Donald Sensing penned an interesting blog post the other day. He doesn’t believe another Republican will ever be President. In the post he pointed to a court ruling meant about nothing to the Obama regime. An appeals court ruled that Barack Obama was violating the law regarding the closure of a nuclear waste dump site.
In a rebuke to the Obama administration, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been violating federal law by delaying a decision on a proposed nuclear waste dump in Nevada.
By a 2-1 vote, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ordered the commission to complete the licensing process and approve or reject the Energy Department’s application for a never-completed waste storage site at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
In a sharply worded opinion, the court said the nuclear agency was “simply flouting the law” when it allowed the Obama administration to continue plans to close the proposed waste site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The action goes against a federal law designating Yucca Mountain as the nation’s nuclear waste repository.
And they made a poignant statement
“It is no overstatement to say that our constitutional system of separation of powers would be significantly altered if we were to allow executive and independent agencies to disregard federal law in the manner asserted in this case by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission,” Kavanaugh wrote. “The commission is simply defying a law enacted by Congress … without any legal basis.”
(emphasis added)
Obama shrugged his shoulders.
As per the commander-in-chief, the NRC has declined to conduct the statutorily mandated Yucca Mountain licensing process. This essentially destroys the project, which the U.S. government has been working on since the early 1980s to be the nation’s sole repository for high-level nuclear waste. In 2010, the NRC, then led by Obama appointee Gregory Jaczko, ordered the licensing process terminated.
It is the tip of the iceberg.
The IRS targeting of conservative groups? Sure it happened, but so what? We’re not stopping.:
In a remarkable admission that is likely to rock the Internal Revenue Service again, testimony released Thursday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp reveals that an agent involved in reviewing tax exempt applications from conservative groups told a committee investigator that the agency is still targeting Tea Party groups, three months after the IRS scandal erupted.
In closed door testimony before the House Ways & Means Committee, the unidentified IRS agent said requests for special tax status from Tea Party groups is being forced into a special “secondary screening” because the agency has yet to come up with new guidance on how to judge the tax status of the groups.
The NSA was guilty of thousands of privacy violations. The regime response? Duck oversight.
It would be easy to read too much into the report. Many of those incidents can be chalked up to carelessness. For instance, a programming error mixed up the 202 area code (Washington, D.C.) with the Egyptian international code and the agency ended up collecting a “large number” of domestic call records.
But other violations — small in number but significant in form — go to the heart of what is so disturbing about the agency’s vacuum cleaner approach to surveillance: It’s too easily abused. One program swept up both foreign and U.S. e-mails for months before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled the practice unconstitutional and shut it down.
Still, it’s not even these “mistakes,” as the NSA called them Friday, that are most disturbing. (Though it’s worth asking whether an agency with such access to Americans’ private communications can afford to make thousands of mistakes.)
More bothersome is the hint in the latest disclosures that NSA is trying to hide its excesses from overseers.
Obama’s NLRB appointments were found unconstitutional. He thumbs his nose at the Court.
Following Friday morning’s appeals court ruling that Barack Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional, union attorney (and current NLRB chairman) Mark Gaston Pearce vowed to ignore the court’s ruling.
In a statement posted on the NLRB’s website, Pearce stated:
“The Board respectfully disagrees with today’s decision and believes that the President’s position in the matter will ultimately be upheld. It should be noted that this order applies to only one specific case, Noel Canning, and that similar questions have been raised in more than a dozen cases pending in other courts of appeals.
In the meantime, the Board has important work to do. The parties who come to us seek and expect careful consideration and resolution of their cases, and for that reason, we will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”
“The parties who come to us seek and expect careful consideration and resolution of their cases…”
Wait. What?!?
Obama is raising taxes without Congress and is spending the proceeds as he see fit:
If you like your ridiculously high cell phone bill, there’s good news: President Obama wants to make it even higher! The president is pushing a plan to raise money by hiking cell phone fees and use the revenue generated to wire up local schools with high-speed Internet access. The idea of allowing states and towns to figure out how to pay for their own Internet access is evidently anathema to this administration, as is the idea that government should stay within its constitutional boundaries.
He’s also planning to do this without input from Congress, via the Federal Communications Commission, according to the Washington Post. Congress, not the executive branch, is empowered by the Constitution with the ability to levy or reject taxes.
By circumventing Congress, the president would also avoid hearings, debate, and give and take — what we used to call the legislative process. Now it’s just the government and its functionaries blackmailing the citizenry.
Obama reveals the existence of sealed indictments if he is of a mind to do so.
The DNC collects information on you from your neighbors:
Of course that is desperation on the Democrats’ part. Trying to deflect attention from the White House invading people’s privacy, the Democratic National Committee is making real news by admitting flag@whitehouse.gov was used to collect data on people being turned in by third parties.
And the response from Congress?
As the lawless scandals are exposed — Benghazi, gunrunning in Mexico, misuse of the NSA, the IRS crippling the opposition in 2012 by illegal denials of tax exemptions — the president and his allies have been fast and furious in ginning up his base by playing the race card so often it’s worn to a mere stub.
Still, to the outrage of many the media and his followers insist we must treat him as if he were a sacred cow.
President Obama’s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And at last week’s news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.
Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide employees with health care. No, “this was in consultation with businesses.”
He continued: “In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law. . . . It looks like there may be some better ways to do this, let’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do. But we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to Obamacare. We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.”
Serving as props in the scripted charade of White House news conferences, journalists did not ask the pertinent question: “Where does the Constitution confer upon presidents the ‘executive authority’ to ignore the separation of powers by revising laws?” The question could have elicited an Obama rarity: brevity. Because there is no such authority.
Granted, any president may decline to enforce statutes he believes are unconstitutional. But Obama is making no such claim here. Basically, he is admitting that parts of law are impossible to enforce on the deadlines imposed by Congress — deadlines he signed into law. He’s also admitting he doesn’t want to have Congress make these changes, for fear that if lawmakers get their mitts on this unpopular program, they would at least debate far more extensive changes than he’d like.
Congressional Democrats, and some Republicans, may agree with the numerous delays, changes and special favors. But the president invites chaos when he picks which parts of Obamacare to enforce, and which, in retrospect, he has decided are unworkable or unwise.
In a recent news conference, Obama acknowledged that congressional modification of the law is preferable to these White House fiats: “In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up (House Speaker John Boehner) and say, ‘You know what? This is a tweak that doesn’t go to the essence of the law. … Let’s make a technical change of the law.’ That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do, but we’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to, quote-unquote, ‘Obamacare.”’
Tweaks? Obama isn’t making tweaks. He’s trying to circumvent major flaws that began flaring when the law was enacted. Hence the many carve-outs, delays and special deals that have been piling up since he added his signature to Obamacare on March 23, 2010.
Obamacare doesn’t work. But back to Sensing:
The goal of the entire Democrat party is to be the permanent, sole political authority in the country. This is the actual transformation that Barack Obama promised to great applause in his 2008 campaign. And we are getting transformed good and hard:
[I]nstead of the new birth of hope and change, it is the transformation of a constitutional republic operating under laws passed by democratically accountable legislators into a servile nation under the management of an unaccountable administrative state. The real import of Barack Obama’s political career will be felt long after he leaves office, in the form of a permanently expanded state that is more assertive of its own interests and more ruthless in punishing its enemies. At times, he has advanced this project abetted by congressional Democrats, as with the health-care law’s investiture of extraordinary powers in the executive bureaucracy, but he also has advanced it without legislative assistance — and, more troubling still, in plain violation of the law. President Obama and his admirers choose to call this “pragmatism,” but what it is is a mild expression of totalitarianism, under which the interests of the country are conflated with those of the president’s administration and his party. Barack Obama is the first president of the democracy that John Adams warned us about.
Obama can do this not because the Constitution or law authorize it. Most definitely they actually prohibit it. He is getting away with it because there is no one who can stop him and almost no one who wants to stop him. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, in the Democrat party is in the slightest interested in reining in Obama’s expansion of executive diktat because they know what few of the rest of us are awakening to: the Democrats are never going to lose that executive authority again. Let me be clear, with a promise to elucidate another day: there is never going to be another Republican president. Ever.
The media will not examine Obama’s imperialist manner because they do not want to. They agree with it. The courts are literally unable to enforce their rulings contra this administration; Obama ignores them at will and without consequence. The Republicans are dominated by the Political Class and lack the numbers, influence, collective will and ideological conviction to rein in the administration even if they had the ability to do so, which they don’t.
I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that Obama had been monitoring all GOP communications.
And one wonders what would happen if Obama evoked Executive Authority (after all, it’s not a “normal political environment”) and decided not to leave office. Courts mean nothing, the Senate wouldn’t mind and the House is full of spineless GOP cowards. If you search for the definition of the word “obsequious” you’ll find “See: White House Press Corps”
Who’d force him out? Besides, that’d be racist.
What would tyranny look like in America? Look around.
Will no one stop him?
DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 40 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 45 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter who is in the field of education.
DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.
Except for liberals being foolish.
@Ditto: Most at the Constitutional Congress did not want a big government and feared that a strong, central government would become a tyrannical version of the governing systems already in place in France, England and Spain. Most envisioned a central government similar to that of ancient Greece- a government that could bring the city-states together in times of war or national crisis. Thus, the Constitution lets the states decide if they wanted to join or leave the union- just like the system developed in ancient Greece. Plus, if you looked at the founding fathers, their inspiration for self-governance was based upon Sparta and Athens as role models.
@Tom:
South Carolina had voted to secede from the Union. Federal troops were trespassing. They refused to withdraw from a Sovereign State.
@MataHarley:
What? The Southern States seceded and Lincoln declared war.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/13991-south-carolinas-1860-declaration-of-secession-what-has-changed
Here’s a timeline:
You can see the whole timeline here.
http://www.civilwar.org/150th-anniversary/this-day-in-the-civil-war.html?gclid=CLPE4PrLjrkCFc9i7AodhyUAYQ#prewar
We have a modern day secession taking place today. Several counties in Colorado are voting on whether to secede from Colorado or not. This is not anything new. Kentucky seceded from Virgina……peacefully. They did not feel their interests were being addressed from Richmond. Tennessee seceded from North Carolina……..peacefully. Again, they did not feel their interests were being addressed from Raleigh.
Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union and he decided to do that by force. That is the bottom line.
@MataHarley:
That’s exactly my point. They left the Union, i.e. seceded. Therefore they weren’t part of the Union after they seceded which is why they had to be readmitted. They were part of the country prior to secession and after the war, not during it.
Aqua
thank you for that interesting true story of AMERICA,
It show the courage THE STATES AND THEIR CITIZENS involving themselves in the interest of their GOVERNMENT,TO BETTER THEIR STATES, and the confidence they gave to their leader of their STATE WHICH THEY RESPECTED,WE CALL THAT GETTING INVOLVE BY THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE, IT’S A WIN WIN ACTION,
@Aqua: Great job. What was the timeline of secessions till (and after?) Lincoln’s declaration of war? Did all seceded states join The Confederacy simultaneously?
A.V. Thanks for your excellent input.
I remember as a Marine Officer, TBS Quantico Va. 1967, Southern Officers were wary of wearing their dress blues home.Time heals all wounds but those have healed slowly.
Semper Fi
@Tom: A less winded response from me. Let me ask a few questions to get a feel for where you are coming from. With regards to whether or not the Confederate States were part of the U.S:
What do you consider to be the date this country was founded on and what criteria do you base that on?
With regards to the CW being about slavery as the main issue as opposed to a constitutional one, mainly state’s rights:
1. Did the U.S. Constitution at that time forbid the individual states from setting laws governing slavery?
2. Which event ended slavery- the CW, the Emancipation Proclamation, or the Thirteenth Amendment?
3. What was/were the purpose(s)/effect(s) of the Fourteenth Amendment?
@Richard Wheeler:
And some heal even more slowly than that. The animosity surrounding the “CW” being one of those. Some are still fighting it so to speak. Other wounds, such as religious animosity, will probably never heal.
@Richard Wheeler:
Only six States joined the Confederacy initially; Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida. Sam Houston refused to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy, so he was replaced as governor. Texas joined a month later.
Other States joined later for one reason or another.
All seven original Confederate States had seceded by April 19th, 1861, which is when defacto war was declared. Lincoln had the ports from South Carolina to Texas blockaded, which is an act of war. There is speculation about Lincoln actually knowing this was an act of war, because in doing so, he would be recognizing the Confederacy. That is something he didn’t want to do. Other theories are that he knew exactly what he was doing and didn’t care, thereby subverting the Constitution and bypassing congress.
Either way, on July 4th, 1861, Lincoln convened a special session of congress to pay for the war. Congress authorized the spending. You can read his speech here.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1861lincoln-special.asp
@Richard Wheeler:
There is still an enormous amount of animosity in the South against the North. A lot of northerners look down their noses at the South.
For whatever reason, northerners believe the majority of white people in the South are racists. I lived in and around LA for 15 years; I promise you there is much more racial animosity in LA than there is in Georgia.
I get that conception… albeit somewhat late to the comprehension party, AV. LOL But what makes me think that the secession, and ensuing re admittance, is clear as mud is the SCOTUS majority opinion, written by Judge Chase, in Texas v White. This was all about some US bond possession, and a large part of that opinion had to consider whether the SCOTUS had jurisdiction (i.e. if Texas wasn’t a State in the Union, they didn’t), and the methods specific to Texas on their secession, their de facto government’s actions during the rebellion, and whether the court viewed that secession as within Constitutional law.
I have to say, it’s interesting reading and I can’t say that I’m in agreement with Chase’s language regarding intent of a union “in perpetuity and indissolubility”, and ergo indestructible. What the high court ultimate determined was that Texas, thru the rebellion, continued to be both a State, and a State of the Union… albeit in a form of “suspension”. There’s a lot to the opinion, but here’s the crux of it with some excerpts.
This brings the debate to the even more confusing status, in light of SCOTUS on Texas v White, as to whether the Court considered secession within the legal framework and therefore recognized as a dissoluble relationship for any of the states. If so, that would mean that, despite the States attempts to secede, the Union still considered them part of the same country, if not a member in good standing (as they were waging hostilities).
Even in recent times, a State’s attempt to secede has been slapped down by the courts as illegal… notably the recent Alaskan lawsuit, Kohlhaas v. State, decided by their Supreme Court in 2006. Kohlhaas drafted a secession initiative, and the State refused to certify it. It ended up in the Alaskan high court, and they used Texas v White as central to their ruling that secession was unconstitutional. Even tho courts tend not to rule on initiatives and referendums prior to enactment, it was one of the rare instances that they considered preemption because the initiative “proposed clearly unconstitutional ends”.
It’s sure a lofty discussion, fraught with legal potholes, when considering the Confederate States’ status. But there is also merit to the notion that if their secession was unlawful in the Union’s eyes, why was there a need for re admittance? My guess is that may lie in the considered legitimacy of the war time state governments, who had pledged allegiance to a hostile entity. Those had to be dissolved and replaced, and a new loyalty oath taken to return to member in good standing.
@Richard Wheeler, you’ll find the answers to your questions in several places.
An interesting take on secession’s legitimacy, as well as a graph with the order of secession, relative to the fall of Ft. Sumpter by Michael Climo on his Examiner page. He notes it was deliberate that Jefferson Davis or other Confederate leaders were not brought to trial.
An excellent timeline from The Civil War website.
And if you are a Wiki fan, they have two pertinent pages… The Confederates States of America, and Secession in the US.
@another vet:
Thanks for an interesting, very informative response. But (no surprise, I’m sure), I have a few things I’d like to address:
I know we’re just going in circles at this point, but what was the preeminent state’s right issue at play? Slavery. To say that the slave states just happened to feel strongly about state’s rights and that that’s what informed their views on slavery, not the other way around, seems preposterous to me. You bring up the Nullification Crisis as an example of a state;s right issue independent from slavery. None other than John C. Calhoun would dispute that claim:
Independence from themselves? The southern states weren’t conquered territories. They were there at the Union’s inception, or petitioned to join subsequently. To call it a fight for independence is to dress it up in something romantic I frankly don’t believe it warrants. Southern secession was closer to an illegally broken contract that one freely enters into because one subsequently no longer likes the terms, after much of the benefit has been taken.
I understand that. But Lincoln’s view, backwards by our standards, still held that slavery was an evil abomination, and that’s the viewpoint I believe much of the North, and the civilized world, held at that time. There is a huge difference between unadmirable racist attitudes and putting someone in chains. So there is no moral equivalency here to be drawn.
I can’t get around the fact that the constitution of the Confederacy perpetuated the institution of slavery. A constitutional document formulated to uphold the principle that one human being can own another as property has no moral legitimacy, in my opinion. It’s a degeneration from the central founding ideal that all men are created equal.
The choice at that juncture in history was to either preserve the Union and seek a more perfect expression of that central ideal—which had been expressed and accepted as a sacred principle at the first moment the founders declared the nation an independent, self-determining entity in the world—or see the Union broken by those who intended to preserve and institutionalize a glaring imperfection.
All other political issues of the day were of secondary importance. This one was a matter of resolving the moral nature of the nation’s soul. Were we going to try to become what we said we were going to be at the start, or not?
@another vet:
I know this wasn’t address to me (and has been responded to by Mata), but I still take issue with your conjecture that the South was a separate nation. The rebellion failed, therefore it never achieved it’s stated goal of establishing an autonomous nation. To state that the act of declaring oneself independent grants independence alone is also highly problematic. If Rhode Island were to declare itself seceding from the Union today, does that mean the residents of Rhode Island are no longer United States citizens immediately following the declaration?
To give you a real example, rather than a hypothetical, take the case of General George Thomas. I’m sure you know the story, but here is an American officer from Virginia, a southerner, who – to great personal cost to himself – decided to honor his oath to the United States of America and fight for the Union. So who can claim George Thomas as its very own citizen? Was George Thomas a traitor to the Confederacy, if – by your definition – it existed as a sovereign nation?
@Greg:
Quite eloquent……and complete BS. I love when people say it’s all about the South and slavery and the Confederate Constitution was to ensure slavery in perpetuity. You do realize that the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the States in rebellion. Slavery was still legal in the other States. As a matter of fact, even after the Civil War, there were slaves in the Union. The South surrendered in April 1865 and the 13th Amendment was not adopted until December of 1865. That is what ended slavery, not the Civil War.
@Aqua, #66:
It’s my understanding that a great many young men in the north went to war in the belief that purging the nation of the institution of slavery was a sacred cause, ordained by God. There were countless instances when such men advanced on the battlefield, almost certain of imminent death. I believe Lincoln himself came to see the horrors of the war as a sort of national penance for having embraced slavery.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve always understood that to be central to the moral dynamic of the conflict. I don’t deny there were all sorts of attendant political and economic issues, and that there were many people who focused primarily on those. I had family on both sides. My southern ancestors on my father’s side were slave owners.
@Tom:
Why wouldn’t it? The southern States were not the first with a plan to secede, the northern States were.
I saw this argument before made by Retire05. The Declaration of Independence states:
This was not just a declaration of war against Britain. The very first line of the Declaration states:
In other words, the Founders believed this was a natural right.
So, it’s ok for the federal government to break a contract and expect a Sovereign State to grin and bear it. The Constitution has enumerated powers. The 10th Amendment states without question:
The 10th Amendment does not say anything about there being a hearing in federal court presided over by federal hacks. If it is not listed in the Constitution as power reserved for congress, it belongs to the States and the People.
@Aqua: The slavery issue was also a convenient way to keep other foreign powers (namely France) from entering the war. I am, by no means, trying to belittle President Lincoln in any way. However, war is a chess match, and I do believe he made his proclamation both because he believed in it but also to keep other countries out of our affairs.
@Greg, that’s one squishy, feel-good view of the war. Unfortunately, tho it’s promoted as such for good PR about America’s humanity, Lincoln and his incoming administration, and the industrial north had different reasons.
The secessions started prior to Lincoln’s inaugural when the Morrill Tariffs looked like they were going to pass. The first of the ten tariff tax hikes was passed shortly before Lincoln assumed office. By 1860, custom duty tariffs went from 18% to an average of 37%. By summer of 1864, it was up to 47%.
Because the southern states purchased 2/3rds of the nation’s imports, and tariffs comprised the prime source of US revenues, they were already carrying a disproportionate amount of taxes that were sent to the North, spent by a Congress that made no secret they loathed the south. The alternative of buying goods from the north still resulted in the same end… more of their revenue being sent north. None of it was acceptable.
Instead of waiting around and watching customs officers haul off southern tariff revenues, they decided to secede. And they wrote into their constitution a prohibition against protective tariffs from foreign nations.
That bode fiscal ruin for the industrial north. All imports would divert their ships to duty free southern ports, and away from the tariff heavy north, and northern businesses would skirt the tariff revenues by making sure their imports entered thru the south as well. It wasn’t rocket science to see that secession had to be reversed at any cost so that the central government, funded primarily by tariffs generated in the south, wouldn’t fall.
@MataHarley, #70:
Didn’t the Morrill Tariffs pass the year after southern states had seceded and their congressional representatives had left Washington? If they’d stayed, they could have voted against it.
Greg, the first of the Morrell Tariff increases passed Congress (finally in the Senate) Feb 20, 1861. However it had already passed the House nine months earlier. There was no secret that the tariffs were going to be railroaded thru, especially when Lincoln won the election.
Only SC had seceded a year (to the day) before. MS, AL, GA, FL and LA all seceded in Jan 1861. Texas followed early Feb 1861.
@MataHarley: I agree that there is conflicting evidence as the whether or not the Confederate states were still part of the Union after they seceded. For instance, ratification of the 14th Amendment was considered a prerequisite for some of the states in order to gain readmission into the Union with Congressional representation. I believe Texas may have been one of those. All of which makes you wonder, had those states refused, what would have happened? Being part of the Union but not allowing them to have representation in Congress would have meant what? They were no longer states or that they no longer had a say in the national political process?
It would have been much easier to figure all of this out had the attempts at secession been stopped BEFORE they occurred.
@another vet:
Not to my knowledge. But certainly the possibility down the road of a Constitutional Amendment would have been on the minds of people on both sides of the question. If you’re point is that slavery was not abolished prior or during the war and therefore could not have been a catalyst, that’s simply not true. A seemingly irreconcilable difference is just the sort of fertile ground to plant the sort of animosity and bitterness for what followed.
13th Amendment. Which, by the way, wouldn’t have been possible at that moment in time if the Southern States had not rebelled (to my point above).
This is too broad an inquiry. You’re going to have to be more specific.
@another vet, ah… the elusive, woulda-shoulda-coulda-if-only perspectives. Yes, it does make the mind twist when considering alternative universes in time.
Generally, while it’s all a stimulating discussion as to whether the “War of the States”/rebellion/Civil War can actually be called a civil war. It seems that technicality rests solely on whether the States were, or were not, still a member of the Union despite their secession. If one wants to hinge on SCOTUS as the defining factor, it’s inarguable. Then again, if a State is adamant they aren’t part of the Union, they will argue that SCOTUS has no jurisdiction, and their majority opinion is null.
In the long run, I don’t see that calling it a Civil War, or War of the States can be considered incorrect… except possibly for PC purposes for some. Nor do I think the majority find the term offensive.
What may be the more interesting debate is, in the wake of Texas v White and ensuing precedents, by what method may a State leave the Union? That is not laid out in Article IV of the Constitution.
The Chase High Court alluded only to two possibilities – “”through revolution, or through consent of the States.” Whether he is vaguely referencing some process similar to a Constitutional Convention, I’ve no clue. I’d say that revolution is self explanatory. But then, if only one state out of 50 is revolting, can that be considered a real “revolution”? :0)
@Aqua:
I’m sorry, but that comparison doesn’t hold water. The 13 colonies were not equally represented within the government which ruled them (“no taxation without representation”). They were subject to the unilateral laws and decrees of a monarch who lived a month away. They truly were subject to a form of tyranny. In what way is that analogous to the Southern States’ situation? Did they not have the exact same Constitution and rights as the Northern States, the same representation in the Federal Government, and the same lawful recourses to address grievances? If you don’t like the President, vote him out of office. If you don’t like what Congress is up to, elect a new Representative. if you don’t like a law, you have the 1st Amendment granting you freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, the right to petition the Government. What you don’t have, in my view, is the right to take up arms against your fellow citizens. In our form of government, no one gets everything they want all the time. The idea that any disappointed party can just get up and walk away from the table at a moment’s notice is unworkable, a recipe for anarchy. The government has a duty to the law abiding citizens it represents to protect their persons, their way of life, their property, their rights, and therefore to oppose unlawful insurrection.
@MataHarley:
Not the first time the SCOTUS has made extra-constitutional dicta and then built upon it. Lincoln ignored these state’s announcement of secession and instead only considered them to be in rebellion. The Union aligned justices, in considering Texas v. White of course supported Lincoln’s executive decision that the Constitution was contract that the states could not break from. There is nothing in the Constitution that supports such a ruling, and the Declaration of Independence clearly is contrary to such a ruling, so the court was forced to search and find a “legal” excuse to support their dicta, and relied on contract law. That it was required to “re-admit” these states into the union would argue against such a ruling, so that would have to have been ignored also. Secession, which is a declaration of independence, has been common both before and after our “civil war.” and most nations have recognized the right of a portion of another nation to declare it’s independence (ie. secede,) It just comes down to whether they can succeed to secede, and fight off the embarrassed nation that will try to stop what it sees as only insurrection. This is why it was necessary for the seceding states to join in a loose confederacy to mutually defend their declaration of independence. Such court rulings are only material if the formerly ruling nation can through force, keep the state under it’s rule. It would require a good number of states to join in confederation and secede en mass, for any secession to succeed, no state could reasonably go it alone. In other words, if you want to declare independence, you better be ready to back it up with a lot of help.
@Tom:
Never said that. Slavery was part of Southern life to some. Again, the overwhelming number of Southerners did not own slaves and a good number that were owned were owned by a minority of slave owners. Trying to make it sound like all or most Southerners were wild about slavery distorts the average Southerner’s views. McPherson researched Southern soldiers’ views as to why they fought by examining diaries etc. and most stated they were fighting for Southern independence and didn’t care about slavery.
As for Calhoun and the Nullification Crisis, it was about state’s rights in this case a dispute over a tariff. It’s no big secret that Calhoun was a slave owner and a fierce proponent of the peculiar institution. Per your own link:
What is the common argument between the Nullification Crisis (tariff) and the CW (slavery)? The issue of state’s rights and ultimately disunion be it over slavery, tariffs, something else, or a combination thereof. Robert E. Lee, who as you know was the main military man in the South (unlike Calhoun who was dead long before the war started), was an advocate of freeing the slaves for military service and he was a slave holder himself Does that sound like he agreed to lead the Confederate Army because of his devotion to slavery?
I’ll expand a tad on #58 questions. The Constitution as it was written at the time in question forbid slavery in the Northwest Territories which at that time were Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin, nowhere else. Per the 10th Amendment that meant the legality of slavery was up to the individual states at the time, i.e. state’s rights. The Northern states gradually chose to outlaw it, the Southern states did not. Economic considerations were obviously the big factor here given the two different economies that were emerging. When the Louisiana Purchase came along it opened up a new can of worms because now there were new territories that weren’t addressed in the Constitution as far as slavery. The North said no to expanding slavery into the new territories. The South said that they should be allowed to take their slaves with them because their states allowed for the possession of slaves (state’s rights). This conflict over state’s rights versus federal rights was temporarily resolved with the Missouri Compromise. The Nullification Crisis dispute involving the tariff (again an issue of state’s rights versus federal rights) was resolved based on a compromise hatched by Henry Clay. The Mexican War once again added a bunch of territory to the U.S. not addressed in the Constitution or the Missouri Compromise leading to another debate about whether or not slave owners could take their slaves into the new territories because slave ownership was legal in their states (state’s rights). This was temporarily resolved with the Compromise of 1850. Ditto for the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott Decision.
A main argument for Southern secession (warranted or not) was that if Lincoln were elected he wouldn’t enforce the Missouri Compromise meaning the federal government wouldn’t uphold federal law and would therefore infringe upon rights guaranteed to the states (state’s rights). Had the Constitution outlawed slavery to begin with or had there not been a 10th Amendment, slavery wouldn’t have been an issue because the states wouldn’t have had a claim that outlawing slavery (or in the case of the 10th, the Nullification Crisis as well) infringed upon their rights.
Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment, not the CW or Emancipation Proclamation, meaning it was a Constitutional issue. The 14th Amendment was added in part to prevent states (state’s rights) from infringing upon the rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. Slaves were already free when it was added.
Finally, in the South as was the case in the North, there was resistance to the central government. When Jefferson Davis brought up the idea of Richmond raising taxes and conscription in order to support the war effort, those who were opposed said it gave Richmond too much power and it went against state’s rights which is why they seceded in the first place. Some asked what the point in secession was if Richmond was going to run roughshed over state’s rights like Washington did.
@another vet:
I believe close to 1/3 of free Southerns did own slaves, which isn’t exactly a tiny minority. For those who didn’t, many of them likely had hopes to one day be slave owners, so they may have supported the institution for aspirational or philosophical reasons. Other non-owners may have supported slavery simply because they were white supremacists. I agree there were likely many Southerners who didn’t support slavery, but research shows in areas with lower instances of slavery, there was lower support for secession (see the border states and West Virgina). Finally, we should acknowledge the fact that the decision to secede was driven by the small elite in power in the South. The common man’s opinion likely had very little to do with it.
@Tom:
If the Constitution guarantees a state the right to decide on the laws for its citizens as in the case of slavery or the federal government enacts a law that penalizes one group of states while rewarding another group of states as was the case with the cotton tariff, is that equal representation? That’s why I’m opposed to double standards when it comes down to enforcing laws. It really pisses people off to the point where they can, and in some cases will, resort to drastic measures especially if keeps up long enough which is what happened. And mind you, the North was also subject to this as well which inflamed passions on their side. Most of those compromises revolving around slavery favored the South to a small extent. By the time 1861 came around both sides were ready to take off the gloves.
As for taking up arms against fellow citizens, who invaded who? And no, I’m not a proponent of the “The War of Northern Aggression”. It seems to me that secession went rather peacefully. Had Lincoln withdrew from Sumter it wouldn’t have been bombed. He chose not to for political reasons knowing it would most likely be attacked just like there were political reasons for bombing the fort. Both sides didn’t want to be perceived as being weak. Each was looking for the other side to fire the first shot and the South complied. Know how many people were killed there? Zero. Think about it. The “event” that is attributed to triggering the most costly war in U.S. history was one that had ZERO deaths. No other war this country fought was started over an event causing fewer deaths. Can’t get any less than zero when talking about deaths!
Was war inevitable? Personally I don’t think so. It was probably evident to a lot people as far back as at least the Missouri Compromise which essentially created two countries. Someone who was forward thinking enough probably could have predicted it when the Constitution was signed.
@another vet:
Too many interesting points to respond to right now in detail, but let me reiterate that I have never claimed that slavery was the sole reason for the War. My issue is with those who want to downplay it, and turn secession into either a doomed romantic struggle against tyranny and injustice, or a dry legal debate over the Constitutional legality of secession. In both cases (particularly the first), downplaying, if not erasing, slavery from the conversation is a necessary tactic to making an argument that appears both logical and palatable to contemporary sensibilities, never mind moral or righteous. The problem is, it just won’t go away. It’s woven into every aspect, just like it was woven into every aspect of Southern life at that time.
@Tom:
Lincoln felt the same way. He believed what happened in the South was the result of a small minority of troublemakers. He called for the Union to raise an Army of 75,000 men for a period of 90 days to put down the insurrection. After 4 years and tens of thousands of casualties I’d say he grossly misjudged the average Southerner’s views about their desire for independence.
As for the 1/3 of Southerners owning slaves, according to the 1860 Census, the number is way high. Around 8% is more accurate unless you have another source. I’ve seen estimates as high as 25% and as low as 4.8%.
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html
@Tom:
That is in no way my intent or view.
another vet
after the slaves where freed, it was told that they became very poor,
because of lost of their jobs and food supplied and bed where some had all their family in one farm,
so it was said they found hard to live with the change,less taken care on their own,
and some who went to the northern cities had a worse deal than when they where slaves
and had a worse deal in finding work and many where mistreated by their boss,
many returned to where they work in farm as slaves to find the work they had ,
@MataHarley:
In my opinion it is our Federal government that is “revolting” 🙂
Certainly, a revolution is simply to revolt against authority, although “insurrection” would seem to me to be more appropriate.
One thing I left out in my earlier post, is a weak link in the use of unbreakable contract argument to deny the rights of a state to secede from the union. When one party of a contract is in breach of contract, then other parties have the right to declare said contract as null and void. By stepping beyond the established limited powers of the Federal government, and ignoring the 10th Amendment rights of the states and the people (respectively,) the Federal government is in breach of contract, providing just cause for the individual states to secede. The SCOTUS, being one branch of the trinity that forms the Federal government, as created by the Constitution, can not be considered an impartial party. As mentioned, those states that secede and form a new government would not necessarily be seen as residing within the jurisdiction of the nation that they have declared independence from. Therefore the authority of the SCOTUS Court to rule over members of a confederacy that left the union is questionable.
Often ignored is that there were abolitionists in the South as well as a good many of those state’s lower social level populous, whom saw slavery in much the same light as some of us today: who see illegal immigrants as unfair competition for employment.
@another vet:
AV, I assume you’re referring to the “percentage of families owning slaves” column, which I agree is the best metric. The 8% includes non-slavery states, which I believe is suppressing the percentage. I dropped this into Excel and if you filter only on the Confederate states, it’s 31%. If you include non-Confederate slave states, the percentage is 26%.
I completely understand and appreciate you sharing your perspective and obvious depth of knowledge on the subject and era.
@Ditto, I won’t argue that SCOTUS can be a frustrating critter on many occasions. Then again, for the majority of decisions they seem to get it right.
The problem with secession is the Constitution gives avenues for admitting a new State. It doesn’t address how States may withdraw. That does become a legal quandary which I don’t envy any judge to decide.
INRE the Salmon Chase court, and your observations (without any particular citation to back it up) that Lincoln influenced the Texas v White decision. Well, all I can say is that of course SCOTUS was Union aligned. It is the only country they swore an oath of allegiance to, right? One can’t even consider the possibility of it being Confederacy aligned. And, in fact, were there a recognized legal “Confederacy”, SCOTUS would have no jurisdiction to rule.
To this end, you believe that the Chase Court imagined legal rights merely to back Lincoln. That may, or may not, be true and we’ll never know with certainty. What we do know with certainty is that there is no provision to withdraw from the contract of Statehood short of avenues normally taken to break away from a ruling power… revolution. But even during revolution, is the union still a union, or not? And this was the questions before the court before they could address the Texas demand to get US bonds back that were sold by the Texas governing power during the rebellion. If the high court recognized that rebellion era governing power as legit, Texas would have been manure-out-of-luck. As it was, SCOTUS sided with Texas.
INRE the “re admission” issue that you say nullifies the court ruling, well I think that also is clear as mud. Truly, I will admit that all this stuff really gets up there in the ionosphere for clarity. But I don’t think it’s a cut and dried simple as you wish to portray. The US needs to recognize a State’s ruling government as legitimate, and the interim Confederacy governments of the southern States were not. Stands to reason since they aligned themselves with armed enemies of the Union. So I think the re admission issue relates more to formal recognition of the State government, and less about “undoing” a secession with a re admission. Remember, it wasn’t the same governing power.
Bottom line, for all SCOTUS decisions you don’t like, there’s only two avenues. You accept their ruling as a correct interpretation and petition Congress to do new legislation to fix the mess. Or you attempt revolution. But you either accept SCOTUS in it’s founding role, or you don’t. Always a mixed bag.
To your @follow up observations:
What breach of contract would that be? The southern states may not like the Morrell Tariff Act, and I don’t blame them one bit. But that’s hardly a breach of contract. Tariffs and duties are a Constitutional power of Congress in Article 1, Section 8. In this case, what is “weak” is your argument that unwanted tariffs were a breach of contract, or beyond federal Constitutional authority.
Now if you want to make an argument that secession was all about slavery, there may.. or not.. be really loose merit to that. Fact is, only four of the 13 Confederate States gave a formal reason for secession. Those four pretty much rested their case on slavery and states rights, which is what mostly likely gave rise to the “American Civil War all about Slavery” meme.
Well duh… of course. If they wanted legitimacy, they couldn’t say they wanted to renege on a statehood contract because of Constitutional authority for taxation/duties, could they? So they raced to “states rights” and slavery.
But don’t you find the timing odd when, all of the sudden, these states start complaining about slavery? Orders of statehood for the Confederate states show that all of these states knew about differing views on slavery before signing on. Even at that, slavery was (and I might add *unconstitutionally*) and remained a states right choice.
Was there a sudden onslaught of nation wide anti-slavery bills slated to come before a pre Lincoln or Lincoln era Congress and government? Nope. In fact, here’s an interactive gif showing the gradual/states rights progress towards anti slavery laws. The Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t until Sept 1862, well after the secessions.
But tariffs were on the table…
So why would states, willingly signing on to US statehood from 1788 to 1845 (Texas being the last Confederate state) – knowing full well they controlled slavery issues in the state (against the “all men created equal Constitution concept) – all of the sudden get a hair up their butt about slavery and “states rights” as a reason to secede?
Simple. It wasn’t the reason. Slavery they could do. Fight off onerous tariffs, they couldn’t. Look for any clause to get out…
The SCOTUS ruled as they did, Ditto. Like our Constitutional structure and founding? Deal with it. The only way you can change is is to petition Congress to write a new law to correct. Other than that, SCOTUS is part of our Constitution… even when you don’t agree with it.
And while the SCOTUS did not deal with specific reasons for secession in Texas vs White, the states would lose big time on a “states rights” argument to withdraw from a contract. But then, that was never their reason for doing so. It was all tariffs and duties.
@Tom:
That’s the column I was looking at. I’m not going to do the math for the entire Confederacy (not an Excel guru), but if you look at the percentage of slaveholders as a percentage of the Confederate population it would most likely be much lower. As an example, in Virginia, which had the most slaves and slave owners, the percent of Virginians owning slaves comes out to 3.27%. Naturally if you take into account families it’ll show more exposure to slavery than 3.27% would indicate.
One thing to keep in mind is that the various opinions/theories amongst historians (and I’m no historian) concerning the primary cause of the CW fluctuates with time. There are times when the economic theory is prominent. Other times it’s slavery. Other times it’s state’s rights. You’ll be happy to know from what I’ve been told that currently the prominent theory is the slavery one. I used to be in that boat until I researched more about the war and Antebellum America and switched to the state’s rights/Constitutional theory although I think the economic theory holds considerable weight as well. I had one history professor whose area of concentration was the CW, who believed the number one cause for the war was the Abolitionist movement in the North. This was coming from someone who described his politics as being slightly to the left of Bill Clinton and who had a bumper sticker on his car that said “Get over it” with a picture of the Confederate flag.
@ilovebeeswarzone: You are correct. Reconstruction didn’t go very well and in many cases both poor whites and former slaves were worse off economically than what they were when slavery existed. It lends support to the theory that the main cause of the war was economics.
A correction to my comment in #80 that I just caught. I believe war was inevitable. Must have been one of my dogs doing the typing!
@Ditto: The people in the hills in the South had little use for the big plantation owners. In many cases they despised them more than they did the “Yankees”. There were actually more than a few “battles” fought between them and the state militias.
The same can be said in the North. After the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, there were movements opposing the war because they felt slaves weren’t worth dying over. Even the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac, George McClellan, stated if the war ever became about slavery he wouldn’t support it. He even threatened to use federal troops under his command to put down any slave rebellions in the South. Keep in mind he was a very popular general with his troops who, running as a Democrat, opposed Lincoln in 1864.
@another vet:
Some time ago I was researching some questions I had on the pre-war South and came upon this little tidbit:
This is from a website that provides class material to AP students. This was under the “History” category. This crap (there is nothing else you can call it) is what is being taught to our public school students. I wonder how many of America’s students are being taught that there were BLACK slave holders? Blacks, who were freemen/previous slaves themselves, had no problem owning other blacks.
Years ago I subscribed to a magazine put out by the National Trust for Historical Preservation. I remember one issue that dealt with the slave ship captains that sailed out of the Eastern seaports that were, themselves, black. I have searched and searched for that article, but never could find it on the web. And it was not until the 13th Amendment was passed that New Jersey saw the emancipation of its last 16 slaves. Another historical fact that is not taught in our public schools.
Now, this history has been cleansed by some calling it “sympathy” slavery, or “benevolent” slavery, meaning that these black slave holders purchased other blacks simply out of sympathy for them and wanting to keep them out of the hands of evil “white” slaveholders. But that is just more revisionist history.
@retire05: PC history is definitely taught in schools. They have a tendency to leave out facts that contradict their theme as opposed to putting all the facts out and letting people decide for themselves. When I learned about the bombing of Ft. Sumter I always assumed there were heavy casualties given it triggered the war. It wasn’t until years later I found out on my own no one was killed. I found out my own that the South began emancipating its slaves in 1865 although some of the Southern states had begun doing so a lot earlier or that blacks actually served and fought on the side of the South during the war as early as 1861. It’s all well documented in the Official Records of the War of Rebellion. Most people are surprised to know that. Does that mean the South was right about slavery or that it was good? Of course not. But when educating people they need to be given all the facts on the given subject and not what is deemed “important” by someone who is most likely biased or perhaps ill informed themselves.
I hope we never have another republican or democratic president.
another vet
hi,
and when they where taken out by force and chained them in their boat, they called them SLAVES, THE ARABS gave them that name because their history was having made people slaves and they
came to do their bloody business
in AFRICA stole those PEOPLE and sold them abroad which the AMERICA was one among other,
the name slave they gave
stayed but no more true,
THE AMERICANS bought them and they needed hands so the name slaves was not true ,
they became workers for the money which was paid,THE SETTLERS WHERE NOT RICH IN MONEY, THEY WHERE RICH IN LAND,
the money the RANCHERS paid was made into a contract with those they bought to earn
their freedom meaning the cost to get them, by working for it, SO THE WORD SLAVE did not origin with the AMERICAN,
it started with the ARABS PROSPECTOR OF SLAVES, WHO for century had name their worker SLAVES,
so the name stayed but the living was not abusive on the whole, the new settlers had big land to work at and big family to help for it, but when those ARABS came and where selling them, the white where just as offended as you and me and bought them to free them when their contract expired
they fed them and gave them the needed resource so it was a fair exchange which is still the basis of today bonding between employers and employees that is the CAPITALIST, AND IT DID WORK for
AMERICA to become the greatest country of the WORLD, and take on the MOON TRIP
WHICH NOW A LEADER TRY TO CHANGE BACK INTO A SLAVE CITIZENRY, WHO JUST HAVE TO FOLLOW HIM AND VOTE HIM IN TO EXPAND HIS SLAVES NUMBERS, AND CROWD THIS NATION WITH NOT THE BEST IMMIGRANTS BUT THE OTHER WHO PROMOTE DRUGS TO OUR YOUNG AND PROFIT FROM IT,
the attack on THE PEOPLE, is not from ASSAD
it’s the ALQAEDA who did it to bring the horror ON A WORLD PUBLIC
so to win their support, and blamed ASSAD for the massacre,
we have follow their pattern of fighting since they moved in,
anything is possible so to win their war,they will use
the people they pretend to help, so to win,
@another vet:
If the point 0f the exercise is to get a sense as to how many Southerners were intimately familiar with the institution, I would think the family metric more useful, considering the entire family, not just the named owner, would have come into contact and benefited from the ownership. I think this still lowballs the the actual impact. In the deep south, where in some states nearly half the population were slaves, I’m sure there were many non-owners employed by owners on plantations, or in other related businesses,who came into daily contact, and economically benefited, with slavery.
True. The point I was, perhaps unsuccessfully, making is that the economic, the political and slave issues are all intertwined to such a degree as to make it nearly impossible to isolate one as a cause. You can’t strip out slavery from the South and say the economic reasons would have still been there, because the economy would have instantaneously collapsed.
In regards to the tariffs argument, you may find this person’s take interesting:
@retire05:
What a steaming load of feces. Do you have any proof to back your strawman claim that the history of black slave ownership has been dampened or erased from American history classes and texts? None other than Harvard’s own Robert Louis Gates Jr. has written about it on The Root, his article referencing other literature on the subject.
And to say that “blacks…. had no problem owning other blacks” is an odious and completely unsubstantiated generalization to make. A tiny fraction of free blacks (approximately .01%) owned a tiny fraction of the total slaves in bondage (less than .01%). In 1830, that’s about 13,000 out of 2,000,000. Is this the big coverup scandal you’re so worried about?
What sort of damaged, narcissistic ego can look back upon something as overwhelming as slavery in America and come away with only resentment and feelings of victimhood? It’s all about the PC hustlers apparently.
@Tom:
While I’ll agree that taxation without representation is a form of tyranny, it is not the only form. The reason we have the form of government we have, is that the founders feared a pure democracy in which the minority were at the will of the majority. States rights were always at the forefront in our Constitution. We are the United States, a union of separate and sovereign states. During the ratification conference in Virginia, Patrick Henry made this very clear. He was actually fighting against ratification because he feared the States were being done away with and a grand central government placed in their stead.
And so we have the 10th Amendment.
At the time, not so much. The north had way more people than the south and far more representation. The south felt the brunt of this lack of representation. But I like your use of the term same Constituition. Yes, we did have the same Constitution. But the federal government has been subverting the Constitution since its inception, with the Alien and Sedition Act. In 1789 the actually passed a law stating you could not say anything against the president. Granted, this was prior to Judicial Review was given to SCOTUS in 1803. But the 1st Amendment explicitly states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
I have to reject your premise. First, I believe any sovereign people have the right to declare their independence. We did it, people all around the world have done it. Great Britain is not the only country people can declare their independence from. The Southern States had no interest in fighting the North, only in secession. The right to self governance. After South Carolina seceded from the Union, the asked the federal government to surrender Fort Sumter. It was South Carolina’s land. The feds were given more than enough time to remove their troops; instead Lincoln decides to provision Fort Sumter. Had the federal troops left and Lincoln not declared war with the blockade, there would have been no fight.
It is not a recipe for anarchy. If the US dissolves into two, three, or even more federations, what is to keep these federations from being allies? We have 50 separate states and we get along fairly well now. What would stop that? If the 10th Amendment were adhered to before the Civil War and today, it wouldn’t even be an issue.
@Tom:
This is my point only that all of those issues and the right to secede can be lumped under a Constitutional issue.
Jackson was able to defuse the crisis by giving SC a way out (actually it was Henry Clay who negotiated the compromise). Part of the process was to isolate SC from the rest of the South because he was worried that the other Southern states would back them, especially in the event of war. Part of the way he isolated SC was by backing Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama in their quest to remove the five Indian tribes from their native lands. His official reasoning was that it was unconstitutional because you can’t have a state within a state. SCOTUS sided with the Indians. Jackson refused to enforce their decision and had the Indians forcibly removed and sent to Oklahoma via the Trail of Tears. In addition to isolating SC, he also needed the militias of the other Southern states in the event an invasion was needed because the U.S. Army didn’t have the manpower and most of it was stationed in the West to protect settlers from Indian raids.