From Lincolns First Inaugural Address, 1861: Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and limitations, and always changing easily, with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it, does of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that rejecting the majority principle, anarchy, or despotism in some form, is all that is left. Lincoln was dead wrong about secession. He subscribed, along with Daniel Webster, to the Nationalist Theory of the Union - the idea that we were one people before the ratification of Constitution, or even before the Revolution - that this Union somehow preexisted ratification. However, the 13 colonies were distinct, discrete groups of people, and coming together in a common agreement and need for a common defense, CREATED the Federal Union - and many (if not all) of the colonies (states) ratified the Constitution under the expressly understood condition that they would RECLAIM the authority that they willingly yielded to the Federal government in the event of an abuse of power by said government. Even the British government recognized the independent sovereignty of the individual states in the 1783 Treaty of Paris: His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States... After all, isnt secession how this whole thing began? :) We havent seen anarchy or despotism yet.
Posted on: Wed, 23 Oct 2013 13:14:52 +0000
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