.

[Roland]

If Lincoln was an illegitimate dictator, then that is another issue. The question at hand regards whether or not secession dissolves the constitution; if it does, then Lincoln's actions are just.

[WFHermans]

But in that case the secession should have been recognized as well. You can't have it both ways (unless you are a fork-tongued crypto-jew like Abraham Licoln). Either the secession means the end of the constitutional rights for the seceded states, or the secession is not recognized and the constitution stays in force.

[Roland]

That is an interesting point, but I don't think it applies. Secession - the establishment of a separate government and army - defines he who secedes as an enemy of the constitution against which punitive action can be justly taken. Since secession is an exception to the norm, it entitles the sovereign to take whatever steps are necessary to restore the normal situation, even if those steps require the suspension of the constitution itself. This is the essence of emergency powers.

[Macrobius]

A couple of comments: first, the assertion that the planter class wanted to secede needs to be demonstrated -- both that this sentiment was uniform from the larger planters with hundreds of slaves, down to the freeholder class which might or might not have owned a slave or two. I suspect that in fact, both in the case of the New England Secession and the South Carolina one, that initially it was the commercial interests in the seaport cities that took the lead. The interior only galvanised after legislatures acted for the State as a whole.

Second, any arguments based on secession and its rights need to establish one critical fact from a legal perspective -- that the states at the time of the first US Confederation were sovereign entities capable of entering into such a contract. If this is not *true*, then arguments about paper rights are irrelevant, because *on paper* there were no such rights (a demonstrably false title cannot lead to persuasive theoretical arguments about the rights it allegedly but not in fact confers). This is an important fact, whether or not you believe the States subsequently had such rights, by virtue of achieving independence. That is because the mechanism by which they acquired such rights, or alternatively by which they had prior rights, is the determining factor for judging later events. This logical point seems to have been lost in the desperate rhetoric leading up to conflict, and glossed over by the victors afterwards, as an inconvenient consideration.

This point is, I believe, the weakness in Calhoun's argument in his Disquisitions, if I recall correctly, since he argues that Americans were (1) not one people, (2) not one nation, (3) the states were each sovereign nations, in effect, after their independence, (4) the organic principle of democracy requires assent of the whole body, not just one portion of it, to subsequent arrangements.

[Personal Disclaimer: the Macrobii owned a plantation in South Carolina, and were against secession. All the sons fought in the war and several were wounded or imprisoned. Their plantation was not far, say, from the battle gardens at Edisto, where a defense was made against the advance of Sherman's Federal Army.]

The States' Rights argument is superficially persuasive, but 'zeal for our side' has led to its being swallowed without due consideration. First of all, it is clear that the British settlements were by 'one people'. The only case otherwise would be to point out ethnic differences among British subjects, however these do not correlate with colony boundaries.

The colonies are, quite clearly, corporate franchises for settlement, and their initial local legislatures corporate apparatus, not state apparatus -- you know, like the Senate that runs Exxon, or House of Burgesses of Kellogg corporation. In most cases, except for some nobles (who would need the permission of the crown to leave the realm, right?) the settlers were indentured to the corporations they 'worked for' (to use modern terms). Just like your right to go into a Walmart or the local mall (private corporate property) is restricted by a tacit agreement to terms set by the corporation, subject of course to higher laws, with its own governance and security force having rights -- up to expulsion and perhaps the imposition of some fines, and a bit of proxying for the 'real' local authorities in the matter of collecting sales taxes, etc. -- so the corporations that administered the colonies, under the contract-serfdom arrangement binding the inhabitants not to some local proprietor, but to the corporation, for which they served, for the duration of their residence, i.e. life -- a point often glossed over in our made-up histories, had rather brutal rights over most of the inhabitants.

I do not think it can be demonstrated that the colonies were ever, according to the sovereign of the people who settled them, were classed as 'separate nations' having a common crown, like Scotland or Ireland. There are similarities (and the hostile occupation of New England is an interesting mirror of Ireland in this regard) -- however the assertion that there were 13 independent nations having a common monarch is mostly wishful thinking, and not demonstrable in point of law -- even, I would add, an unbiased reading of the law then current; certainly, the reading any actual court of the time would have given in England. The word used for the colonists clearly indicates the intended servile status -- coloni is late medieval legal terminology for what is usually rendered, in French and English, serf. The corresponding classification in Latin, by etymology, would be servus. However, there were grades of serfdom, of which servus, the lowest dropped out. Coloni implies the contract-serfdom of a military settler in a colony -- the settlement of Corinth by ex-Roman Army vets being the paradigm case -- well known to the Founders, who knew both their Bible and their Roman History. Most of them could probably explain, in which campaign Corinth was levelled, requiring its resettlement by loyal settlers.

In any event, the question of who one people, divided into quasi-autonomous corporations, charted by their mutual sovereign, can elevate their several corporate apparatuses into mutually sovereign status, so as to enter into a contract among States, is a curious one. In point of fact, several theories were advanced, but none proven in any court other than the real one of the battlefield and individual compliance with the outcome.

[Thomas777]

I have been waiting for somebody to address that point RE: original sovereignty.

I likely won't have time to properly address your points today, but I will return to them by tomorrow afternoon.

[Boleslaw]

Interesting discussion. Hopefully I can add a few of my own thoughts to this over due time. Especially since I have Anti-Federalist sympathies.

I know Thomas E. Woods is one source for arguing that Southern succession was within the constitution; as well as for a pro-States' rights perspective in general.

[WFHermans]

Washington's first appearance in history was when he was leading a small troop against the French in the Ohio valley on behalf of the Dominion of Virginia.

After 1776 the colonies repudiated the rule of the King of England and became in all aspects sovereign nations, Virginia calling itself a Commonwealth.

[Macrobius]

Washington's first appearance in history was when he was leading a small troop against the French in the Ohio valley on behalf of the Dominion of Virginia.

After 1776 the colonies repudiated the rule of the King of England and became in all aspects sovereign nations, Virginia calling itself a Commonwealth.

One should be careful not to inject the notion of dominion and commonwealth, which were elaborated with respect to Canada in the 19th century, with the American Republic as then perceived (1867!) providing a primary contrast.

With regard to Virginia, it is helpful to go to the library and read the State Papers (any Federal Repository will have a complete collection of these volumes, for every state). In March 1651/52 (O.S.) Virginia surrendered to Cromwell's troops, who finally had the time to come over in a warship and park until such time as the legislature cared to sign the surrender terms. Oddly enough, the persons signing the 'surrender document' were a dissident faction much concerned with a land dispute in Maryland, which they had lost in court under the Royal government. They took advantage of the moment to, um, surrender, and by the way have their land claims validated, in the process getting their religious faction in power as well. The Royal Governour (Berkeley) retreated to his estate, signed nothing, and kept up the fiction that His Majesties Dominion (not Commonwealth, which is just an Englished form of Res Publica -- the Wealth or Welfare of the Populus) still existed. Did it? Who knows? Fate spun the wheels again to he got a chance to rewrite history, at least until Bacon's Rebellion when he was cashiered.

To amplify: the First American Revolution occured when the Republican Commonwealthers showed up in boats from England. The Americans, who were Cavaliers, lost.

In any event, the terminology 'Dominion' and 'Commonwealth' would make no difference to the Monarchists, as they persisted in the notion that England was part of the Roman Res publica -- the current term was the 'Fourth Monarchy'. Charles I signed his documents 'Carolus Caesar' -- using the usual European designation for a King, who is not an Augustus or Emperor. Technically, he was maintaining the Roman order as well as the English.

After the Restoration, Virginia was re-chartered and the Tories put firmly in charge, with their view of history encapsulated in the required school civics textbook of the Era 'King and Country' -- curiously no longer in print and text unavailable in all the libraries I've looked at. In 1688-89, the wheel spun again, and Virginia acceded to His Britannic Majesty once more, with less grace than Massachussetts of course. The landed Oligarch class eventually became reconciled with the Whigs -- indeed, the Revolutionaries posed (and perhaps were) 'Old Whigs', i.e., defenders of the True Cause of 1688, with its Bill of Rights -- as White and Protestant (and not a little Presbyterian) as the Battle of the Boyne.

The word Covenant, by the way, is Foedus in Latin -- the Arca Foederis is the Ark of the Covenant, if the reference is not obvious to our current taste in terminology. Federalists are just Covenanters by another name. Since Old Whigs and Covenanters have easy and obvious reference to the politics of the period, it would be hard to miss the reference or suppose some sort of misdirection as to what exactly was meant -- bring back the good old Republic of Holland, with its Electors, and its King making Covenant with the people, after the fashion of the Angles and Saxons of Yore. Now, substitute the People for the King as sovereign, and you have the political theory of the winning side -- all of them, Federalist and Republican Anti-Federalist alike.

[Thomas777]

A couple of comments: first, the assertion that the planter class wanted to secede needs to be demonstrated -- both that this sentiment was uniform from the larger planters with hundreds of slaves, down to the freeholder class which might or might not have owned a slave or two. I suspect that in fact, both in the case of the New England Secession and the South Carolina one, that initially it was the commercial interests in the seaport cities that took the lead. The interior only galvanised after legislatures acted for the State as a whole.

I think that is a fair point...and it lends insight into why the secessionists never debated resolving the issue by way of popular mandate despite the catastrophic political consequences of their (perceived) subversion of the Federal apparatus.

Second, any arguments based on secession and its rights need to establish one critical fact from a legal perspective -- that the states at the time of the first US Confederation were sovereign entities capable of entering into such a contract. If this is not *true*, then arguments about paper rights are irrelevant, because *on paper* there were no such rights (a demonstrably false title cannot lead to persuasive theoretical arguments about the rights it allegedly but not in fact confers). This is an important fact, whether or not you believe the States subsequently had such rights, by virtue of achieving independence. That is because the mechanism by which they acquired such rights, or alternatively by which they had prior rights, is the determining factor for judging later events. This logical point seems to have been lost in the desperate rhetoric leading up to conflict, and glossed over by the victors afterwards, as an inconvenient consideration.

I think that the answer lies in the commerce clause. In other words, why does the commerce clause exist?



The States' Rights argument is superficially persuasive, but 'zeal for our side' has led to its being swallowed without due consideration. First of all, it is clear that the British settlements were by 'one people'. The only case otherwise would be to point out ethnic differences among British subjects, however these do not correlate with colony boundaries.

Agreed.


The colonies are, quite clearly, corporate franchises for settlement, and their initial local legislatures corporate apparatus, not state apparatus -- you know, like the Senate that runs Exxon, or House of Burgesses of Kellogg corporation. In most cases, except for some nobles (who would need the permission of the crown to leave the realm, right?) the settlers were indentured to the corporations they 'worked for' (to use modern terms). Just like your right to go into a Walmart or the local mall (private corporate property) is restricted by a tacit agreement to terms set by the corporation, subject of course to higher laws, with its own governance and security force having rights -- up to expulsion and perhaps the imposition of some fines, and a bit of proxying for the 'real' local authorities in the matter of collecting sales taxes, etc. -- so the corporations that administered the colonies, under the contract-serfdom arrangement binding the inhabitants not to some local proprietor, but to the corporation, for which they served, for the duration of their residence, i.e. life -- a point often glossed over in our made-up histories, had rather brutal rights over most of the inhabitants.

You cover a lot of ground here, and I think most of your points are very sound...however, I take excetption to some of your characterizations. I'm in the midst of reading Sobran's history of the Anti-Federalists, and I'll transcribe some of those points shortly. I think your argument is probably the better argument, but there is in fact precedent that can be proffered in defense of original sovereignty.

[Macrobius]

You cover a lot of ground here, and I think most of your points are very sound...however, I take excetption to some of your characterizations. I'm in the midst of reading Sobran's history of the Anti-Federalists, and I'll transcribe some of those points shortly. I think your argument is probably the better argument, but there is in fact precedent that can be proffered in defense of original sovereignty.

I see I missed this response a couple weeks ago.

Remember that Virginia was not a Commonwealth until the revolutionary constitution of 1776, which reflected Jefferson's views. 'Commonwealth' is, of course, just a rendering in English of Res Publica -- res = wealth or stuff, chattels, and public = commoners, or the portion of the population that is landed and thus qualified to vote for the House of Commons. Loosely, the 10% of the population that is entitled to be addressed as 'Mister' (showing the middle class background of this term, as Master, Journeyman, Apprentice, vs. the higher class title 'Sir' which correlates with Dominus. A Dominus is either a knight or someone who has an A.B. degree or a qualified ecclesiastic -- about 1-2% of the male population). Of course, in our Revolutionary zeal, 'Mister', Citizen, and voting Franchise are all one and the same thing, with the Missus thrown in to boot.

The reference to Commonwealth is, of course, a direct reference to the Republic of Cromwell, which likewise represented an overthrow of the monarchy. The British side had different constitutional (and legal) theories to parse the various charters. Of course, Jefferson's theory was made good on the field of battle -- at least I believe he was governor at the time of the Yorktown surrender, serving under a constitution he himself penned. So naturally his theories have prevailed subsequently, or are the basis for what prevailed.

'Republic' was not possible on the older English/British theories, not because they were PC and hated Cromwell (yes on both counts, but...), rather because England as a kingdom was still, theoretically, part of the Roman Empire, which itself never admitted that it ceased to be 'the Res Publica'. English Kings were, technically, Caesars, not Augusti. Charles I signed state documents 'Carolus Caesar', same as his Russian peer, the Czar (no British monarch claimed imperial dignity before Victoria, though perhaps one of the later Hanoverians did as well, esp. George III). I believe Charles 1st was the last to do so, but it wouldn't surprise me to find later claimants. Europe was thus, in theory, some one thing, of which the individual national kings were a component and peers.

The 'legitimacy principle' before Cromwell's republic and sometime afterwards -- down to at least 1689 say -- was the 'fourth monarchy' (google 'Quarta Monarchia'). This is an explicit biblical reference to the Roman Empire as the fourth empire in Daniel's vision of the beast (legs of iron, with feet of clay -- that's the Roman Empire). This view of legitimacy -- that legitimacy derives from the (Christian) Roman Empire, on both secular and ecclesiastical grounds -- was universal in all of Christendom before Westphalia. To claim to be a legitimate monarch was to claim succession to the Caesars, one way or another. The term 'quarta monarchia' occurs in this sense in the Rosicrucian manifestoes, and is alluded to in the name of the Fifth Monarchists, a millenarian sect who proclaimed the Republic of Jesus Christ established by the force of protestant arms. The Rosicrucians, politically, were proxies for King James I, in establishing a protestant enlightenment on the continent, in the Palatine and Bohemia (James' daughter was married to the Count Palatine). The defeat of this effort by the Habsburgs at the batte of Winter Mountain concluded the Bohemian phase of the Thirty Years War. (See Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment).

Naturally the Cromwell episode put an end to the Fourth Monarchy and its representative. Note that Charles was murdered (1649) *after* the treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Fourth Monarchy on the continent. Cromwell's troops invaded Virginia in March 1651/52 (the new year began March 25th Old Style). Virginia was 'the Old Dominion' after the Restoration, in honour of Berkeley's resistance, if you can call it that. However, I do not believe this constitutes elevating Virginia to independent Kingdom status, such as Scotland (Scotland doesn't have a Governor). There was no need of that, as Charles intended to remain king of what it was, and did not require a separate basis for his claims. He would be in no such need domestically, with Berkeley in power. Relative to other nations, his claims over the colony were no better or worse off for its having 'dominion' status.

Of course, the Brits resurrected the notion of an empire scale Commonwealth with component Dominions in 1867, but this time there was no dependency on Roman claims -- rather an abandonment of that basis of legitimacy I should think, as something no longer understood or valued -- and we must be careful not to read back presuppositions from then into events a century or two centuries earlier.

The Nonjurors and Tories who were cashiered in 1689 held the Quarta Monarchia theory to the end. The new PC Whig theory was that the sovereign was King-in-Parliament -- hence the importance of 'representation' in the reasoning leading, in 1774 to the reactions of 1775 and 1776. The Whig theory looks to the Republic of Venice as an ideal constitution (but William of Orange said, famously, 'I will not be a Doge'), and more practically to William's Holland. The US 'electoral college' may owe something to the election process of the Holy Roman Empire, but it owes more to that of Holland, and Holland's construction of 'States'.

Also, we have to understand what Neo-Toryism was, and how it differed from the old kind. The Virginian revolutionaries felt that the Old Whig principles had been betrayed by the Whig Oligarchy and certainly by the 'neo-Tory' tendencies. The Old Tories had gone down in defeat in 1715 and 1745 Jacobite rebellions, and had reconciled themselves, as of about 1760, to permanent Hanoverian rule. There was a brief period in *British* politics in which the primary opposition was not Whig vs. Tory, but Country [patriots] vs. Court [loyalists]. This period leads to that known as the 'Tory Ascendancy'. (The reference is to the Irish peers, and the name was reused in the American South, and later in Upper Canada, with reference to a similar social class). The term 'Tory' itself means an Irish Brigand, a term of abuse for a supporter of James II of course, and by application a Jacobite (in Scotland) or a Non-Juror (in England).

The crucial point is that Neo-Toryism, like our present Neo-Conservatism, was more Whiggism in a new and virulent form, not acceptable to either the Old Whigs or, really, to the 'patriotic' Old Tories either. This 'rebellion of the Country against the Court' overthrew the Whig Oligarchy, the old Pitt regime, and led to a series of Tory governments. *This* revolution, if you will, prefigured a similar movement in the American South, in which normally 'conservative' landowners joined, paradoxically, with more Radical Whigs of the Massachusetts Puritan sort, to overthrow the centrist government, which was founded on Whig Oligarchy corruption, blind Loyalism to the Empire-principle without Patriotism or reference to the Country -- gentry Commoners *or* the rural masses.

Parallels to modern American politics should now be obvious.

[Thomas777]

Remember that Virginia was not a Commonwealth until the revolutionary constitution of 1776, which reflected Jefferson's views. 'Commonwealth' is, of course, just a rendering in English of Res Publica -- res = wealth or stuff, chattels, and public = commoners, or the portion of the population that is landed and thus qualified to vote for the House of Commons. Loosely, the 10% of the population that is entitled to be addressed as 'Mister' (showing the middle class background of this term, as Master, Journeyman, Apprentice, vs. the higher class title 'Sir' which correlates with Dominus. A Dominus is either a knight or someone who has an A.B. degree or a qualified ecclesiastic -- about 1-2% of the male population). Of course, in our Revolutionary zeal, 'Mister', Citizen, and voting Franchise are all one and the same thing, with the Missus thrown in to boot.

All bets were off with respect to the status of Virginia as a continuity charter franchise of the crown from the moment that hostile fire was exchanged at Lexington-Concord. There was a standing custom since 1066 that (paraphrase) 'an attack on the King's men is an attack on the King himself'...this has implications beyond the obvious affront to the sovereign authority of the British Army. In other words, firing upon Redcoats in anger by militiamen under arms, pursuant to the authority granted to them by their patrons, represented perfected secession from the Crown. Our query henceforth must address the issue of the sovereign authority of the Virginia commenwealth vs. the Sovereign authority of the Government of the United States.

As I have noted before, I think that the historical record, and the paper record of the ratificaiton debate indicates that the 'New Sovereign' (i.e. the Federal apparatus) represented a blanket rejection of the Roman code and its antecedents (I believe we discussed this on another thread, in which J.M Kelly was cited), in favor of a 'return' to common-law, Anglo-Saxon mores that prevailed briefly before the Latin reconquest of Britain. What this represents (beyond the obvious procedural restructuring of the administrative apparatus) is an inversion of Coronation and attendant "descending authority" as the basis for Executive mandate in favor of "ascending" authority with the landed class as the arbiter/provider of the mandate. In other words that 10% who enjoy the title of "Mister" can giveth as well as taketh away Sovereign authority. Which brings us to the original post of the thread: The power to revoke mandate was not vested in the Secession Convention delegates.

The reference to Commonwealth is, of course, a direct reference to the Republic of Cromwell, which likewise represented an overthrow of the monarchy. The British side had different constitutional (and legal) theories to parse the various charters. Of course, Jefferson's theory was made good on the field of battle -- at least I believe he was governor at the time of the Yorktown surrender, serving under a constitution he himself penned. So naturally his theories have prevailed subsequently, or are the basis for what prevailed.
It seems we agree here. The issue was settled amidst the smoke of battle.

'Republic' was not possible on the older English/British theories, not because they were PC and hated Cromwell (yes on both counts, but...), rather because England as a kingdom was still, theoretically, part of the Roman Empire, which itself never admitted that it ceased to be 'the Res Publica'. English Kings were, technically, Caesars, not Augusti. Charles I signed state documents 'Carolus Caesar', same as his Russian peer, the Czar (no British monarch claimed imperial dignity before Victoria, though perhaps one of the later Hanoverians did as well, esp. George III). I believe Charles 1st was the last to do so, but it wouldn't surprise me to find later claimants. Europe was thus, in theory, some one thing, of which the individual national kings were a component and peers.
This is quite a compelling issue. I'm going to read up on it, and try to flesh out this notion of 'continutiy Imperium'. Frankly, I have not researched it enough (outside of basic sources of law) to discuss the issue in any meaningful way.


The 'legitimacy principle' before Cromwell's republic and sometime afterwards -- down to at least 1689 say -- was the 'fourth monarchy' (google 'Quarta Monarchia'). This is an explicit biblical reference to the Roman Empire as the fourth empire in Daniel's vision of the beast (legs of iron, with feet of clay -- that's the Roman Empire). This view of legitimacy -- that legitimacy derives from the (Christian) Roman Empire, on both secular and ecclesiastical grounds -- was universal in all of Christendom before Westphalia. To claim to be a legitimate monarch was to claim succession to the Caesars, one way or another. The term 'quarta monarchia' occurs in this sense in the Rosicrucian manifestoes, and is alluded to in the name of the Fifth Monarchists, a millenarian sect who proclaimed the Republic of Jesus Christ established by the force of protestant arms. The Rosicrucians, politically, were proxies for King James I, in establishing a protestant enlightenment on the continent, in the Palatine and Bohemia (James' daughter was married to the Count Palatine). The defeat of this effort by the Habsburgs at the batte of Winter Mountain concluded the Bohemian phase of the Thirty Years War. (See Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment).

Naturally the Cromwell episode put an end to the Fourth Monarchy and its representative. Note that Charles was murdered (1649) *after* the treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Fourth Monarchy on the continent. Cromwell's troops invaded Virginia in March 1651/52 (the new year began March 25th Old Style). Virginia was 'the Old Dominion' after the Restoration, in honour of Berkeley's resistance, if you can call it that. However, I do not believe this constitutes elevating Virginia to independent Kingdom status, such as Scotland (Scotland doesn't have a Governor). There was no need of that, as Charles intended to remain king of what it was, and did not require a separate basis for his claims. He would be in no such need domestically, with Berkeley in power. Relative to other nations, his claims over the colony were no better or worse off for its having 'dominion' status.

Of course, the Brits resurrected the notion of an empire scale Commonwealth with component Dominions in 1867, but this time there was no dependency on Roman claims -- rather an abandonment of that basis of legitimacy I should think, as something no longer understood or valued -- and we must be careful not to read back presuppositions from then into events a century or two centuries earlier.

The Nonjurors and Tories who were cashiered in 1689 held the Quarta Monarchia theory to the end. The new PC Whig theory was that the sovereign was King-in-Parliament -- hence the importance of 'representation' in the reasoning leading, in 1774 to the reactions of 1775 and 1776. The Whig theory looks to the Republic of Venice as an ideal constitution (but William of Orange said, famously, 'I will not be a Doge'), and more practically to William's Holland. The US 'electoral college' may owe something to the election process of the Holy Roman Empire, but it owes more to that of Holland, and Holland's construction of 'States'.

Also, we have to understand what Neo-Toryism was, and how it differed from the old kind. The Virginian revolutionaries felt that the Old Whig principles had been betrayed by the Whig Oligarchy and certainly by the 'neo-Tory' tendencies. The Old Tories had gone down in defeat in 1715 and 1745 Jacobite rebellions, and had reconciled themselves, as of about 1760, to permanent Hanoverian rule. There was a brief period in *British* politics in which the primary opposition was not Whig vs. Tory, but Country [patriots] vs. Court [loyalists]. This period leads to that known as the 'Tory Ascendancy'. (The reference is to the Irish peers, and the name was reused in the American South, and later in Upper Canada, with reference to a similar social class). The term 'Tory' itself means an Irish Brigand, a term of abuse for a supporter of James II of course, and by application a Jacobite (in Scotland) or a Non-Juror (in England).

The crucial point is that Neo-Toryism, like our present Neo-Conservatism, was more Whiggism in a new and virulent form, not acceptable to either the Old Whigs or, really, to the 'patriotic' Old Tories either. This 'rebellion of the Country against the Court' overthrew the Whig Oligarchy, the old Pitt regime, and led to a series of Tory governments. *This* revolution, if you will, prefigured a similar movement in the American South, in which normally 'conservative' landowners joined, paradoxically, with more Radical Whigs of the Massachusetts Puritan sort, to overthrow the centrist government, which was founded on Whig Oligarchy corruption, blind Loyalism to the Empire-principle without Patriotism or reference to the Country -- gentry Commoners *or* the rural masses.

Parallels to modern American politics should now be obvious.


This is a very interesting account, and quite timely. Once again, I'll have to dig a bit deeper before I can address these points properly.

[Thoth]

Yes.
Following Tyler Anbinder's Naivism & Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings & the Politics of the l850's, your argument, as I am understanding it, leads back to the root of the tension between Catholics and Confederates, still trying to be "bridged" today in another thread. But the differences go deep, political, beyond the bounds of religious differnces. That was to come much later, in our time.

The politics of America* during the half-decade 1855-60, one get from Anbinder, was dominated by growth of the fledgling Republican Party, mainly in the North, to counteract the nativist Know Nothings. After its phenomenal over-night rise to power through the Masonic Orders and victory in state wide elections ibn New York, California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Maryland, Deleware, Kentucky and Lousiana, and proven they could carry Pennsylvania and Indiana as well. The Republicans were trying to establish themselves as the principal challenger to the Democratic party. The only state they carried in 1855 was Ohio -- and they had to recruit anti-slavery Know Nothing to do that.
The nativist's ideology I would have defended, then, as I defend America, now, against its religio-ideological hi-jackers -- I'm not sure it's what the thread and Russell Kirk mean by the term. I have always associated him with Taft industrial belt Reblicanism, vs. Wisconsin Progressivis agricultural Republicanism in the 20th, favoring the latter according to my West Texas roots. The problem the nativists faced was how to go National, and win the White House, which couldn't be done without bring North and South Orders under one roof. However, the slavery issue divided them.

It was the Catholics, whom the Know Nothing Orders excluded, who led the "fusionists", forging a religio-political link between the wave of immigrants arriving from Europe the previous decade; the rabid anti-slavery (substitute 'anti-abortion') mouthpieces for Protestant pulpits; and the moral-economic entrepreneous selling Unity! Union! One US oF A.! -- This, as you well point out, goes over by default to "the leader principle"; the President defines the People, rather than the other way arounbd. This went beyond what the Constitution which, by leaving open the question of "rights" by not mentioning slavery, did not give this branch of Government that authority; therefore, the Confederate secession of 1961 is already the defacto forging of what "the Union" was thenceforth to mean. Hamiltonian Right-Wing Vatican Corporate Multiculturalism, I suppose the ideology might be called today. Kansas-Nebraska, the gravemen then between Ohio (later Log Cabin) Republicans and Southern slave holding states, get replaced by Bob Dole, Johnny Carson and grotesque serial criminals and Sen. Boken Brownback, ardent Iraq war defender. To me, its always amazing what turns up in following old threads.

Well, there you have it. My argument is there is a metaphysical incopatibility between what the South seceeded for -- the priciple of self-determination, as a Confederacy, not part of a Nation defined under a new definitive principle.

Today, the Catholic hierarchy (not the sane one's who have to get along with others, for whom abortion is not a personal issue) are putting the contents of female citizen's womb in the same position the abolutionists put niggers owned by reputable slave holders-- to expand the notion of "rights" to include a new constituency brought into existence by religio-moral entrepreneurs. To "The Unborn". And calling it "conservatism". Both are instances of creating a corrupt, poisonous idealogy by manipulating the U.S. Constitution. And many men South of the Mason Dixon said "fuck that", ready to do incredible things even without a pebecite authorizing their leaders. I've seen the Grey uniforms in the memorial at Vicksburg, and other places. Something very powerful being drawn on. After 911 I instinctively sought it as a historical source, though having radically opposed its manipulated militaristic-industrial-corporate war in Vietnam (also with a Catholic link: Diem and Kennedy). I took up with the OD Board, through its historic "Neocon Watch", only to find ...what? A veritable hotbed of some of the finest honest-to-God Catholics you could ever come across. I'm not saying anything about where it's going from here. But I think Scalia injected a pre-emptive strike for the anti-American wing of that religion, which genuine followers of its true tradition must inwardly reject, and outwardly show.

The American Party, and the Know Nothings are the last real conservatives this country hase seen, as I understand this term; maybe Lafollete.

[Jake Featherston]

The American Party, and the Know Nothings are the last real conservatives this country hase seen, as I understand this term; maybe Lafollete.

Since you mentioned Sen. Robert M. LaFollette, I thought I'd just point out an interesting aspect of the 1924 Presidential election. While LaFollete, as the nominee of the Progressive Party, secured "only" 17% of the popular vote, and carried just his home state of Wisconsin (for 13 EVs), in nearly the entire western half of the country, his candidacy supplanted that of the Democratic nominee, Ambassador John W. Davis of West Virginia (who received 29% of the popular vote, and 136 Electoral Votes), going as far as to push the nominee of the Democratic Party down into the single digits in the states of California and New Mexico.

President Coolidge won election to his office (having come into it via the Vice-President, within the context of the suspicious death of Warren Gamaliel Harding in San Francisco, the previous year) with 54% of the popular vote, and 382 Electoral Votes (out of 531 total, 266 needed to win).

http://www.uselectionatlas.org/USPRESIDENT/GENERAL/pe1924.png

Like Al Gore in 2000, Davis couldn't even carry his home state.

[Boyd]

The South should have capitalized on their healthy majority on Capitol Hill and labored to guard citizenship against the excesses of the Boston Bramhins and the Radical Republicans. Unfortunately, it seems that such an effort would have required a degree of prescience that was just not possessed by J. Davis and his contemporaries.

I don't think their majority was that large after the November 1860 election, and in any case a hostile President would have veto power for the next four years. They didn't have the majority needed to prevent the passing of the Morrill Tariff in December, before Lincoln was even inaugurated, the primary reason they seceded on December 24.

A couple of comments: first, the assertion that the planter class wanted to secede needs to be demonstrated -- both that this sentiment was uniform from the larger planters with hundreds of slaves, down to the freeholder class which might or might not have owned a slave or two. I suspect that in fact, both in the case of the New England Secession and the South Carolina one, that initially it was the commercial interests in the seaport cities that took the lead. The interior only galvanised after legislatures acted for the State as a whole.

They already had several economic reasons to do so. They already had a highly developed export trade in a major cash crop, and their own foreign interests. The Morrill Tariff would be taxing them to support corporate interests in the North at the South's expense, and the massive subsidies proposed for a new continental railroad that wouldn't pass through their own region, which, along with the 'Free Soil' movement, would further reduce the ability of the Federal government to raise funds, selling land being a major source of Federal financing since the beginning. A look at the legislation passed as soon as the South was out the way in the Senate and Congress is the smoking gun on this.

The primary opponents of Southern political power were the railroads, the Free Soilers, and Northern manufacturing interests supporting a massive tariff. All the legalese about secession and whatnot were just window dressing over the economic realities separating the two systems. The South could easily get along without the North, and after the election of Lincoln, a railroad lawyer, it became obvious they no longer needed to stay in the Union.

The reasons for the Civil War were all economic:

Continental railroad route, and Federal subsidy for it

'Free Soil' advocates, another loss of federal revenue sources

Morrill Tariff Act, catalyst for actual secession by at least 8 states.

Slavery was a red herring issue, used by both sides for it's own propaganda. Expansion of the Southern system into the West was not a threat. Even Daniel Webster and Jeff Davis knew this, even if most Southerners and Yankees didn't. Antislavery was a ruse in the North to get votes, mainly from new immigrants that were coming in waves between 1845 and 1860, and who were targeted by the 'Free Soil' interests and railroads. All the legal issues were moot; they merely aligned along with the financial interests, and were smokescreens.

[Boyd]

My understanding of civil war history is very limited, but I do know that Lincoln was willing to be conciliatory toward Southern demands.

Actually he wasn't. He ignored even Seward, a major Republican radical, and literally 100's of thousands of Northern businessmen's petitions to seek reconciliation, and insisted on collecting the new tariffs at Charleston harbor, the major Southern port, instead of evacuating; he meant to go to war. He had already secretly sent some $2 million dollars to New York City to begin raising army regiments before April 12, less than two weeks after his inauguration.

Nearly all other Federal forts in tne the South had already been turned over to the Southern government by his inauguration day, except for Sumter and I think two or three minor ones in Florida. He clearly wanted to keep the South out of the Union long enough to get the Republican economic interests their much coveted bills passed. I don't think he thought the secession or the war would last as long as it did, though, but it was pretty much common knowledge among the players that Lincoln's election would mean a war, however brief everyone thought it would be.

[Boyd]

Lincoln also did not appear on the South Carolina ballot, by virtue of the fact that South Carolina had already seceeded from the Union, and thus did not participate in the U.S. Presidential election.

The election was held in November, 1860; South Carolina didn't secede until right before Christmas, 1860. I'm nor sure when the Electoral College met, but everybody knew who won the election.