Broken From The Beginning …

The 150th anniversary of the start of the ‘War Between The States’ invites reflection on the causes.  The “More Perfect Union” was broken from the start.

This reflection is important as we engage in battles against our national government … our struggle in Arizona to enforce Laws that Washington refuses; our struggle to nullify a national healthcare system that demands our participation; these are contemporary examples of the same issues that led to war in 1861.

What follows below are observations and opinions of a contemporary author who had begun documentation of the issues before hostilities became open war. Consider how this author frames the issues.

The excerpts below are from Chapter 1, The Origins Of The Late War, by George Lunt (Appleton and Company, 1866). I endeavor to string together snippets adequate to demonstrate how the “More Perfect Union” was stillborn; had failed before the ink had dried on the Constitution and subsequent Bill of Rights.

It was the sentiment of a large majority at the North, before the war began, that slavery, in itself considered, was neither right nor wrong. It was a question of policy and of law, not of morals.

…

…notwithstanding the emancipation measures of the Northern legislative bodies, as it respected the States they then represented, no objection appears to have been taken, on the score of slavery, to the Constitution of the United States, when proposed to the Conventions of their Several States. … Mr. Jefferson, indeed, gave a reason for this reticence … “Our Northern brethren, also, I believe, felt a little tender under those censures, for though their people have very few slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”

…

…if…slavery was viewed…simply as a State institution, absolutely within the power of each State to regulate and control, to preserve or abrogate as it saw fit, then to exercise national legislation upon it, in respect to the territory ceded by Virginia, out of which future States were avowedly to be formed, was an indirect attack upon the institution in States where it already existed by law, and a direct interference with popular right and liberty.

…

…a resolution passed in 1790 … “Resolved, that Congress has no authority to interfere in the emancipation of slaves, or in the treatment of them within any of the States; it remaining with the several States alone to provide any regulations therein which humanity and true policy may require.”

…

…to engage Congress in an unconstitutional measure, it would be considered an interference with their rights, making “them uneasy under the Government, and causing them to lament that they had ever put additional power into its hands;” … by exchanging the former Confederation for the Union under the Constitution.

…

Within three years, therefore, after the adoption of the Constitution, we obtain this definite exposition of the limitations of its powers, in this respect, from the most competent source.

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In striking at the rights of slaveholders, it violates equally, in principle, those of citizens who are not slaveholders, and endangers the whole civil system by undermining the basis of all constitutional security. … If that charter was broken in regard to one section, it could have no vital force to secure protection to another.

…

Under the old articles of “Confederation and Perpetual Union,” agreed upon July 9th 1778, the first section, after that declaring the name of the Confederacy, is the following:

“Art. II – 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.”

No similar provision was contained in the Constitution agreed upon by the General Convention of the several States; but … was proposed by Congress among other amendments, and was made part of the Constitution …

“Art. X – The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

…

This quiet state of things continued undisturbed until mobs, encouraged by State legislation, had begun to set aside constitutional obligations; and men who excused their fanaticism, under the pretext of a higher law, of which they conceived, than the actual laws of their country…

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… after the years 1820-’21, during which that great struggle which resulted in what is called the Missouri Compromise was most active and came to its conclusion, the States of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee were earnestly engaged in practical movements for the gradual emancipation of their slaves. This movement continued until it was arrested by the aggressions of the abolitionists upon their voluntary action.

…

Promised emancipation refused to submit itself to hateful abolition. Those three border States placed themselves at once upon the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, and, resenting as an insult the interference of the Northern intruders, abandoned the scheme … tending to their own future welfare …

Violation of individual and State sovereignty …

Imposition of national legislative agendae…

• Mandate healthcare

• Fund entitlements through deficits

• Raise the Debt Ceiling

The “More Perfect Union” was broken from the beginning, and we are again at immediate risk.  Remember the words of Billy Beck:

“All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war.”

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