Trego's Mountain Ear

In 1869, the Supreme Court ruled (Texas v. White) that unilateral secession by a state was illegal.  President James Buchanan, in 1860, argued that secession wasn’t legal, but that the federal government didn’t have the constitutional authority to prevent the southern states from seceding.  It reads to me like General Grant made the decision that secession was illegal sometime around 1865.

The Constitution is kind of blank on the topic – and few people would condemn Robert E. Lee for violating a Supreme Court ruling 8 years before it was made.  Still, it might be that the founding fathers missed another thought at the Constitutional Convention – How do we kick a state out of the union? 

As I think about it, since South Carolina first threatened secession in 1776, the folks who wrote the Constitution had ample time to include it before writing the Bill of Rights.  Jefferson Davis thought the topic covered by the tenth amendment: “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.”  If that was the case, it seems that Buchanan  and Jefferson Davis were right.  Three states, New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island had included statements permitting themselves the option of secession when they ratified the constitution.  On the other hand, by 1865, Yankee muskets and bayonets had made a fairly convincing argument that secession wouldn’t be tolerated.

So I’ve been reading opinions – usually stated as facts – that Confederate troops, bearing arms against Union armies, were traitors.  But there was a strong opinion at the time that secession was legal. 

I can’t really consider the war between the states a civil war.  The southern states wanted to go their own way – but they didn’t want to take over the rest of the nation. 

Andrew Jackson was President just 24 years before the War Between the States.  He said, “After eight years as President I have only two regrets: that I have not shot Henry Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun.”

I reckon the point I’m trying to make is that our nation has been more divided, had more political animosity (or at least as much) in the past as we have today.  Maybe the best answer is just to vote the bastards out and then conscientiously try to get along with our fellow Americans.  After all, we should at least try to have a level of tolerance equal to Andy Jackson’s.