GDG- Re: Gettysburg Digest, Vol 37, Issue 20

[Biggsk at aol.com]

Margaret writes:

>>>>BTW, Madison, when President of the United States, was  prepared to use 
military force to keep New England in the Union if the  Hartford Convention had 
adopted any proposal to  secede.>>>
 
And considering how poorly that military force was doing during this war,  
save very few occasions, he would have been very hard-pressed to pull that  off. 
 I think he knew that too.  If the British had won at New Orleans  they would 
have torn up the Treaty of Ghent basically (as Robin Reilly argues in  his 
book on the campaign) and either kept up prosecution of the war heavily  
reinforced by veteran British regiments from the Napoleonic Wars and/or redone  the 
deal at the point of their sword, to which Madison would have had nothing to  
bargain with.  His military threat against New England was a hollow  shell.
 
Mr. Madison's opinions are just that - his opinions.  The Constitution  did 
not have any provision regarding the legality or illegality of secession,  and 
that was what the South was using to base its opinion upon.  It was  also 
sticking very much to the ethos of government by, of and for the people -  and 
their people had just withdrawn their consent to be governed.
 
Greg Biggs

 



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