GOTS: No South African Contact?

[History Learner]

You are misrepresenting and misinterpreting what is written even when you directly post from a text. This is a pattern that you consistently do across topics on this forum. The text you cite does not say that the Confederate Constitution prohibited secession. It did not in fact, do that, and the source you are citing here makes no such claim. It just says that it didn't codify any such right.

The Confederate Constitution did not prohibit secession. It did not include language explicitly allowing secession but there was a belief on the part of the participants in the drafting of the Confederate Constitution that the United States Constitution implicitly allowed secession. Where they altered the Preamble you are citing they did so in a manner so as to emphasize the independence and sovereignty of individual states, against the ambiguity of 'We the People of the United States'.

I think you can probably figure out what events occurred between 1861 and 1869 that would make Texas v. White irrelevant to the matter at hand. The Constitution of the Confederate States in no way prohibited secession and there is no reasonable reading of the historical text which would lead one to conclude that it did.

There is definitely a debate to be had about how the Confederate Constitution would have performed in peacetime and how any surviving Confederacy would weigh the balance between states' right and the powers of a national government- but there is no room to claim that the Constitution of the Confederate States as written prohibited secession or that the founders of the Confederacy believed they had drafted a document which would have prohibited secession.

I'm not misrepresenting or misinterpreting anything, unless of course definitions have changed such that "the constitution did not provide for secession by individual states" no longer means exactly. If we're going off legal definitions, as you suggested in your prior post, then looking at Texas v. White is rather critical, given it can guide us on how contemporary legal opinion on the word choice was. I get this is your strongly held opinion, but equally there is evidence and analysis by political scholars/historians that hold it was the opposite of what you propose and I've done you the curtesy of citing that.

Likewise, you can interrogate this premise from actions, not just words. You conceded earlier there were at least two different attempts to explicitly codify secession; if the Confederate Constitution did allow for secession as you assert, why were these attempts even necessary if this right was commonly understood? Even better, why did both attempts fail? As numerous political scholars have asserted, and I've cited a few already in this thread, most of the State's Rights rhetoric was merely cosmetic and for propaganda purposes that gave way to an extremely centralized and powerful national government. There is a reason why The Atlantic calls the Confederacy an Antidemocratic, Centralized State.

 

[JesterBL]

If we're going off legal definitions, as you suggested in your prior post, then looking at Texas v. White is rather critical, given it can guide us on how contemporary legal opinion on the word choice was.

You're being intentionally obtuse given that you used the word banned (which is not what the source you are citing says) and you used a completely different argument than in the text you cited but also apparently you do need to be told what happened between 1861 and 1869. An 1869 legal opinion is an opinion that is not contemporary in any but the barest sense to a legal opinion in 1861, when one of the very questions at stake (secession) had been decided by the force of arms in the largest conflict in North America to that time and since. A Reconstruction Era decision by the United States Supreme Court has no bearing on how the Constitution of the Confederate States would have been implemented or interpreted.

The idea that you shouldn't enumerate rights which are already self-evident is foundational to many of the constitutional debates in the United States, since before even the drafting of the US Constitution.The Confederates explicitly writing in a right to secede would also be conceding that it hadn't been in the US Constitution to begin with (many of their changes to the Constitution were based on sincere if regionally-centered reform efforts, and they knew those were novelties) and would be opening it up to a greater narrowing than merely leaving it among the rights and powers not enumerated to the independent and sovereign states of the Confederacy.

You're not winning any points by pointing out that the Confederacy was an anti-democratic state (which I agree with- I'm not a Lost Causer and I believe that attempts to maintain slavery as an institution reigned higher than any other lofty ideal in the founding of the Confederacy and, allohistorically, would reign higher in any and all attempts to maintain the slaver's republic) that did, to a great degree, adopt powers at the level of government they claimed to despise- although as the source you cite goes to great pains to point out- the Confederate Constitution was never in effect during peacetime. By far the most interesting part of the Confederate Constitution- beyond the grab-bag of genuine reformist ideas and the more specific language around slavery and the symbolic changes to things like the Preamble- is the deep anxiety around slave rebellions embedded in the document- and which are the most likely source of a Constitutional crisis in a post-war Confederacy. But it's simply false to claim that the Confederate Founders were so brazen as to ban secession in the document of their founding. They did not.

 

[History Learner]

You're being intentionally obtuse given that you used the word banned (which is not what the source you are citing says) and you used a completely different argument than in the text you cited but also apparently you do need to be told what happened between 1861 and 1869. An 1869 legal opinion is an opinion that is not contemporary in any but the barest sense to a legal opinion in 1861, when one of the very questions at stake (secession) had been decided by the force of arms in the largest conflict in North America to that time and since.

If a legal mechanism is not provided, which it was not, then it is illegal and thus banned. How exactly can something happen without a mechanism in place for such?

A Reconstruction Era decision by the United States Supreme Court has no bearing on how the Constitution of the Confederate States would have been implemented or interpreted.

Texas v. White gives an idea of what the word choice (and thus legal meaning of said words) was understood to mean by those in the contemporary times. No one is claiming a time machine from 1869 to 1861 existed but, rather, the word choice used was understood to have a specific meaning at the time.

The idea that you shouldn't enumerate rights which are already self-evident is foundational to many of the constitutional debates in the United States, since before even the drafting of the US Constitution.The Confederates explicitly writing in a right to secede would also be conceding that it hadn't been in the US Constitution to begin with (many of their changes to the Constitution were based on sincere if regionally-centered reform efforts, and they knew those were novelties) and would be opening it up to a greater narrowing than merely leaving it among the rights and powers not enumerated to the independent and sovereign states of the Confederacy.

You're not winning any points by pointing out that the Confederacy was an anti-democratic state (which I agree with- I'm not a Lost Causer and I believe that attempts to maintain slavery as an institution reigned higher than any other lofty ideal in the founding of the Confederacy and, allohistorically, would reign higher in any and all attempts to maintain the slaver's republic) that did, to a great degree, adopt powers at the level of government they claimed to despise- although as the source you cite goes to great pains to point out- the Confederate Constitution was never in effect during peacetime. By far the most interesting part of the Confederate Constitution- beyond the grab-bag of genuine reformist ideas and the more specific language around slavery and the symbolic changes to things like the Preamble- is the deep anxiety around slave rebellions embedded in the document- and which are the most likely source of a Constitutional crisis in a post-war Confederacy. But it's simply false to claim that the Confederate Founders were so brazen as to ban secession in the document of their founding. They did not.

I get that's your opinion, but I've already cited Donald L. Stelluto saying that's not the case. What are his qualifications?

Donald L. Stelluto, Jr. is the Executive Director of the Kellogg Institute for​

International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. in U.S.​

constitutional history from the University of Maryland, College Park and he specializes​

in U.S. constitutional history and the nineteenth century, with a focus on the American​

Civil War era. Dr. Stelluto is the author of several articles on western legal history, the​

American South, and the Civil War era, and co-editor, with Vittorio Hosle, of The Idea of​

a Catholic Institute for Advanced Study. His current project, “A light that reveals its true​

meaning,” is a book-length examination of legal and constitutional developments in the​

Confederacy. He is the project leader and a member of a collaborative team awarded a​

$1.58 million research award in 2012 from the John Templeton Foundation.​

I freely admit I don't have a PhD in Constitutional Studies, nor am I an expert in Confederate Constitutional developments. Dr Stelluto does, however, and I've already cited him on the matter. I think at this point the best we can agree on is to agree to disagree here.

 

[JesterBL]

If a legal mechanism is not provided, which it was not, then it is illegal and thus banned. How exactly can something happen without a mechanism in place for such?

I don't know if maybe there is a language barrier or what, but this is nonsensical within the context of American constitutional law and English common law.

I would strongly recommend you go read the actual text of the Confederate Constitution. Here's an example from the text which directly undercuts the entire logic of what you've said here (and you'll note is more or less lifted from the US Constitution):

Article VI

5. The enumeration, in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people of the several states.

6. The powers not delegated to the Confederate States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people thereof.

I get that's your opinion, but I've already cited Donald L. Stelluto saying that's not the case. What are his qualifications?

The person you are citing's qualifications don't matter one bit when you're arguing something completely different than what they themselves said. You don't get qualifications by osmosis because you cited him adjacent to misinterpreting him. He never said that secession was banned by the Confederate Constitution.