Why the Cherokees Sided With the Confederacy in 1861

(Excerpted from Mike Scruggs’ book, THE UN-CIVIL WAR; Chapter 8: “The Cherokee Declaration of Independence”)

Most Americans have been propagandized rather than educated on the causes of the War Between the States (aka, The War of Northern Aggression; aka, The War to Prevent Southern Independence; aka, the Civil War) in order to exonerate the perpetrators and victors and justify their actions. But the truth is out there for anyone willing to take the time to do some reading.

The true perspective comes from the South, for it was the Confederate states who were the ones standing up and fighting for principle. If the truths and ideals articulated in the Declaration of Independence were still going to mean anything, the Confederacy would have to fight for them. In Chapter 8 of his book, THE UN-CIVIL WAR, Mike Scruggs discusses the views of the Cherokees with respect to the splitting of the country in 1860-61 uses those views to support the truth of the war.

In 1861, there were two principal groups of Cherokees in the United States – the Western Band, with a population of slightly over 20,000, and the smaller Eastern Band, located in North Carolina, with a population of only about 2000. Both sided with the Confederacy, but the larger Western Band made a formal Declaration of Independence from the United States.

On August 21, 1861, the Western Cherokee Nation, by a General Convention in Tahlequah (Oklahoma), declared its common cause with the Confederate States against the Northern Union. A treaty was concluded on October 7 between the Confederate States and the Cherokee Nation and on October 9, John Ross, the Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation called into session the Cherokee National Committee and National Council to approve and implement that treaty and a future course of action.

The Cherokee had much more in common with their Confederate neighbors than with the North, but their treaties had been with the government of the United States (now the Northern Union). At first they thought best to honor those treaties. But with the invasion of its neighbors, the repression of free speech and press by Lincoln, the complete trampling of the US Constitution, and the support the North had given to individuals and groups leading up to the war (such as John Brown) who urged violence against the South, the Cherokee soon changed their mind.

The Cherokee were perhaps the best educated and literate of the American Indian tribes. They were also among the most Christian. Learning and wisdom were highly esteemed. They revered the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution as particularly important guarantees of their rights and freedoms, just as Southerners did.  It is not surprising therefore that on October 28, 1861, the National Council of the Western Cherokee Nation issued its own Declaration of Independence –  Declaration of the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Compelled Them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America.

The introductory words of this Declaration strongly resembled the 1776 Declaration of Independence:

“When circumstances beyond their control compel one person to sever the ties which have long existed between them and another state or confederacy, and to contract new alliances and establish new relations for the security of their rights and liberties, it is fit that they should publicly declare the reasons by which their action is justified.”

In the next paragraph, the Council noted the Cherokee Nation’s faithful adherence to  treaties with the United States its attempts at neutrality in the face of the hostilities between the North and the South. But the seventh paragraph began to articulate their alarm at the North’s aggression and their sympathy with the South: “But Providence rules the destinies of nations, and events, by inexorable necessity, overrule human resolutions.”

Comparing the relatively limited objectives and defensive nature of the Southern cause to the aggressive actions of the North, the Declaration included this observation:

“Disclaiming any intention to invade the Northern States, they (the Southern States) sought only to repel the invaders from their own soil and to secure the right to govern themselves. They claimed only the privilege asserted in the Declaration of American Independence, and on which the right of the Northern States themselves to self-government is formed, and altering their form of government when it became no longer tolerable and establishing new forms for the security of their liberties.”

The next paragraph noted the orderly and democratic process by which each of the Confederate States seceded. This was without violence or coercion and nowhere were liberties abridged or civilian courts and authorities made subordinate to the military. The following (ninth) paragraph contrasted this with the ruthless and totalitarian trends in the North:

“But in the Northern States, the Cherokee people saw with alarm a violated Constitution, all civil liberty put in peril and all rules of civilized warfare and the dictates of common humanity and decency unhesitatingly disregarded. In the states which still adhered to the Union, a military despotism had displaced civilian power and the laws became silent with arms. Free speech and almost free thought became a crime. The right of habeas corpus, guaranteed by the Constitution, disappeared at the nod of the Secretary of State or even a general of the lowest grade. The mandate of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was at naught (negated) by the military power and this outrage on common rights was approved by a President sworn to support the Constitution. War on the largest scale was waged and immense bodies of troops called onto the field in the absence of any warranting it, all under the pretense of suppressing a rebellion.”

The tenth paragraph continued the indictment of the Northern political party in power (the Republican Party) and the conduct of the Union Armies:

“The humanities of war, which even barbarians respect, were no longer thought worthy to be observed. Foreign mercenaries and the scum of the cities and the inmates of prisons were enlisted and organized into brigades and sent into Southern States to aid in subjugating a people struggling for freedom, to burn, to plunder, and to commit the basest of outrages on the women. While the heels of armed tyranny trod upon the necks of Maryland and Missouri, men of the highest character and position were incarcerated upon suspicion without process of law, in jails, forts, and prison ships, and even women were imprisoned by the arbitrary orders of a President and Cabinet Ministers. The press ceased to be free and the publication of newspapers was suspended and their issues seized and destroyed. The officers and men taken as prisoners in the battles were allowed to remain in captivity by the refusal of the Government to consent to an exchange of prisoners. They left their dead on more than one field of battle that had witnessed their defeat, to be buried and to have their wounded to be cared for by Southern hands.”

The eleventh paragraph of the Cherokee Declaration is a fairly concise summary of their grievances against the political powers then presiding over a new US Government:

“Whatever causes the Cherokee people may have had in the past to complain of some of the Southern States, they cannot but feel that their interests and destiny are inseparably connected to those of the South. The war now waging is a war of Northern cupidity and fanaticism against the institution of African servitude, against the commercial freedom of the South, and against the political freedom of the States, and its objects are to annihilate the sovereignty of those states and utterly change the nature of the general government.”

Finally, appealing to their inalienable right to self-defense and self-determination as a free people, the Cherokee concluded their Declaration with the following words:

“Obeying the dictates of prudence and providing for the general safety and welfare, confident in the rectitude of their intentions, and true to their obligations to duty and honor, they accept the issue thus forced upon then, unite their fortunes now and forever with the Confederate States, and take up arms for the common cause, and having complete confidence in the justice of that cause, and with a firm reliance upon Divine Providence, will resolutely abide the consequences.”

The Eastern Band of Cherokee made no such formal declaration, but considered themselves North Carolinians and were anxious to join Confederate forces in defending their state and the Southern cause. The Eastern Band Chief, Col. William H. Thomas, a North Carolina State Senator, gathered 416 Cherokee braves to form the core of what later became the Thomas Legion. They were joined by about 1,900 North Carolina mountain men. Thomas, of Welsh descent, was the adopted white son of the late Eastern Band Chief, Yanaguska (“Drowning Bear”). He is said to have spoken the Cherokee language better than any white man that ever lived. The Cherokees had come to have great respect for his wisdom and relentless hard work on their behalf in North Carolina. It should be noted that the Cherokee braves that served in the Thomas Legion represented almost every single male of military age in their small population. They served very faithfully with only about a dozen known to have deserted.

Both Cherokee bands proved their courage and loyalty. The last shot fired in the war east of the Mississippi was fired on May 6, 1865. This was in an engagement at White Sulfur Springs, near Waynesville, NC, in which part of Thomas’ Legion fought against Union Army Colonel George W. Kirk’s infamous Union Raiders. Kirk’s Raiders had engaged in a campaign of murderous terrorism and destruction on the civilian population of western North Carolina. It took some effort at the end of the war for Thomas to persuade his Cherokee braves to surrender rather than continue guerrilla warfare against the Union.

In the West, Confederate Brigadier General and Cherokee Chief, Stand Watie’s mounted infantry regiments became a legend for their guerilla cavalry tactics, baffling and diverting a great number of Union troops. On June 23, 1865, in what was the last land battle of the war, Brigadier General Watie finally surrendered his predominantly Cherokee (Oklahoma) Indian force to the Union.

The issues as the Cherokees saw them were many-fold:

(1)  The Right of Self-Defense, against Northern aggression, both for themselves and their fellow Confederate neighbors and friends

(2)  The Right of Self-Determination by a free people, recognized in the Declaration of Independence

(3)  Protection of their Government of Law (their Rule of Law)

(4)  Preservation of their political rights under a constitutional government

(5)  A strong desire to retain the principles of limited government and decentralized power guaranteed by the Constitution

(6)  Protection of their economic rights and their welfare

(7)  Dismay at the despotism of the party (Republican Party) and leaders in command of the US government

(8)  Dismay at the ruthless disregard of commonly-accepted rules of warfare by the Union, especially their treatment of civilians and non-combatants

(9)  A fear of economic exploitation by corrupt politicians and their supporters based on observed past experience (harsh protective tariffs)

(10) Alarm at the self-righteous and extreme, punitive, and vengeful pronouncements on the slavery issue voiced by the radical abolitionists and supported by many Northern politicians, journalists, and social and religious leaders

The Cherokee Declaration of Independence of October 1861 uncovers a far more complex set of “Civil War” issues than most Americans have been taught. Rediscovered truth is not always welcome. Indeed, some of the issues addressed by the Cherokee Nation are so distressing that the general academic, media, and public reaction is to rebury them or to (intellectually) shout them down as politically incorrect.

The notion that slavery was the only real or even principal cause of the war is very politically correct and widely-held, but not historically correct. It amounts to historical ignorance. The version of the war taught to our children in the public schools and even in our universities – that slavery was the cause of the Civil War – has served, however, as a convenient ex-post facto justification for the North’s decision to instigate war on the Confederate States and its brutal conduct in prosecuting its war. Slavery was an issue, of course, but it was by no means the only issue, or even the most important underlying issue. It was not even an issue in the way most people think of it. Only about 25% of Southern households owned slaves. For most people, North and South, the slavery issue was not one that touched them in their personal or economic lives. The slavery issue was not so much whether to keep it or not, but how to phase it out without causing economic and social disruption and disaster. Unfortunately, since slavery was an institution in the Southern States and since it was protected in the US Constitution, those states believed that the decisions as to how to phase it out and to deal with the resulting economic and social issues should have been left to them – not to radical abolitionists or to the federal government.

After the (unconstitutional) Reconstruction Acts were passed in 1867, the radical abolitionists and radical Republicans, both equally evil-intentioned, were able to issue in a shameful era of politically-punitive and economic exploitative oppression in the South, the results of which lasted many years, including the birth of the Jim Crow/segregationist era.  The sins that the country often associate with the South are often, in reality, the policies and actions of the North.

The Cherokee were – and are – a remarkable people who have impacted the American heritage far beyond their numbers. As this commentary shows, they were remarkably patriotic as well. We can be especially grateful that they made a well-thought out and articulate Declaration of Independence in support of the Confederate cause in 1861 and in joining their defense.

 

To Purchase Lawrence (“Mike”) Scruggs’ book, THE UN-CIVIL WAR:  Amazon –  https://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Shattering-Historical-Myths/dp/098343560X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517505890&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=Lawrence+Scruggs%2C+The+Un-Civil+War

The Truth About the 13th Amendment

Excerpted from Lawrence “Mike” Scrugg’s book, The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths (Chapter 7: “The First Thirteenth Amendment”). 2011, Universal Media (Charlotte, NC) –  with some additions and commentary by Diane Rufino

Mike Scrugg’s book, THE UN-CIVIL WAR, is an excellent book – an excellent reflection on the causes, treatment, and aftermath of the Civil War. I am posting this excerpt, which is the entire seventh chapter of the book (“The First Thirteenth Amendment’) for the primary purpose of introducing you to this book and encouraging you to purchase it and read it.

Ludwell H. Johnson used the words The American Illiad in the subtitle for his comprehensive book on the American “civil war,” entitled NORTH AGAINST SOUTH. The Iliad analogy is very appropriate for two reasons. First, the war was a traumatic, bloody, and nation-changing event. The enormous casualties and destruction alone would sear its battles, personalities, and tales of heroism into America’s memory. Second, what most Americans know about the causes of the war is pious myth.

Most Americans are at least vaguely aware that the 13^th Amendment to the US Constitution passed by Congress and approved by the States in December 1865 following the “civil war” abolished slavery. But this was actually the second 13^th Amendment. The US House of Representatives had passed, with the required 2/3 majority, a 13^th amendment on February 28, 1861. This same amendment was passed by the US Senate on March 2, 1861. It was then send to the States for final approval. As per Article V of the Constitution. 3/4 of the States must approve the amendment before it can officially become part of, and hence “amend,” the Constitution. Two days after the Senate’s approval of the amendment, the newly-elected president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, promised to support it in his inaugural speech.

But what was this first 13^th Amendment and what became of it?  Here is the wording:

“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of such State.”

The first 13^th Amendment would have forever prohibited any Constitutional change that interfered with slavery in any state!

Lincoln endorsed this amendment, which would have permanently engraved slavery into the Constitution by two statements in his inaugural address:  First, self-quoting what he had written earlier to New York Tribune editor, Horace Greeley: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”

Later in the speech, he specifically promised to support this first 13^th Amendment with these words: “I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution has passed Congress to the effect that the federal government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose, not to speak of particular amendments, so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”

In other words, Lincoln had no problem with an amendment which would have prohibited the federal government from interfering with slavery in the States!  In addition, he felt the Constitution already prohibited the federal government from interfering with slavery in the States !!!

The reason for this first 13^th Amendment was, of course, to reassure the Southern States that were threatening to leave the Union that there was not and never would be any danger of Congressional or federal interference with slavery in the States. [Remember that by the time the Senate approved the amendment, seven Southern States had already seceded from the Union – South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas]. The slavery question was a concern to the Southern States, of course. The South had an agrarian society and its economy was supported by the exporting of its crops. The Northern States had gradually phased out slavery, but then again, there had been but a few slaves in the North. Phasing out slavery in the North was a much less daunting social and economic endeavor. It would be an enormous undertaking in the South. The calls of radical abolitionists in the North for immediate abolition of slavery regardless of the economic cost to the South and heedless of the hardship it would suddenly inflict on the slaves themselves, though not really a prevalent Northern sentiment, was a worry to the South. Slavery was by no means universally popular in the South, and many Southern States and individual Southerners were already struggling with how they might phase out the institution of slavery without devastating the Southern economy. But Southern States preferred to handle the slavery question when, if, and however they saw fit. Like Lincoln and many other political leaders in the North, the South considered how to handle the slavery question to be the Constitutional right of each State respectively.

Slavery was an issue that caused tensions between North and South, but it was by no means the only issue. If slavery was the only crucial issue, the South had no reason to secede. The first 13^th Amendment would have guaranteed the question in their favor.

But there were other important issues to the South… more important ones.  One enormous issue was the question of the protective tariffs and in particular, the Morrill Tariff that had been passed by the predominantly Northern Congress with the support of only one Southern congressman. It was passed by the Senate and signed by President Buchanan only two days before Lincoln took office, and Lincoln pledged to support it. The Morrill Tariff, like others in the past, was a severe economic hardship to the agricultural South (in particular to South Carolina and the Gulf States), but a protective benefit for the industrial North – for its manufacturers. To make matters worse, most of the revenue was collected at Southern ports but subsequently used to the benefit of Northern States. In other words, the South was being plundered for the benefit of the North. To look at it a different way, the federal government, which was supposed to be a common government for ALL the States, to serve their interests equally, was effecting policy to benefit only one section of the country, while knowingly and intentionally harming another. Southern States were furious over this tariff, which had just been raised from an average under 20% to an average which would reach 47% (and would affect more items). The Morrill Tariff was part of Lincoln’s and the Republican Party’s campaign platform. In fact, Lincoln further endorsed the Tariff in his inaugural speech and strongly implied that even if the South seceded, the tax would be collected by the Union Navy at Southern ports.

There were other issues as well. North and South had developed different views of government. The South favored the limited and decentralized federal government of the Constitution, but the North was strongly tending towards a powerful centralized government. Early in the years of the American republic, the South and especially Virginia had dominated national politics. But massive waves of immigration to Northern manufacturing States now made them much more populous and politically dominant. Between 1845 and 1855 more than 1.5 million Irish adults and children alone emigrated to America (because of the great potato famine).  And then there was the outright hostility and even violence towards the South. John Brown and his sons butchered 5 pro-slavery settlers in Kansas and then led a raid on Harpers Ferry. The radical abolitionists exhibited unmitigated hatred of all things southern and continued to aggravate tensions.

The first 13^th Amendment became a moot issue, though, after the firing on Fort Sumter and then Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops to invade the South. The outbreak of the “civil war” that would claim the lives of over 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers and as many as 50,000 Southern civilians effectively cancelled the first 13^th Amendment.

On March 2, 1861, the same day the first 13^th Amendment was passed by the Senate, another Amendment to the Constitution was also proposed. This amendment would have outlawed secession. This is a good indication that most of Congress indeed realized that the right of secession was implied when the Constitution was originally ratified by the States and effectively reinforced by the 10^th Amendment. If that wasn’t so, why would they attempt to outlaw it?  In fact, textbooks used at West Point for years before the war had explained the validity of the right of secession.

Indeed,  most members of Congress understood each State had a fundamental right to secede (as the colonies did from Great Britain in declaring their independence). Lincoln himself, at one time, believed the same. As a junior representative from Illinois, Lincoln addressed Congress on the Mexican-American War, asserting that the US should take only that portion of the Texas territory that represents the desire of the people to secede from Mexico (and not the additional 500,000 square miles of land from Mexico it was seeking – territory comprising Arizona, New Mexico, and California; otherwise, the US would be imperialistic).  On January 1848, he spoke these words: “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 that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.”  [http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-war-with-mexico-speech-in-the-united-states-house-of-representatives/ ]

Yet, when the Southern States actually exercised this fundamental of sovereign states’ rights and left the Union, Lincoln had a change of heart. All of a sudden, he no longer recognized secession as an “inherent” or “natural” sovereign right. And this was a problem, because he was the president and as it always seems to be, the views of the president become the views of the government.  In his first Inaugural Address, he articulated his “new understanding” of the right of secession:

“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. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.

Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it–break it, so to speak–but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?   Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was “to form a more perfect Union.”  (First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861; http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/lincoln1.asp ]

The notion of a States’ right of secession – to withdraw from the Union – HAD to be dispelled and de-legitimized if Lincoln was to be able to claim power to preserve the Union and then make good on that promise. There could be no rightful exercise of federal power to force the States to remain together when the States possessed (reserved) the supreme sovereign power, restated by the 10^th Amendment, to withdraw from the Union.

On July 22, 1861, the now Northern only Congress passed a joint resolution (“The Crittenden-Johnson Resolutions on the Objects of the War, 1861”) defining the federal government’s goals in the war:

“Resolved.. That the present deplorable civil war has been forced upon the country by the dis-unionists of the Southern States now in revolt against the constitutional Government and in arms around the capital; that in this national emergency Congress, banishing all feelings of mere passion or resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole country; That this war is not being prosecuted upon our part in any spirit of oppression, not for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and all laws made in pursuance thereof and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.”

In other words, the Northern Congress stated in that resolution that preserving the Union and NOT interfering with the institution of slavery was the purpose of the war.

Later, on August 22, 1861, Lincoln explained his thinking on the war to editor, Horace Greeley, an abolitionist:

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some an leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps save the Union.”

Nearly two years into the war, in September 1862, Lincoln found it expedient to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. This proclamation actually freed no slaves in any territory under Union control. It was done primarily as a war measure. Lincoln hoped that the Proclamation would encourage slave uprisings in the South, thus causing Confederate troops to be diverted. The overwhelming majority of the slaves, however, proved remarkably loyal to the families of their Southern masters, most of which were away in the Confederate Army. Some say that it was also to please the anti-slavery British and thus keep them from coming into the war on the side of the South. The British did not come into the war on the side of the South, but they were also not so stupid as to be fooled by this ruse. The North, after all, imposed the protective tariffs on the South, which had harmed trade with Great Britain. Though the Proclamation had disappointing military results, and only made the British more skeptical of Northern intentions, it did please those radical abolitionists who did not seem to mind the hypocrisy of a document that did not free a single slave in Southern territory occupied by the Union Army. After a period of discontent in the North and in the Union Army over the Proclamation, the abolition of slavery began to be used to bolster the moral purpose of the war. Ever since then, it has been a prime propaganda tool justifying and glorifying the war as a just and noble and moral cause.

However, as can easily be seen in the first 13^th Amendment, Lincoln’s speeches, and Congressional resolutions, slavery cannot be said to have been the cause of the war. It was an issue causing much tension, but it was not the cause of the war. These tensions are very much misunderstood today. Contrary to current misinformed public opinion, most Northern objections to slavery were not really of a high moral tone. Many Northern States, such as Lincoln’s Illinois, severely restricted the possibility of any Blacks, free or slave, taking up residence within their borders. Ohio and Indiana even prohibited free Blacks from even entering their states. Northern attitudes towards Blacks that drove much of the “Free State vs. Slave State” controversy can best be summarized by an October 16, 1854 quote by Abraham Lincoln himself:

“Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted with them.”

A common, but practical solution of what to do with the emancipated slaves was colonization (repatriation). That meant sending them back to Africa or to Central America. Lincoln himself was strongly in favor of colonization. Lincoln was a great admirer of Senator Henry Clay, who first proposed the colonization solution in 1827. Lincoln frequently stated his advocacy of colonization and spoke to black pastors and leaders about it, and on December 1, 1862, in a message to Congress, stated: “I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization.”

This was undoubtedly spoken to reassure Northern politicians who were uneasy with the possible migratory consequences of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Lincoln opposed slavery and was in favor of gradual, compensated emancipation and colonization. But he obviously considered the Union (preserved) and Northern business interests a much higher priority than eliminating slavery. To his credit, he recognized and hated the dangerous fanaticism of the radical abolitionists. But all the current and post-war talk (propaganda) about the war being a noble crusade to free the slaves and of Lincoln being the great Emancipator is a shameless fraud.

Preserving the Union was the principal purpose stated by the North. That might be called noble – if using violence, killing 620,000 young men, killing women and children (civilians), starving families by killing livestock and scorching the land, and forcing states to bear a subservient and exploited status in an unwanted and, to them, an unprofitable Union at gunpoint can be called ‘noble.” The North had more than just territory in mind when it said it wanted to preserve the Union. Loss of the Southern States would mean loss of most of the tax revenue, of which over 90% came from the tariff duties that were paid by the South States and so burdened them. They would also have to compete with the South’s proposed free-trade policies, which would have wreaked economic havoc on the North, just as the protective tariff had wreaked economic havoc on the South. The South would have gained economically by independence, whereas the North would have lost considerably both in tax revenues and in trade.

The real reason Lincoln sought to preserve the Union was to preserve the ability of the federal government to continue collecting tariff revenue from the Southern States. He admitted as much when he was sworn in as president.  Referring back to the section of his first Inaugural Address above where he dispelled the right of the States to secede from the Union, he continued:

“It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it……   I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.  In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.”

Notice that when he spoke the words “the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself” he is really declaring that the federal government has as its primary purpose the obligation to ensure its preservation. This is in absolute, direct contradiction to the cherished principles of the Declaration of Independence.

Despite the tension that divided the South from the North, beginning in 1828, over the protective tariffs (recall the Nullification Crisis which nearly precipitated secession in 1832) and the concerns of South Carolina over Lincoln’s (and the Republican Party’s) platform in the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln chose to ignore such concerns in his Inaugural Address. He said: “One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.”

The so-called “Civil War” was not really a civil war after all. A civil war implies that both sections of the “same country” were fighting for control of the same government. The South had seceded from that government; it wanted nothing more to do with it. Two names for the war are fare more appropriate:  For the South, it was the “War for Southern Independence” and for the North, it was the “War to Prevent Southern Independence.” It was not a glorious crusade to free slaves. Unfortunately, most Americans today accept the pious fraud that the “Civil War” was all about ending slavery. The first 13^th Amendment, however, provides shattering documentary evidence disproving that cherished humbug.

 

To Purchase THE UN-CIVIL WAR:  Amazon –  https://www.amazon.com/Civil-War-Shattering-Historical-Myths/dp/098343560X/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517505890&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=Lawrence+Scruggs%2C+The+Un-Civil+War

QUESTION: Was – Is – Secession Legal?

by Diane Rufino, but based in large part on Leonard “Mike” Scruggs book THE UN-CIVIL WAR, January 19. 2018

On July 4, 1776, thirteen British colonies announced their secession from Great Britain and declared to the world their just reasons: “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separate.” (paragraph 1 of the Declaration of Independence)

The Declaration of Independence (second paragraph) goes on to say: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness….”

The Declaration then goes o to list numerous grievances against the British Crown and Parliament. Most of these have to do with the British Crown and Parliament usurping the powers of the colonial legislatures, but mention is made of the King keeping troops among the colonists in times of peace, quartering British troops, cutting off colonial trade with the rest of the world, taxing the colonists without their consent (representation), depriving colonists the benefits of trial by jury, arbitrarily dissolving colonial charters, inciting insurrection against the colonies (including among the unfriendly Indian tribes), and more. (Ironically, the one thing not mentioned among the list of 27 grievances was the disarming of the colonists and confiscation of their arms and ammunition – the one thing that inspired Patrick Henry to submit resolutions he’d written to the Virginia colonial legislature to build and train a militia from each county; “They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?….. The war is inevitable–and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. The war has actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?  I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”)  After the listing of the specific grievances, the Declaration emphasized that neither the King nor Parliament would listen to their complaints and pleas for relief. “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.”

In the closing paragraph, the signers declare that the colonies are “Free and Independent States.” This paragraph also contains the words “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World” and “with firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence.”  Note that the United States of America were not formed into a single national state, but a confederation of independent and sovereign states.

Previous to the Declaration of Independence, both North Carolina (May 20, 1775) and Virginia (early 1776) had already declared their independence from Great Britain. North Carolina took the lead in calling for independence from Great Britain, and her state flag reflects the two historic dates on which she did so – May 20, 1775 and April 12, 1776. On May 20, 1775, a Charlotte government committee drafted the Mecklenburg Resolves which declared the residents of Mecklenburg County, NC independent of Great Britain:

Resolved, That we the citizens of Mecklenburg county, do hereby dissolve the political bands which have connected us to the Mother Country, and hereby absolve ourselves from all allegiance to the British Crown, and abjure all political connection, contract, or association, with that nation, who have wantonly trampled on our rights and liberties — and inhumanly shed the innocent blood of American patriots at Lexington.

Resolved, That we do hereby declare ourselves a free and independent people, are, and of right ought to be, a sovereign and self–governing Association, under the control of no power other than that of our God and the General Government of the Congress; to the maintenance of which independence, we solemnly pledge to each other, our mutual co-operation, our lives, our fortunes, and our most sacred honor.

Resolved, That as we now acknowledge the existence and control of no law or legal officer, civil or military, within this country, we do hereby ordain and adopt, as a rule of life, all, each and every of our former laws, wherein, nevertheless, the Crown of Great Britain never can be considered as holding rights, privileges, immunities, or authority therein.

On May 31, the Committee put the document in final form and adopted it. The updated document announced that all the colonies were independent of Great Britain:  “Whereas by an Address presented to his Majesty by both Houses of Parliament in February last, the American Colonies are declared to be in a State of actual Rebellion, we conceive that all Laws and Commissions confirmed by, or derived from the Authority of the King or Parliament, are annulled and vacated, and the former civil Constitution of these Colonies for the present wholly suspended. To provide in some Degree for the Exigencies of the County in the present alarming Period, we deem it proper and necessary to pass the following Resolves:  (1) That all Commissions, civil and military, heretofore granted by the Crown, to be exercised in these Colonies, are null and void, and the Constitution of each particular Colony wholly suspended……….”

The Resolves were delivered to the North Carolina delegation meeting at the Continental Congress with the hope that the entire Congress would vote and adopt it. The Congress felt the time was not right and did not take the matter up.

On April 12, 1776, the Fourth Provincial Congress, meeting in Halifax County, adopted the “Halifax Resolves,” which gave North Carolina’s delegates to the Continental Congress the authority to vote for independence. It was the first state to give such authority to its delegates.

On May 4, 1776, the colony of Rhode Island declared herself independent of Great Britain, and in late May – June, the Fifth Virginia Convention passed a series of resolutions rejecting all aspects of British authority and establishing a new form of independent government for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, then urged the Continental Congress to follow Virginia’s (and North Carolina’s) lead.

On June 7, 1776, Lee introduced a resolution (the Lee Resolution) to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia declaring independence, and John Adams seconded the motion.

Lee’s resolution declared “That these United Colonies are, and of right out to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; that measures should be immediately taken for procuring the assistance of foreign powers, and a Confederation be formed to bind the colonies more closely together.”

The Continental Congress adopted the resolution, finally declaring independence for the 13 colonies, on July 2, but this day has been largely forgotten in favor of July 4, when the “formal” Declaration of Independence, written by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted.

Clearly, the idea that a people could separate from a government that did not serve them, or in the worst case, had become tyrannical and abusive, was something the colonists believed was a natural right.

The right of self-determination for people seeking independence is firmly established in international law. With US backing, Panama seceded from Columbia in 1903. Norway seceded from Sweden in 1905. In the United States, the right of self-determination and therefore secession is supported by the precedence of the Declaration of Independence which declared our own secession from Great Britain.

While the Declaration of Independence is of immense importance as a founding document, it is the Constitution of 1787 and the Bill of Rights ratified in 1791 that are the official founding documents. The Constitution was made official by the approval of the people of each state acting independently in convention, not by the people of the United States in general. Nor did these states surrender their sovereignty to the United States. Only limited government powers were delegated to the Federal Government and every state reserved the right to withdraw these powers. In fact, three states – Rhode Island, Virginia, and New York – specifically stated in their ratifications that they reserved the right to withdraw. Other states had less strongly-worded reservations, but no state would have ratified the Constitution if they believed that in doing so they would be surrendering their newly-won independence.

When New York delegates met on July 26, 1788, their ratification document read, “That the Powers of Government may be resumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness; that every Power, Jurisdiction and right which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the government thereof, remains to the People of the several States, or to their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same.”

On May 29, 1790, the Rhode Island delegates made a similar claim in their ratification document. “That the powers of government may be resumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness: That the rights of the States respectively to nominate and appoint all State Officers, and every other power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States or to the departments of government thereof, remain to the people of the several states, or their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same.”

On June 26, 1788, Virginia’s elected delegates met to ratify the Constitution. In their ratification document, they said, “The People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will.”

As demonstrated by the ratification documents of New York, Rhode Island and Virginia, they made it explicit that if the federal government perverted the delegated rights, they had the right to resume those rights. In fact, when the Union was being formed, where the states created the federal government, every state thought they had a right to secede, otherwise there would not have been a Union.

It was to guarantee the sovereignty of the states that the Ninth and Tenth Amendments were added to the Bill of Rights. The Tenth Amendment is a particularly straightforward restatement of the federal nature of the government established by the Constitution: “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.”

Since the Constitution was ratified by sovereign states who desired to retain their sovereignty, the document is classified as a social compact. In essence, it is a contract and thereby its legality is guided by contract law, one of the oldest areas of law. The Constitution is a compact – a contract – between the individual sovereign states, which are the parties, to create the federal government (the creature, or if likening the compact to agency law, the government would be the agent) in order to carry out certain common functions for the states in order that the Union itself could be successful. In the case of Chisholm v. State of Georgia (1793), the Supreme Court expressly declared that the US Constitution is a compact. The right of withdrawal or secession is inherent in the basic document (ie, the right of secession “supersedes” the Constitution) and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments further establish it as a right retained or reserved to each state. It is the option of each state, not the federal government (merely the creature or agent), as to whether it shall remain in the Union or whether it will withdraw. The right of secession was almost universally accepted until Lincoln came up with a new theory of the Constitution – based on a treatise on the Constitution, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, written in 1833 by then Supreme Court associate Justice Joseph Story. [It should be noted that Story’s treatise was highly criticized by leading constitutional experts of the day – including Henry St. George Tucker, Sr., John Randolph Tucker, Abel Parker Upshur, James Kent, and John C. Calhoun. Calhoun was revered as an expert on the Constitution and perhaps even more “Jeffersonian” than Jefferson himself.]

New Hampshire’s constitution of 1792 contains very strong words reserving its sovereign powers as a state. In 1798, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison circulated the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions among the states. These resolutions strongly supported the Doctrine of States Rights and thus also the right of secession. Together these resolutions became known as the “Principles of ’98.”

The Kentucky Resolution, the work of Thomas Jefferson, asserted States’ Rights in very strong terms: “If those who administer the general government be permitted to transgress the limits fixed by that compact, by a total disregard to the special delegations of power therein contained, annihilation of the state governments, and the erection upon their ruins, of a general consolidated government, will be the inevitable consequence: That the principle and construction contended for by sundry of the state legislatures, that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it, stop nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the constitution, would be the measure of their powers: That the several states who formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a Nullification, by those sovereignties, of all unauthorized acts done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy….”  (Kentucky Resolutions or Kentucky Resolves of 1799)

The Virginia Resolution, the work of James Madison, asserted States Rights also in very strong terms; perhaps stronger: “That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to Interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.”  (Virginia Resolutions or Virginia Resolves of 1798)

The doctrines of Nullification, Interposition, and Secession are all rights reserved to the states under Natural Law (the Law of Nature and God’s Law) and by the US Constitution (both implicitly by the limited nature of the delegations of power to the federal government, and expressly by the Tenth Amendment). Furthermore, they are remedies available under contract theory (compact law).

None of the states disagreed with the “Principles of ‘98” (which, by the way, were articulated to resist the unconstitutional Alien & Sedition Acts, signed into law by President John Adams, which were gross violations of several of the Bill of Rights, but most notably the First Amendment).

The New England states threatened secession on five occasions: (1) In 1803 because they feared the Louisiana Purchase would dilute their political power; (2) In 1807 because the Embargo Act was unfavorable to their commerce; (3) In 1812, over the admission of Louisiana as a state; (4) In 1814 (the Hartford Convention) because of the War of 1812; and (5) In 1814, over the annexation of Texas (which had seceded from Mexico). Additionally, many New England abolitionists favored secession because the Constitution allowed slavery.  From 1803 to 1845, anytime that New England felt that their political power or commercial power might suffer, they threatened secession. Yet when the Southern states did the same, a war was initiated to force them to remain in the Union against their wishes.

As early as 1825, the right of secession was taught at West Point. William Rawle’s View of the Constitution, which was used as a text at West Point in 1825 and 1826 (and thereafter as a reference), specifically taught that secession was a right of each state. Rawle was a friend of both George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and his 1825 text was highly respected and used at many colleges. A subsequent text by James Kent maintained the same position and was used at West Point until the end of the war in 1865. Several Union and Confederate generals were at West Point during the time Rawle’s text was used. Rawle even spelled out the procedure for a state to secede, explaining: “The secession of a state from the Union depends on the will of the people of each state. The people alone… hold the power to alter their Constitution.”

The right of secession was very well-stated by none other than Congressman Abraham Lincoln himself in 1848: “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 that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”

That same year, Lincoln further stated: “Any people that can may revolutionized and make their own of so much territory as they inhabit.”

But in 1861, Lincoln adopted a view of secession more expedient to holding the Southern states in the Union against their will. He discovered the theory that Supreme Court associate Justice Joseph Story concocted in his 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, asserting that there was an American nation in the minds of the people before the States were formed. This humbuggery had been strengthened by Daniel Webster’s eloquent but disingenuous and speeches to Congress, claiming that the Constitution was not a compact.

So, Lincoln characterized the orderly, democratic Secession Conventions of South Carolina and the Gulf States, conducted in accordance with Rawle’s treatise on the Constitution, and carried out step-by-step in the same manner as the states when they declared their independence from Great Britain and formed the United States of America, as a rebellion perpetrated by a small minority and proceeded on a path that every member of his Cabinet meant war.

As to the question of whether Secession is legal today, the answer is yes. Again, the right is an inherent and natural right, seared into our history by example (secession from Great Britain), implied by the very limited nature of the general government created by the Constitution and the limited powers delegated to it under that document, and expressly reserved to the states by the Tenth Amendment.  Lincoln’s government may have waged a war to somehow reclassify the nature of the conduct of the Southern states in 1860-61 (“rebellion” rather than secession) in order to force those states back into the Union, but its actions cannot change the fact that those states exercised a natural and inherent sovereign right. The Constitution was never amended to prohibit that right to a State and despite attempts to judicially remove it, as well requiring the Southern states to include such a prohibition in their amended state constitutions (in order for them to be “re-admitted” to the Union that Lincoln said they never left), such actions are merely exercises in futility; they are extra-constitutional actions that lack authority or power of enforcement. The right of a people of self-determination, as it applies to government, can never be legislated, decreed, or written away. It is an inalienable right, having its place among the other Laws of Nature and among God’s Law.

***  For an in-depth discussion on the topic of Social Compact, why the US Constitution is, in fact, a social compact, and the remedies naturally available to the parties of a compact (which in our case are the individual states), including the remedy of secession, please read by article “The Social Compact and Our Constitutional Republic,” which is the article preceding this one.

— This article is based, in good part, on Leonard “Mike” Scrugg’s book: THE UN-CIVIL WAR: SHATTERING THE HISTORICAL MYTHS (Chapter 6, Constitutional Issues and the Un-Civil War). The purpose of this article and the reason for relying so heavily on Mr. Scruggs’ book is to get the reader interested not only in the topic at hand but also to be motivated to purchase and read his most excellent book in its entirety and then to share the information with others!

References:

Leonard “Mike” Scrugg’s, THE UN-CIVIL WAR: SHATTERING THE HISTORICAL MYTHS (Chapter 6, Constitutional Issues and the Un-Civil War), 2011, Universal Media (Asheville, NC).

Walter Williams, “States Have a Historical Right to Secede,” Columbia Tribune, April 25, 2009. Referenced at: http://www.columbiatribune.com/02023ee6-5191-5fd7-85a8-b533bfab9c2e.html [The section on the Rhode Island, Virginia, and New York Resumption Clauses – included at the time that these states adopted the US Constitution – is taken entirely from Mr. Williams’ article]