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Tag Archives | Civil War

Nationalism, Federalism and the Civil War

By on September 15, 2010 in History, Nullification 4

I often read blogs, articles, news “reports” and the like – where the commentator refers to the current 10th Amendment Movement with a comment like Hugh Holub in the Tucson Citizen:

“The Civil War was about the right of states to allow slavery. The Union won and slavery was outlawed.”

Obviously, the southern states wanted slavery, but in reading the original “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union” – one would find the ideas of nullification and states rights vs centralization to be the leading issue:

an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. [Emphasis Added]

Or how about Mississippi:

“[the North] has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.”

From this it seems quite obvious to me that the Civil War WAS about nullification and states rights – the northern states were utilizing them and the slavers in the South wanted central power to force their way on the whole country.

Totally opposite of how the mainstream mouthpieces would have us believe.

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The Death of Federalism: Lincoln’s Real Legacy

By on October 6, 2009 in Federalism, History 2

Any discussion of reclaiming freedom in America is pointless without an accurate understanding of how our rights were lost in the first place. The Real Lincoln, Professor Thomas DiLorenzo’s controversial book on the subject, makes a compelling case that it was Abraham Lincoln himself who set us on our present course.

From the book’s foreword by Walter E. Williams:

The War between the States settled by force whether states could secede. Once it was established that states cannot secede, the federal government, abetted by a Supreme Court unwilling to hold it to its constitutional restraints, was able to run amok over states’ rights, so much so that the protections of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean little or nothing today.

the-real-lincoln

Since its publication in 2002, there have been many supposed rebuttals of The Real Lincoln, but none that credibly addresses damning historical evidence of the war’s origins, President Lincoln’s motives, or his documented usurpation of constitutional liberty.

Contrary to assertions by Lincoln apologists and the man himself, no serious person could believe that the founders, having just won a war of secession over England prior to writing our Constitution, ever intended the Union to nullify the sovereignty of the states or constitutional liberties to be suspended at the whim of the first chief executive who found them politically inexpedient.

But as DiLorenzo and history make clear, Lincoln did not fight the bloodiest war of the nineteenth century, against his own people and at a cost of 620,000 American lives, to free the slaves. He fought it to set a precedent of federal supremacy over the states. And in the process turned his apparent belief that the ends justify the means into federal dogma.

The Real Lincoln offers perhaps the most lucid diagnosis to date of the disease of centralization that is currently devouring the soul of this country. The principles of the Tenth Amendment and federalism are its only cure.

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