Thoughts on Secession and the Governments right to use force

[Ga.windbreak]

Madison's thoughts on this subject:

Thoughts on Madison:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/williams-...liams57.1.html

Did states have a right to secede? At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, James Madison rejected a proposal that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. He said, "A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."

http://morganj428.blogspot.com/2010/...ssion-and.html

Madison, in fact, disagreed with Jefferson on that critical point as well as the exact nature of the constitutional compact. Of course Madison disagreed with much of Jefferson's ideas on the Constitution, he hid Jefferson's beliefs that each generation should have a revolution every twenty years, that no generation should be forced to live under the rules set forth by the previous generation for years to protect Jefferson from scorn.

http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa46.htm

Madison again on the folly of the Governments use of force.

Let a regular army, fully equal to the resources of the country, be formed; and let it be entirely at the devotion of the federal government; still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger. The highest number to which, according to the best computation, a standing army can be carried in any country, does not exceed one hundredth part of the whole number of souls; or one twenty-fifth part of the number able to bear arms. This proportion would not yield, in the United States, an army of more than twenty-five or thirty thousand men. To these would be opposed a militia amounting to near half a million of citizens with arms in their hands, officered by men chosen from among themselves, fighting for their common liberties, and united and conducted by governments possessing their affections and confidence. It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops. Those who are best acquainted with the last successful resistance of this country against the British arms, will be most inclined to deny the possibility of it. Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which the people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of.

Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it.

http://shaysrebellion.stcc.edu/shays...=james_madison

And on how citizens react when their civil rights are trampled on.

Madison found the reaction of former insurgents to the loss of their civil rights entirely predictable: "It is said that…a great proportion of the offenders choose rather to risk the consequences of their treason, than to submit to the conditions annexed to the amnesty; that they not only appear openly on public occasions, but distinguish themselves by badges of their character; and that their insolence is in many instances countenanced by no less decisive marks of popular favor than election to local offices of trust and authority."(9)

Clearly, it was not the armed uprising in Massachusetts that most concerned Madison. He had little doubt that General Lincoln's army would suppress the armed insurgency. Madison feared much more that the beliefs and sentiments of the insurgents might make their way into the state legislature. He needed to look no farther than Rhode Island for an example of a state where debtor interests had taken over the government. The so-called Country Party had passed exactly the sort of debtor relief laws and paper currency the Massachusetts Regulators had demanded. Worse, the Rhode Island law required all creditors to accept rapidly-depreciating paper as legal tender, on a par with gold and silver. Such laws were far more dangerous in Madison's mind than the extralegal activities of the Massachusetts Regulators. The reports that former insurgents were being elected to office in the wake of the rebellion, combined with Governor John Hancock's lenient debtor relief policies, confirmed Madison's worst fears for Massachusetts.

As to the Bill of Rights he himself framed he said:

Madison explained his position in a letter to Thomas Jefferson in October, 1788, writing, "My own opinion has always been in favor of a bill of rights…At the same time I have never thought the omission a material defect." Madison reasoned that anything powers that they had not expressly delegated in the Constitution to the government remained with the people. Why, he reasoned, must a bill of rights spell out freedoms already reserved to the people? Nor did Madison believe that a piece of paper would automatically protect the people's inalienable rights from a government determined to take them away. He pointed out that recent "experience proves the inefficacy of a bill of rights on those occasions when its controul is most needed." In Virginia, Madison already had "seen the bill of rights violated in every instance where it has been opposed to a popular current" in matters of religion, economy and politics.(20)


"Repeated violations of these parchment barriers have been committed by overbearing majorities in every State…Should a Rebellion or insurrection alarm the people as well as the Government, and a suspension of the Hab. Corp. be dictated by the alarm, no written prohibitions on earth would prevent the measure."(21)

While it is clear that both Madison and Jefferson understood the nature of a Free man and the desire within him to remain so neither man forsaw an Abe Lincoln type person, with no attachments to the land nor ingrained feeling of freedom, to ever become President.

Through out all of his, Hamilton's, and Jefferson's writings there is this conflict between a Union and revolution. With the uppermost thought being of a patient Federal government who would eventually bow to the will of the people on matters that were unpopular versus allowing things to fester to the point of no return thus leading to the drawing of the sword by the Government.

Yet in their heart of hearts they must have known such a thing could happen because they themselves had been put to the test of the Sword and had answered that calling. How could they in good conscience expect less from those who came after them? Truth be told both Jefferson and Madison warned of the possibility of a war between the states.

Jefferson's thoughts:

http://inclusion.semitagui.gov.co/Su...n/jeff0300.htm

"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere." --Thomas Jefferson to Abigail Adams, 1787.

"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion... We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in a century and a half, for each State. What country before ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion?" --Thomas Jefferson to William S. Smith, 1787. ME 6:372

"Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one's country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former, because real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries." --Thomas Jefferson: Report on Spanish Convention, 1792.

"If our country, when pressed with wrongs at the point of the bayonet, had been governed by its heads instead of its hearts, where should we have been now? Hanging on a gallows as high as Haman's." --Thomas Jefferson to Maria Cosway, 1786. ME 5:444

"The commotions that have taken place in America, as far as they are yet known to me, offer nothing threatening. They are a proof that the people have liberty enough, and I could not wish them less than they have. If the happiness of the mass of the people can be secured at the expense of a little tempest now and then, or even of a little blood, it will be a precious purchase. 'Malo libertatem periculosam quam quietem servitutem.' Let common sense and common honesty have fair play, and they will soon set things to rights." --Thomas Jefferson to Ezra Stiles, 1786. ME 6:25

"[The] uneasiness [of the people] has produced acts absolutely unjustifiable; but I hope they will provoke no severities from their governments. A consciousness of those in power that their administration of the public affairs has been honest may, perhaps, produce too great a degree of indignation; and those characters wherein fear predominates over hope, may apprehend too much from these instances of irregularity. They may conclude too hastily, that nature has formed man insusceptible of any other government than that of force, a conclusion not founded in truth nor experience." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, Jan. 30, 1787. ME 6:64

"I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government." --Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. ME 6:65

And this:

https://journals.ku.edu/index.php/am...File/2400/2359

Like John Locke, Jefferson placed a high value on the threat of revolution,
and thought this threat a safe way to realize the goals of real
revolution.11 In 1788 he wrote Adams that he hoped France's internal
affairs would be settled without blood. "None has been shed yet. The
nation presses sufficiently upon the government to force reformations,
without forcing them to draw the sword. If they can keep the opposition
always exactly at this point, all will end well."12 "Under governments
wherein the will of everyone has a just influence," Jefferson had earlier
written Madison,

And last a clear Warning By President Buchanan in his final speach before Congress echoing Madison's denial to the Government in use of the sword as a remedy against a rebellious state:

http://www.civilwar-online.com/2010/...buchanans.html

It appears from the proceedings of that body that on the 31st May, 1787, the clause "authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole against a delinquent State" came up for consideration. Mr. Madison opposed it in a brief but powerful speech, from which I shall extract but a single sentence. He observed:

The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.

Upon his motion the clause was unanimously postponed, and was never, I believe, again presented. Soon afterwards, on the 8th June, 1787, when incidentally adverting to the subject, he said: "Any government for the United States formed on the supposed practicability of using force against the unconstitutional proceedings of the States would prove as visionary and fallacious as the government of Congress," evidently meaning the then existing Congress of the old Confederation.

What is very clear to me is that force against a State is NEVER an option.

[Gary G]

In the Revolution, they had won complete liberty. It was something valued and to not easily be given up. Jefferson and the others believed that the greatest threat to that freedom would not come from other nations, but from a central government. The Constitution was an attempt to put checks on the different branches of government, to insure a limited central government. Jefferson's idea was that the Federal government would handle foreign matters and the states would handle most other matters. It was not a democracy; it was a republic, with individual rights. Corporate, nor any other welfare was an issue at that time. From the beginning Hamilton, who was from the West Indies, had ideas of building and empire much like Great Briton. He desired the president to be "king like", a central bank, and the government being indebted to the industrialist and bankers to garner their support. This battle of ideas between Jefferson and Hamilton was fought back and forth until Lincoln, who was a total Hamiltonian, and a many year Whig organizer. When the war was settled, the Hamiltonian course was set with no recourse. Succession and nullification were defeated. Today we have lost so much in the way of freedom. Always living under government suppression, we just do not realize that which we have not known; that which was lost. I would like to have lived in Jefferson's day when a man could keep all that he earned and do with it what he wished; And could do this or do that without having to get permission from the government (which is what a license or permit amounts too). The prisons are full of those convicted of victim-less  crimes which would not have been a crime then. All empires, which we have evolved to, end. What will be next, I do not know. A republic I hope.

[Dee]

I think it was an excellent idea then, and an excellent idea now. We have a slightly darker Mr. Lincoln in office at the present, and he is hell bent on the same type of governmental rape of the country as his predecessor.

[BUGEYE]

Dee, you're exactly right.  now, what do we do about it??

[Dee]

Watch it go to hell in a hand basket while everyone votes for the most electable fence riding pretty, or debonair one, and ignores the most qualified Constitutionalist.
In Lincoln's time the South paid about 70% of all the taxes, and grew most all the textiles, i.e. KING COTTON, while the Industrialized North worked on controlling D.C. and telling the South how smart they were. Ain't much changed. Now we are once again feeding them, and saving their businesses and unions, while they still claim mental superiority.
If Texas would secede, I would ride the lead horse to secession gladly telling the rest to kiss my southern ass. Equinely speaking of course.

[BUGEYE]

LOL,  Dee, texas is in the best position to secede, along with louisiana. ya'all have most of the oil refineries.

[Ga.windbreak]

The thing that most amazes me is this modern day worship of Lincoln and the intent of those who do to paint him as a savior and a believer of God.

How anyone can picture a person who kills his own citizens by making war on them as a saint is totally beyond all common sense imvho. To think that war is the answer to saving anything much less The Union of the several states and allowing half of its citizens to suffer the results of over 100 years of less than equal treatment is certainaly not a saint in my book. I would be more incline to call him MAD, CRAZY, or at the very least Traitor to the very oath he took to preserve and defend the Constitution of the several states. Madison would agree with me and in point of fact did!

Let us rather no longer insult them with the supposition that they can ever reduce themselves to the necessity of making the experiment, by a blind and tame submission to the long train of insidious measures which must precede and produce it.