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

[Margaret D. Blough]

>>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 their people had just withdrawn their consent to be governed. <<

That's any interesting concept: that secessionists decades later had a far better idea of what the Framers intended than did the man who was one of the leaders of the movement to have a Constitutional convention in the first place, who played a leading role in drafting it, who left the most complete record of the debates, who led the successful Virginia ratification effort over an opposition led by Patrick Henry, and who was one of the two principle authors of "The Federalist Papers" which played such an important role in New York's ratification of the Constitution.

Relying on an absence of an express prohibition is a decidedly weak reed to rely on.  Yes, there were some who believed secession was legal but there were many who did not.  Even Jefferson accepted that no nation is obligated to commit suicide.

Regards,

Margaret


-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Biggsk at aol.com 

> Esteemed GDG Member Contributes: 
> 
> 
> 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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