Ken Brunt said:That's handy for people who are into smoke and mirrors. :lol: :lol: Or do they buy cigars?Ralph Berg said:You can also buy cigarettes a lot cheaper down there.............;)Hans-Joerg Mueller said:Yes, But don't get me started on tobacco allotments.More government meddling to benefit the few. Ralph
Aren't those both (NC & SC) tobacco growing regions? That would get kind of smelly, wouldn't it? :lol:
Just got around to reading through this thread, and agree completely with Ken’s observation that it’s a lot more interesting than discussing the demise of a German toy maker.
Mike makes an argument that, because of the Dred Scott decision, the Northern states had greater justification to claim their constitutional “states’ rights” had been infringed than did the states of the old South. However, to paraphrase Andrew Jackson, many Northerners would have assented to the following proposition: “Justice Taney has made his decision - now let him enforce it.”
Sure, there was some outrage in the North about Dred Scott - John Brown certainly had reservations! However, most Northerners simply ignored its ramifications, if indeed they understood them.
Mike’s primary purpose in making this states’ rights argument was to underscore the fundamental importance of the slavery issue in the politics of the decade or so prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. I agree with his assessment, with one caveat.
For many Southerners (Robert E. Lee, for example), the issues of states’ rights and slavery were closely associated in a way that seems almost perverse today, but which made perfect sense to people who lived in those times. Their association of the two issues might best be described by referencing the lyrics from that 50s hit about love and marriage: “You can’t have one without the OTHHHHHHHHH-er!”
Associating states’ rights and slavery may seem patently absurd in the early 21st century. However, it was in all likelihood very real for General Lee and many other Southerners living in the mid-19th century.
Hans-Joerg Mueller said:They probably buy cigars.........as one of our president's proved, they're a lot more versatile. Then again he was into smoke and mirrors too.............;)Ken Brunt said:That's handy for people who are into smoke and mirrors. :lol: :lol: Or do they buy cigars?Ralph Berg said:You can also buy cigarettes a lot cheaper down there.............;)
Yes, But don't get me started on tobacco allotments.More government meddling to benefit the few. Ralph
Quote:
Mike makes an argument that, because of the Dred Scott decision, the Northern states had greater justification to claim their constitutional "states' rights" had been infringed than did the states of the old South. However, to paraphrase Andrew Jackson, many Northerners would have assented to the following proposition: "Justice Taney has made his decision - now let him enforce it."Sure, there was some outrage in the North about Dred Scott - John Brown certainly had reservations! However, most Northerners simply ignored its ramifications, if indeed they understood them.
On that note:
"Alexander Hamilton was perhaps the strongest advocate of “judicial review” - the right of judges to opine on our Constitution. But an opinion on the meaning of the Constitution is merely an advisory opinion to the legislative and executive branches of government. Not even Hamilton imagined that the right to opine is a power to rule. Courts, he pointed out, intentionally have been given no means of enforcing their opinions, noting that the executive and legislative branches are not compelled to obey false or dubious opinions. Therefore, he wrote:
…The judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution. … [T]he judiciary…has no influence over either the sword or purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither force nor will…
Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that court opinions were binding upon the specific parties involved and “entitled to very high respect and consideration…by all other departments of the government.” But like the Founding Fathers, he utterly rejected the myth that judges’ opinions are the law of the land:
…If the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
In the last century cultural elites created an illusion of judicial power that would be unrecognizable to earlier Americans, lawyers and laymen. After the American Revolution, the framers of the Constitution rejected any judicial authority over the other branches of government.
The Massachusetts Constitution contains the quintessential statement of the American form of government: “The power of suspending the laws, or the execution of the laws, ought never to be exercised but by the legislature…” (Part the First, Article XX.) “[T]he people…are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent.” (Part the First, Article X.) “The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.” (Part the First, Article XXX.) “All the laws which have heretofore been adopted, used and approved…shall still remain and be in full force, until altered or repealed by the legislature…” (Part the Second, Article VI.)" (History and the Judiciary
by Paul Weyrich)
Ken, if what you say is true, how did we get to where we are, now? How did the courts gain so much power?
Dave, you have made the most astute argument in this series.
Dave Healy said:
Just got around to reading through this thread, and agree completely with Ken's observation that it's a lot more interesting than discussing the demise of a German toy maker.Mike makes an argument that, because of the Dred Scott decision, the Northern states had greater justification to claim their constitutional “states’ rights” had been infringed than did the states of the old South. However, to paraphrase Andrew Jackson, many Northerners would have assented to the following proposition: “Justice Taney has made his decision - now let him enforce it.”
Sure, there was some outrage in the North about Dred Scott - John Brown certainly had reservations! However, most Northerners simply ignored its ramifications, if indeed they understood them.
Mike’s primary purpose in making this states’ rights argument was to underscore the fundamental importance of the slavery issue in the politics of the decade or so prior to the outbreak of the Civil War. I agree with his assessment, with one caveat.
For many Southerners (Robert E. Lee, for example), the issues of states’ rights and slavery were closely associated in a way that seems almost perverse today, but which made perfect sense to people who lived in those times. Their association of the two issues might best be described by referencing the lyrics from that 50s hit about love and marriage: “You can’t have one without the OTHHHHHHHHH-er!”
Associating states’ rights and slavery may seem patently absurd in the early 21st century. However, it was in all likelihood very real for General Lee and many other Southerners living in the mid-19th century.
So how come you can argue that states rights matters to southerners, but most northerners just shrugged it off? You’re arguing that northerners didn’t really care much about state’s rights, but southerners did, because the issue was linked to slavery. But for northerners, states rights was just as much linked to slavery–the right to forbid it. The argument that somehow southerners care more about state’s rights is, IMHO, belied by the S Carolina declaration of secession,which puts a federal right to own slaves above a state right to forbid slavery. The northern papers were full of talk about dred scott, and about the “slave Power conspiracy” to make slavery the law of the land in all the states. It’s a constant subject
mike omalley said:I find it difficult to place myself into the context of an era I didn't live in and ascribe motivation to people whose life experiences I do not, and cannot, have any direct experience of. However, since it is the historian's brief to do just that, let's have a go.
So how come you can argue that states rights matters to southerners, but most northerners just shrugged it off? You're arguing that northerners didn't really care much about state's rights, but southerners did, because the issue was linked to slavery. But for northerners, states rights was just as much linked to slavery--the right to forbid it. The argument that somehow southerners care more about state's rights is, IMHO, belied by the S Carolina declaration of secession,which puts a federal right to own slaves above a state right to forbid slavery. The northern papers were full of talk about dred scott, and about the "slave Power conspiracy" to make slavery the law of the land in all the states. It's a constant subject
The specific issue I am discussing is neither states’ rights nor slavery per se, but the connection between the two in the minds of people, especially wealthy Southerners like General Lee. There is evidence of grave doubts held by many Southern leaders about the morality of slavery in the years immediately prior to the Civil War. What is also apparent is that Southerners didn’t want Northerners telling them they couldn’t have it.
Sorry - gotta run - will return to this.
Dave Healy said:mike omalley said:I find it difficult to place myself into the context of an era I didn't live in and ascribe motivation to people whose life experiences I do not, and cannot, have any direct experience of. However, since it is the historian's brief to do just that, let's have a go.
So how come you can argue that states rights matters to southerners, but most northerners just shrugged it off? You're arguing that northerners didn't really care much about state's rights, but southerners did, because the issue was linked to slavery. But for northerners, states rights was just as much linked to slavery--the right to forbid it. The argument that somehow southerners care more about state's rights is, IMHO, belied by the S Carolina declaration of secession,which puts a federal right to own slaves above a state right to forbid slavery. The northern papers were full of talk about dred scott, and about the "slave Power conspiracy" to make slavery the law of the land in all the states. It's a constant subjectThe specific issue I am discussing is neither states’ rights nor slavery per se, but the connection between the two in the minds of people, especially wealthy Southerners like General Lee. There is evidence of grave doubts held by many Southern leaders about the morality of slavery in the years immediately prior to the Civil War. What is also apparent is that Southerners didn’t want Northerners telling them they couldn’t have it.
Sorry - gotta run - will return to this.
I agree with your last paragraph, but there is just as much of a sense in the north that they didn’t want southerners telling them what to do about slavery, or insisting that they had to assist in the recapture of escaped slaves, or insisting that any slaveowner had the right to move his slaves into any northern state, or insisting that no northern state could ban slavery.
I also agree that it’s hard to understand a context of another era. That’s a historians job. I’ve spent a good deal of time reading newspapers, magazines, and letters written by people in the years before the Civil War, and the North is literally up in arms about what it sees as a southern determination to overide the will of the people and the laws of the various states. I have far from perfect understanding, but tere are some things that are clear.
here are some quotes from northerners about the South’s desire to overide state jurisdictions:
Lincoln:
commenting on dred scott: slavery’s advocates wanted to “push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all states…North as well as South…We shall lie down pleasently, dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.”
Ohio abolitionist:
“The slave drivers seek to make our country a great slave empire: to make slave breeding, slave selling, slave labor, slave extension, slave policy, and slave dominion forever the controlling elements of our govt.”
Cincinnati Daily Commercial : “There is such a things as the SLAVE POWER…It has marched over and annihilated the boundaries of the States. We are now one great homogeneous slaveholding community.“
It’s a modern romantic notion that ascribes to Lee and the South some heightened and particular sense of states rights. It’s a story southerners invented about themselves in order to downplay slavery. But as I keep pointing out the brief that S Carolina makes in its argument for secession is all about how a federally mandated right to own slaves trumps any state’s right to ban slavery. Both sides were obsessed with the slavery question by 1855: both sides saw state’s rights at stake as well as the definition of federal power.
The Northern take on the interwoven issues of slavery and states’ rights is well documented. The references you cite reflect the thinking of the majority of Northerners - there was little doubt, and no moral dilemma.
Where we part company is at your comment, “It’s a modern romantic notion that ascribes to Lee and the South some heightened and particular sense of states rights.” To paraphrase your comment, I think it is neither romantic nor modern to ascribe to Lee and the South a take on the interwoven issues of states’ rights and slavery that is very definitely particular to a society that rubbed up against slavery every day, and had genuine reservations about it.
It would have been well-nigh impossible for any educated Southerner of that era to compartmentalise states’ rights and slavery; the two issues would have been inextricably interwoven in their minds. Any discussion of the Southern take on states’ rights must include the Southern take on slavery. “You can’t have one without the OTHHHHHHHHH-er!”
There is no dearth of examples of Southern slave owners’ doubts about the morality of slavery and the slave trade, some of which antedate independence. In addition, there is good reason to believe that all but the most rabid of Southern slaveholders recognised the clock was ticking on slavery for a myriad of political, economic and technological reasons by the late 1850s.
In my third year at college, I had the luxury of auditing a Civil War course taught by a gentleman from Georgia who saw the issues differently from the Fletcher Pratt/Bruce Catton perspective I’d been influenced by until then. His views on the undesirability of fanaticism of any sort have profoundly influenced my life in the 40+ years since. His understanding of, and compassion for, his fellow Southerners who abhorred slavery but fiercely resisted the external imposition of change was a revelation to me, born and raised in New York.
I have no wish to play amateur psychologist. I don’t know why Lee chose to fight for Virginia. I do know he had to make a call on a serious issue when all sorts of doubts existed about which course of action to choose, and I am unwilling to either romanticise or trivialise the call he made.
Mike, I have to thank you for this post. After reading it, I sat down with my wife, looked her straight in the eye and asked her if she thought I was romantic. For the first time in 33 years, my good lady was utterly speechless, and I wish I could have bottled the look of amazement and incredulity on her pretty face!
Ken Brunt said:Quote:
Mike makes an argument that, because of the Dred Scott decision, the Northern states had greater justification to claim their constitutional "states' rights" had been infringed than did the states of the old South. However, to paraphrase Andrew Jackson, many Northerners would have assented to the following proposition: "Justice Taney has made his decision - now let him enforce it."Sure, there was some outrage in the North about Dred Scott - John Brown certainly had reservations! However, most Northerners simply ignored its ramifications, if indeed they understood them.
On that note:"Alexander Hamilton was perhaps the strongest advocate of “judicial review” - the right of judges to opine on our Constitution. But an opinion on the meaning of the Constitution is merely an advisory opinion to the legislative and executive branches of government. Not even Hamilton imagined that the right to opine is a power to rule. Courts, he pointed out, intentionally have been given no means of enforcing their opinions, noting that the executive and legislative branches are not compelled to obey false or dubious opinions. Therefore, he wrote:
…The judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution. … [T]he judiciary…has no influence over either the sword or purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither force nor will…
Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that court opinions were binding upon the specific parties involved and “entitled to very high respect and consideration…by all other departments of the government.” But like the Founding Fathers, he utterly rejected the myth that judges’ opinions are the law of the land:
…If the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal.
In the last century cultural elites created an illusion of judicial power that would be unrecognizable to earlier Americans, lawyers and laymen. After the American Revolution, the framers of the Constitution rejected any judicial authority over the other branches of government.
The Massachusetts Constitution contains the quintessential statement of the American form of government: “The power of suspending the laws, or the execution of the laws, ought never to be exercised but by the legislature…” (Part the First, Article XX.) “[T]he people…are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent.” (Part the First, Article X.) “The judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men.” (Part the First, Article XXX.) “All the laws which have heretofore been adopted, used and approved…shall still remain and be in full force, until altered or repealed by the legislature…” (Part the Second, Article VI.)" (History and the Judiciary
by Paul Weyrich)
The American tradition of mixing respect for the law with a healthy cynicism about those charged with creating, interpreting and enforcing it is well illustrated by the citations in this post.
I suspect the “illusion of judicial power” Paul Weyrich speaks of is a complex phenomenon, and I do not know what the “cultural elite” he speaks of actually is. However, based on the Bush administration’s recent actions regarding the Supreme Court decision supporting the power of the EPA to regulate pollution where it impacts human health, it seems Dick Cheney must be a member of this “cultural elite”.
The mind boggles!
It’s not so complex really. It’s giving more weight to their opinion that it deserves. After all, it’s just an opinion, not a fact.
Dave Healy said:
The Northern take on the interwoven issues of slavery and states' rights is well documented. The references you cite reflect the thinking of the majority of Northerners - there was little doubt, and no moral dilemma.Where we part company is at your comment, “It’s a modern romantic notion that ascribes to Lee and the South some heightened and particular sense of states rights.” To paraphrase your comment, I think it is neither romantic nor modern to ascribe to Lee and the South a take on the interwoven issues of states’ rights and slavery that is very definitely particular to a society that rubbed up against slavery every day, and had genuine reservations about it.
It would have been well-nigh impossible for any educated Southerner of that era to compartmentalise states’ rights and slavery; the two issues would have been inextricably interwoven in their minds. Any discussion of the Southern take on states’ rights must include the Southern take on slavery. “You can’t have one without the OTHHHHHHHHH-er!”
There is no dearth of examples of Southern slave owners’ doubts about the morality of slavery and the slave trade, some of which antedate independence. In addition, there is good reason to believe that all but the most rabid of Southern slaveholders recognised the clock was ticking on slavery for a myriad of political, economic and technological reasons by the late 1850s.
economic and technological reasons by the late 1850s.
/quote]
I’m not arguing against your position vis a vis the south, I’m arguing that the North is just as implicated in/concerned with slavery. For example, the Fugitive Slave Act, which required yankees to assist southern slave catchers–did you know there were riots in Boston and Phil. over this? Southern PA had a very large free black community, and was constantly concerned about the idea of slave catchers coming across the Mason Dixon line to abduct free blacks who looked like someone’s former slave. I’m assuming you know about the brutal fight for Kansas and Nebraska, in which John Brown made his first appearance, or that Amos Lawrence, New England textile manufacturer, was advertising throughout the North for abolition settlers who he would fund to Kansas? You don’t need to be a psychologist, you just need to read the northern newspapers–slavery slavery slavery, everyday.
I’m not casting any aspersions on Lee, or doubting his personal qualms about slavery. I’m just arguing that state’s rights was every bit as important in the North, and that in fact the North had more reason to be concerned about states rights given the South’s aggressive insistance that slavery must be legal everywhere. And further that the idea that “State’s Rights” belongs to the South is a canard, a modern interpretation dreamed up by southern apologists.
It’s not at all clear why the presence of slaves should make one aware of state’s rights–as I keep pointing out, S Carolina, which led secession, had more slaves than perhaps any other state, but its argument is that no northern state has the right to interfere with slavery because of federal guarantees. In other words, th presence of slaves made S Carolina leaders far more willing to insist that the federal constitution overode state’s rights. Lee’s personal ambivalence has nothing to do with it, but it makes for a nice story.
Steve Featherkile said:
Ken, if what you say is true, how did we get to where we are, now? How did the courts gain so much power?Dave, you have made the most astute argument in this series.
Steve,
We let them…pure and simple!
A law doesn’t become a fact simply because a judge says so. It becomes a fact when the legislative and executive branches say so and decide to enforce it.
I can well recall my amazement and consternation at reading in “American Heritage” many years ago about the rioting in New York City when the Union introduced the draft. I’d never realised how much tension there was between African-Americans and Irish-Americans. It was a revelation.
If that’s where you’re going when you say “the North is just as implicated in/concerned with slavery”, I concur.
You state “the idea that “State’s Rights” belongs to the South is a canard, a modern interpretation dreamed up by southern apologists.” I’ve never come across anyone who’s ever suggested Southerners had a monopoly on the states’ rights argument. I always assumed that disagreement - and there’s plenty of that - implied recognition that the other side had something to say that was worth arguing about.
If that’s where you’re going when you say “the North is just as implicated in/concerned with slavery”, I concur, but it appears to be attacking a straw man. If the states’ rights premise is an equal opportunity argument, the fact that the two sides disagreed is not surprising.
I’d never considered the unique moral dilemma confronting many Southerners of the Civil War era until our prof, Ed Cashin, put it on the table. Up until then, words like “obdurate”, “obstinate” and even “recalcitrant” tended to characterise my view of white Southerners at the start of the Civil War.
Ed didn’t try to force his point of view on us. I think he understood the breadth of the chasm he was trying to bridge, and he actively encouraged dissent. Many of us, yours truly included, regarded him initially as an apologist for racism. I think it took us a while to recognise that we were viewing the past through the prism of the present, complete with a rainbow of our own mid-1960s Yankee prejudices.
I recall there was no unanimity among us that the dilemma Ed described was something unique, righteous or even particularly compelling. However, the second sentence, last paragraph, of the Wikipedia article about him accurately summarises the way the vast majority of us saw the man.
I’m not saying “the presence of slaves makes one more aware of states’ rights.” I am saying the experience of Northerners who didn’t have to live with slavery, day in, day out, was not the same as the experience of Southerners who did. Many people of conscience grappled with the morality of the issue at the same time as they were asserting their right not only to keep, but extend, the practice. This dilemma, where reservations about slavery had to be weighed against a deeply-felt desire to retain a perceived constitutional right to preserve their “peculiar institution”, was something uniquely Southern.
If where you’re going when you say “the North is just as implicated in/concerned with slavery” doesn’t account for this fundamental difference in perspective, our respective takes on this issue are definitely at variance.
Ken Brunt said:Steve Featherkile said:
Ken, if what you say is true, how did we get to where we are, now? How did the courts gain so much power?Dave, you have made the most astute argument in this series.
Steve,
We let them…pure and simple!A law doesn’t become a fact simply because a judge says so. It becomes a fact when the legislative and executive branches say so and decide to enforce it.
American history is replete with examples of Presidents ignoring the decisions of courts or, more recently, getting their legal beagles to twist them beyond recognition. It’s a time-honoured tradition.
Ultimately, power lies with Congress, whose members are the elected representatives of the people (the Senate wasn’t originally directly elected, but it is now). As long as the President has the support of the Senate, he can thumb his nose at the Court. The House can impeach him, but unless the Senate convicts (by a 2/3 majority), he’ll survive.
If the Congress doesn’t like the way the President is, or is not, enforcing the Supreme Court’s decisions, they have the power to throw the rascal out. It’s yet to happen, though Andrew Johnson came close, and Nixon pulled the pin rather than put the system to the test.
Thanx Dave, you explained it a lot more eloquently than I did.