• He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
• He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
• He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
• He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
• He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
• For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
• For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
• He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
• He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
- In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
The Southern states seceded in 1861 over what they felt were years of hostility to their sovereign interests. The high protective tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were a particular cause of contention.
In 1824, a high protective tariff was proposed by the US Congress. The purpose was to protect industry in the North which was being driven out of business by low-priced imported goods (by putting a tax on them). On May 19, 1828, it was passed by the US Congress. It came to be labeled the "Tariff of Abominations" by the Southern states because of the negative effects it had on the Southern economy. It was a high tariff on finished products (as opposed to raw materials). In 1828, which part of the country was producing "finished products"? The North. The North had the industry. The South was still an agrarian society. Its economy was supported by its exports - of cotton, sugar, and more. Southerners relied heavily on sales in the world market for their produce so that the protective tariffs did not offer them any service (only a detriment). The South was harmed directly by having to pay higher prices on finished goods. It used to buy them through imports but the tariffs made them too expensive. The choice then was to pay the high prices or buy from the North (which was also expensive for them). The South was also harmed indirectly because reducing the exportation of British goods to the US made it difficult for the British to pay for the cotton they imported from the South. Furthermore, because the United States enacted the high protective tariffs on foreign products, those countries retaliated on raw materials exported by the Southern states. Other countries weren't buying their products. The demand for raw cotton abroad was greatly reduced. The South responded by lowering the price on their products, cotton in particular. The North took advantage of this and bought the cotton at the lower value for their manufacturing looms.
To make matters worse, the exports of the South, along with the tariffs and customs revenues, were the only important sources of tax revenue that supported the federal government. Some have estimated that 30% of the U.S. population (the South) was providing at least 70% of the income to the government. In other words, the South was disproportionately supporting the federal government and yet was being disserved by it with oppressive policies.
On the one hand, the government needed the revenue that the South brought in to fund the government, but on the other hand punished them, through various policies, to harm their interests and economies. So, when the South seceded, the major source of government revenue was lost. To some historians, the war against the South was a convenient vehicle to ensure the southern revenue base was retained to fund the treasury.
One complaint against King George could easily have been made by the Southern States against the federal government: "For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world."
As Lincoln's election became evident, secessionists made clear their intent to leave the Union before he took office the following March. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina took the lead by adopting an ordinance of secession. By February 1, 1861, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed. Six of these states then adopted a constitution and declared themselves to be a sovereign nation, the Confederate States of America. Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri, and Kentucky soon followed. President Buchanan and President-elect Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederacy, declaring secession illegal. Lincoln, committed to the ideal of republicanism, saw secession as an act of anarchy and was committed to restoring the republic (the Union). In his first inaugural address, on March 4, 1861, Lincoln said: "Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. In rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left." In that same inaugural address, he also said: "I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination."
In a message to Congress later that year, on July 4, he wrote: "The distinct issue, 'Immediate dissolution or blood'...embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question of whether a constitutional republic or democracy -- a government of the people, by the same people -- can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether the discontented individuals -- too few in numbers to control the administration, according to organic law, in any case -- can always, upon the pretenses made in this case or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without any pretense, break up the government and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: 'Is there, in all republics, this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?'"
In a letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley dated August 22, 1862, Lincoln wrote: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving the others alone, I would also do that."
And in his annual message to Congress on Dec. 1, 1862, he said: "Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free - honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."
Lincoln justified the war based on legal terms. (And certainly in moral terms as well). He believed the Constitution was a contract (and for one party to get out of a contract all the other parties had to agree); in fact, he believed the original states joined together with the intent of forming a perpetual union. He believed they memorialized that intent expressly in the Articles of Confederation. The Articles stated both in the Preamble and in the body that the union "thus created" is "perpetual." Article XII stated: "The Articles of this confederation shall be inviolably observed by every state, and the union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the united States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every state." (The term "perpetual" was actually used five times in the Articles). According to Lincoln, the Constitution, drafted to address the limitation of the Articles, merely created a more perfect 'perpetual' union.
So strongly did Lincoln believe this that he stated as such in his first inaugural address: "I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination."
Apparently, this was not the position that Lincoln always held. On the floor of the 30th Congress on January 13, 1848, Lincoln delivered this message: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and to form one that suits them better. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may make their own of such territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority intermingling with or near them who oppose their movement."
With respect to the sovereign powers "retained by the States," (10th Amendment), Lincoln believed that the power or right to secede was not one of them. According to Lincoln, secession was not such a power since it is "a power to destroy the government itself." To leave the Union would be to destroy the government.
Lincoln also cited two other constitutional sources for his belief that secession is illegal - The Supremacy Clause and the Guarantee Clause. The Supremacy Clause, in Article VI, states: "The Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof . . . shall be the Supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Perhaps Lincoln saw secession as violating federal law, particularly the law against acts of treason.
Article IV, Section 4, clause 1 (The Guarantee Clause), states that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." This clause was cited by President Lincoln to justify a war to prevent secession.
Publisher's note: Diane Rufino has her own blog, For Love of God and Country.
Come and visit her. She'd love your company.
your company.
