A Majority in 32 States Agree

With Ron Paul that Lincoln was wrong to start and prosecute a war against the southern states when they seceded from the union. An act not prohibited to them by the Constitution - the act of going to war against states exercising their reserved rights is not a power delegated to the executive branch or the federal government in general. I challenge anyone to provide evidence to the contrary. Apparently the majority of folks in the less metropolitan states understand this concept.

Take a gander at the map of the poll results - everywhere that people still live with some degree of that quality that has been considered historically "American" the majority agree that Lincoln was wrong.

Samuel Chase (a signer of the Declaration of Independence) and Justice of the Suprime Court stated in Ware v. Hylton (3 Dallas 199 at 224 U.S. 1798)

In June, 1776, the convention on Virginia formaly declared that Virginia was a free, soveriegn and independent state and on the 4th of July 1776, following, the United States in Congress assembled declared the thirteen colonies free and independent States; and that as such they had full power to levy war, conclude peace etc. I consider this as a declaration, not that the United States jointly in a collective capacity were independent States etc. but that each of them was a soverign and independent State, that is each of them had a right to govern itself by its own authority and its own law, without any control from any other power on earth. [emphasis mine]

The Treaty of Paris 1783, concluding the American War of Independence, supports this conclusion:

His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.

Notice that Great Britian acknowledhes the independence of thirteen individual states as free and independent nations - not simply one joint government. The United States as a government was born from a contract between free and independent States and it was given only limited power to do specific things. As the 10th Amendment clearly states:

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.

The president did not and still does not have the power the use force against a state or states exercising their reserved rights - i.e. all rights of free and independent nations not specifically delegated to the Federal Government under the terms of the Constitution. Free and independent states are by definition free to enter into contracts and agreements and when they believe those agreements are no longer in their best interests they are free to leave those agreements. That is the meaning of being free and independent - any other definiton would inply that the states were captive and not free at all.

Alexis de Tocqueville the foremost observer of the creation of the American Republic, in Democracy in America, said:

The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States choose to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right.

President James Buchanan stated succinctly in a speech before Congress, December 1860 that the Constitution does not delegate to the Federal government the power to use force against a state:

The question fairly stated is, Has the Constitution delegated to Congress the power to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw or has actually withdrawn from the Confederacy? If answered in the affirmative, it must be on the principle that the power has been conferred upon Congress to declare and to make war against a State. After much serious reflection I have arrived at the conclusion that no such power has been delegated to Congress or to any other department of the Federal Government. It is manifest upon an inspection of the Constitution that this is not among the specific and enumerated powers granted to Congress, and it is equally apparent that its exercise is not " necessary and proper for carrying into execution " any one of these powers. So far from this power having been delegated to Congress, it was expressly refused by the Convention which framed the Constitution.

Lincoln himself spoke highly of secession at one point in his career (when it was pragmatic and met his own ideological objectives)

Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one which suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right-a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own so much of the territory as they inhabit.

This excerpt is taken from Lincoln's "If You Can Secede You May" (Mexico) speech, cited in Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), p. 450.

Clearly Mr. Lincoln was wrong to wage war against the South - he did not do it to free slaves for he never freed a single slave under his actual sphere of influence. Furthermore, slaver ended in every other Western nation without war, it was an intsitution destined to end in America as well without warfare. He invaded the South outside of his constitutional mandate and beyond his delegagted power to act. His actions caused the death of 400,000 Americans and in the minds of the uneducated and more nefariously those that wish to use the Federal Government for purposes that is was never created for changed our Republic into an empire.

Ron Paul was brave to answer Tim Russert correctly but it is more encouraging to see that many of my fellow Americans still understand history and the Constitution.