Re: Was Secession Legal? Part 5
>”And yet, ratification by States did say:
the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will”.
Your statement is somewhat incoherent. “Ratification by States” did not say this; the Virginia “form of ratification” said it. This statement does not refer to secession. It refers to the resumption by the people of the United States of particular powers from the federal government, by taking any such powers, previously delegated, from the government. There is a clear mechanism in the Constitution for doing so. It is found in Article V, which permits the Constitution to be amended without the consent of Congress (though it has never been so amended).
In 1861, Virginia “resumed” from the government of the United States the power to return fugitive slaves from the state of Virginia to some slave state of the U.S. from which they might have fled. Setting aside for the moment the question of whether any such power of rendition of fugitive slaves was ever delegated to the federal government — when did Virginia ever allege that said power had been perverted to the injury and oppression of Virginians?
>”Even the Articles of Confederation had said:
“Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”
Did something change when the States joined the “union”? I think not. Had there been no way of escaping a government which had become injurious to the citizens of a State, I do not think any State would have ratified the constitution. As Patrick Henry said, I smell a rat.”
Something fundamental may inded have changed when the Constitution went into effect. Were the Articles of Confederation a law? That’s far from clear. It was argued at the time, with at least a considerable degree of plausibility, that the Articles were not a law, but a treaty, among thirteen entities that were entirely separate, sovereign, and independent nations. This is the position that James Madison took. Not everyone at the time agreed with him. It was Madison’s view, and not his alone, that a treaty imposes no legal obligations on its signatories, because it does not take away from them any of their sovereignty; they acknowledge no higher law than their own.
There can be no question, however, that the Constitution was not a treaty among thirteen independent nations, but the supreme law of the land of one nation. Its own words make it crystal clear that the Constitution (as well as federal laws not inconsistent with it), are superior to any state law or constitution. Thus, states of the United States lack the most basic attribute of sovereignty — the legal right to refuse to acknowledge any law higher than their own.
>”Nice try, Gary, but the person being removed from the State of Pennsylvania is not a “citizen”, he/she is “property”. The central government was to act as agent of all the States and be consistent with the laws of the nation. At the time, the law favored returning runaway slaves to the owner, enforcable by federal agents.”
You are overlooking two important questions. First, how do you know that he or she is property? Has any competent legal authority made that determination? Was the mere allegation that a person was property sufficient to establish the fact that he or she was property? If you had lived in Pennsylvania at that time, was my claim that you were my property sufficient to give me the legal right to enslave you? And even if he or she was property, who has established that he or she was the property of the person claiming him or her, and not the property of someone else entirely?
Second, even if he or she was property, where was he or she property? In Pennsylvania? How can that be the case, and Pennsylvania still be a “free state”? Even slave state courts routinely ruled that a slave brought into a free state voluntarily was not a slave there — and if the (former) slave ran away, the (former) owner had no legal right of recovery.
Granted, the Constitution may have declared that a slave who fled into a free state had to be returned (by whom?) upon request to the state from which he or she had fled (though some abolitionists denied that it said even that much, since nowhere did it use the words “slave” or “slavery”). That did not mean, however, that the fugitive was a slave in Pennsylvania. It meant that someone (who?) had to deliver up the fugitive to a state in which he or she would (once again) be a slave.
>”The central government is a creature of the State’s, acting as their agent in dealing with foreign nations.”
My point exactly. The federal government in this case was acting as the agent of the owner, not as the agent of a state. Surely you must agree, then, that if the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 was constitutional, it could only be because the federal government was under the Constitution not merely the agent of the states, but something more. Furthermore, it was not the agent of particular states, else it must do Pennsylvania’s bidding in a case involving a Virginia slaveholder on the one hand and the state of Pennsylvania on the other.
>”Are these mere words:
Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.”
When, exactly, did the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen become incorporated into the Constitution of the United States — and, if they had, how could you say that one man was another man’s property under the Constitution? Are you claiming that the “social distinction” that permitted one man to enslave enother was “founded upon the general good”? – Gary Charbonneau
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