From Confederation to Consolidation the Political Effects of the Civil war

Tolkien R.R.J

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From Confederation to Consolidation

This consolidation of the states has been the obiet of several men in this country for some time past. Weather such a change can ever be effected in any manner whether it can be effected without convulsions and civil wars, whether such a change will not totally destroy the liberties of this country time can only determine.”
-Richard Henry Lee 1787


If ever this vast country is brought under a single government.... you will have to chose between reformation and revolution.”
-Thomas Jefferson



Antebellum American Politics

Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself...each party has equal right to judge for itself”
-Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 written by Thomas Jefferson


"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 1800 Written by James Madison


For the Constitution of the union....can never assume any powers, that is not expressly granted by that instrument, not exercise a power, in any manner than is there prescribed. This is indeed, a short, clear, and concise exposition of the principles of a limited government, founded upon a compact between sovereign and independent states.”
-St George Tucker 1803


While the compact theory of the union was not the universal opinion of the founders [the nationalist view was held by men like Danial Webster, Joseph Story and John Jay, was the minority view] it was the majority that dominated politics in early American life before the civil war. The dominate political philosophy of the day Known often as Jeffersonian democrats were of a political belief that flowed from the state ratification conventions especially the Virginian ratification convention. And led by southern [mainly] Virginian planters. In 1803 Virginian St George Tucker authored “A view of the constitution of the united states” the dominate view of the federal government at the time the compact view of Jefferson and James Madison, the “principles of 98” expressed in the Virginia and Kentucky resolution of 1798. And continued with John Taylor of Carolines 1820 “Construction construed, and constitutions vindicated” Abel Parkers Upshar's “ A Brief Enquiry into the Nature and Character of our Federal Government: Being a Review of Judge Story's Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States and John C Calhouns Disquisition on Government and Discourse on the Constitution and government of the united states. This view of the union [that went back to even before the ratification conventions] would dominate the political landscape for decades, and the Virginia conventions understanding of the union would dominate American life before the civil war.

The Constitution of the united states is to be considered as a compact or confederation between free independent, and sovereign states.”
-Abel Parker Upshur

The federalist attempted a national government at the conventions, but this was rejected for a union “the united states” Madison said “The truth is, that the great principle of the Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered less as absolutely new, than as the expansion of principles which are found in the articles of Confederation.

"The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people.
-Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America


9 of the first 11 presidents were southern plantation owners, 7 of the first 12 were Virginians [many two term] 9 were southern, and 1 from New York, at that time was “southern” in politics. The future confederate states would provide 13 of the first 18 us presidents before Lincoln. Before Lincoln The south provided 14 of the 19 attorney generals, 17 of 28 supreme court justices, and 21 of 33 speakers of the house came from the south. The democrat party was the main party of antebellum America who's 1852 platform gives the Jeffersonian view of the union. 1852 Democratic Platform

“Resolved, That the democratic party will faithfully abide by and uphold the principles laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798, and in the report of Mr. Madison to the Virginia legislature in 1799; that it adopts those principles as constituting one of the main foundations of its political creed, and is resolved to carry them out in their obvious meaning and import.”
-Winning Democrat platform 1852


The dominate view of the federal government. as a limited, delegated agent of the sovereign people of the several states, and not the judge of the extant of its own powers, was buried by the outcome of the civil war”
-Clyde Wilson From Union to Empire


Today the federal government has the authority over all peoples and states. Everything is subject to its authority. This is not how it has always been or intended by the founders. The federal government only had power and authority that was delegated it by the states. That authority was only within the limits specifically stated in the Constitution.

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.
-James Madison Federalist Papers #45


The federal government is the creature of the individual states.”
-President Franklin Pierce 1855 veto message


The states were to govern the rest.

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”
-10th amendment U.S Constitution


Everything not expressly mentioned will be presumed to be purposely omitted”
-James Wilson Pennsylvanian Ratification convention


The powers that the federal government had were not Superior to the states, but inferior, since deriving its delegated powers from the states, who existed before the constitution. Madison stated the meaning of the constitution is found “In those state conventions where it received all the authority which it possessed.” The original constitution reads “A constitution for the united states.”

I consider the foundation of the [Federal] Constitution as laid on this ground: That “all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.” [10th Amendment] To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specifically drawn around the powers of Congress is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.”
Thomas Jefferson, “Opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank” [February 15, 1791]


Our government is not to be maintained or our union preserved by invasions of the powers of the several states... its true strength consists in leaving individuals and states as much as possible to themselves ..not in binding the states more closely to the center”
-President Andrew Jackson


Even Federalist at the state conventions assured the people that if the federal overstepped its clear delegated powers, these actions were unconstitutional and void.

We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected,…in behalf of 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: that, therefore, no right, of any denomination, can be canceled, abridged, restrained or modified. In such a system “rights” are given by government— and what a master gives to his slaves, at the master‟s discretion, can be taken away. The ultimate reality is that in any system in which the central government is the sole arbiter of rights, the people are in fact mere subjects whose purpose is to hear and obey .”
-Virginia‟s ratification



no legislative act, therefore contrary to the constitution, can be valid”
-Alexander Hamilton federalist #78


Congress cannot assume any other powers than those expressly given them. Powers of congress are all defined and clearly laid down. So for they may go, but no further”
-Samuel Johnston North Carolina convention


Every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by the said constitution clearly delegated to the united states of America, or or of the government thereof remains to the people of the several states, or to the representatives state governments”
-New York ratification convention

Sovereignty lied with we the people represented by elected officials of our states.

The attributes of sovereignty are now enjoyed by every state in the union”
-Alexander Hamilton


The thirteen states are thirteen sovereign bodies”
-Oliver Ellsworth


A compact between separate communities”
-James cooper New yorker 1833
 

Tolkien R.R.J

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States Rights in Action

The support of state governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies.”
-Thomas Jefferson First Inaugural Address


The duty of state governments, to protect themselves from encroachments”
-Joseph Desha Kentucky Governor 1825


The true barriers of our liberty...are the state governments”
-Thomas Jefferson


It was the states in their sovereignty that did almost all the governing “State authority was the rule, federal the exception.” As president Pierce said in 1855 “the power is in states alone.” The federal government had no right to exercise powers not specifically delegated to it in the constitution. For example Jefferson was not against internal improvements as many believe, he just said their had to be an amendment first to the constitution to have authority. If the federal government assumed such powers that were not granted it by the constitution, its acts could be declared unconstitutional by the states. States could decide the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. At North Carolina’s ratifying convention, James Iredell told the delegates that when “Congress passes a law consistent with the Constitution, it is to be binding on the people. If Congress, under pretense of executing one power, should, in fact, usurp another, they will violate the Constitution.” In December 1787 Roger Sherman observed that an “excellency of the constitution” was that “when the government of the united States acts within its proper bounds it will be the interest of the legislatures of the particular States to Support it, but when it leaps over those bounds and interferes with the rights of the State governments they will be powerful enough to check it.

Unconstitutional [laws] void and of no effect. It is the right and the duty of the several states to nullify those acts”
-John Breckenridge Kentucky


Sir they [the states] ought not to submit, they would deserve the chains which there masters are forging for them, if they did not resist”
-Edward Livingston NY house of representatives


Consolidate the states by degrees, into one sovereignty, the obvious tendency of witch would transform the present republican system of the united states, into an absolute”
-James Madison

Before Lincoln states determined their own domestic affairs the federal was mostly for foreign as John Randolph of Roanoke said in a speech in congress 1823-24 “Cause of the existence of the federal government was the regulation of foreign commerce.” They were not forced by an all powerful authoritative federal government to comply to its standards. States could nullify unconstitutional rulings and laws from the federal government. One of the first times the federal government, in this case the supreme court, tried to force itself on a state, in the court case Chisholm V Georgia 1793. The state of Georgia declared that to submit to a federal court would destroy the “Retained sovereignty of the state.” The federalist supreme court voted 4-1 that Georgia must comply with the federal court ruling. So the Georgia legislature passed a bill that any federal agent in the state that attempted to enforce the federal supreme court ruling, should be hanged. So no federal agent dared enter the state. This resulted in the passing of the 11th amendment as congress itself supporter state sovereignty against the supreme court. In 1850 a dispute in Texas over land in the New Mexico territory almost led to the secession of Texas. Texas called for force to be used to maintain its integrity. South Carolina nullified the tariffs of 1828 and 1832. Virginia and Kentucky nullified alien and sedition acts in 1798. In 1824 when John Quincy Adams proposed the “American system” of internal improvements, protective tariffs, and a national bank. Jefferson responded with “the solemn declaration and protest of the commonwealth of Virginia” reaffirming the principles of 98. States rights were more common in the north in antebellum Americas [descendants of the federalist] since the southern view was the majority and often controlled the general government. The colonist had nullified the british stamp act, the Townsend acts, and the tea act.


The solemn duty of the state governments...to interpose”
-Daniel Webster Federalist/ Nationalist



The Embargo of 1807-1809

Thomas Jefferson as president declared an embargo on all American ports. Massachusetts nullified the federal law and replied

“While this State maintains its sovereignty and independence, all the citizens can find protection against outrage and injustice in the strong arm of the State government..not legally binding on the citizens of this State.”

Connecticut responded with the resolution of the general Assembly

“Resolved, That to preserve the Union, and support the constitution of the United States, it becomes the duty of the Legislatures of the States, in such a crisis of affairs, vigilantly to watch over, and vigorously to maintain, the powers not delegated to the United States, but reserved to the States respectively, or to the people; and that a due regard to this duty, will not permit this Assembly to assist, or concur in giving effect to the aforesaid unconstitutional act, passed, to enforce the Embargo”

Pennsylvanian 1809

Over the Olmstead controversy said

“And whereas the causes and reasons which have produced this conflict between the general and State government should be made known, not only that the State may be justified to her sister States, who are equally interested in the preservation of the State rights; but to evince to the Government of the United States that the Legislature, in resisting encroachments on their rights…they are contending for the rights of the State, that it will be attributed to a desire for preserving the Federal government itself, the best features of which must depend upon keeping up a just balance between the general and State governments, as guaranteed by the Constitution. … Whilst they yield to this authority, when exercised within Constitutional limits, they trust they will not be considered as acting hostile to the General Government, when, as guardians of the State rights, they can not permit an infringement of those rights by an unconstitutional exercise of power in the United States courts. …Resolved, that the independence of the States, as secured by the Constitution, be destroyed, the liberties of the people in so extensive country cannot long survive. To suffer the United States‟ courts to decide on State Rights will, from a bias in favor of power, necessarily destroy the Federal part of our Government: And whenever the government of the United States becomes consolidated, we may learn from the history of nations what will be the event.


The war of 1812

When Connecticut was called to bring out its militia to guard the cost they replied

"It must not be forgotten, that the state of Connecticut is a FREE SOVEREIGN and INDEPENDENT state; that the United States are a confederacy of states; that we are a confederated and not a consolidated republic. The governor of this state is under a high and solemn obligation, “to maintain the lawful rights and privileges thereof, as a sovereign, free and independent state,” as he is “to support the constitution of the United States,” and the obligation to support the latter, imposes an additional obligation to support the former."



and the Governor stated

It is their right, [states] it becomes there duty, to interpose their protecting shield between their rights and liberty of the people, and the assumed power of the general government”
-Governor Jonathan Trumbull Connecticut



1813 Embargo

In response to the embargo Massachusetts General Court approved

"A power to regulate commerce is abused, when employed to destroy it; and a manifest and voluntary abuse of power sanctions the right of resistance, as much as a direct and palpable usurpation. The sovereignty reserved to the states, was reserved to protect the citizens from acts of violence by the United States, as well as for purposes of domestic regulation. We spurn the idea that the free, sovereign and independent State of Massachusetts is reduced to a mere municipal corporation, without power to protect its people, and to defend them from oppression, from whatever quarter it comes. Whenever the national compact is violated, and the citizens of this State are oppressed by cruel and unauthorized laws, this Legislature is bound to interpose its power, and wrest from the oppressor its victim."



In 1820, when Ohio was fighting against the unconstitutional Bank of the United States, it recognized and approved "the doctrines asserted by the Legislatures of Virginia and Kentucky, in their resolutions of November and December, 1798, and January 1800 — and do consider that their principles have been recognized and adopted by a majority of the American people"

Bank of the United States Controversy 1821

Ohio wrote “The committee are aware of the doctrine, that the Federal courts are exclusively vested with jurisdiction to declare, in the last resort, the true interpretation of the Constitution of the United States. To this doctrine, in the latitude contended for, they never can give their assent…. That this General Assembly do protest against the doctrine that the political rights of the separate States that compose the American Union, and their powers as sovereign States, may be settled and determined in the Supreme Court of the United States…

Fugitive Slave Laws/ Liberty Laws

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.”
-South Carolina Causes of secession


Many northern states nullified the fugitive slave laws or passed liberty laws that nullified the federal law. Wisconsin nullified the supreme court law.

“Resolved, That this assumption of jurisdiction by the federal judiciary, in the said case, and without process, is an act of undelegated power, and therefore without authority, void, and of no force. Resolved, That the government, formed by the Constitution of the United States was not the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; but that, as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress... 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 which formed that instrument, being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge of its infraction; and that a positive defiance of those sovereignties, of all Unauthorized acts done or attempted to be done under color of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.”


States rights held the federal government in check and held it to only what it was granted to do in the constitution. So from the American revolution until The civil war, you had the same constitutional republic. The states doing the self governing in there state sovereignty.

States rights, which prior to 1860 had been an important northern belief as southern. Were overturned by Lincolns war”
-Dean Sprague Freedom under Lincoln


"Jeffersonianism still prevailed in the minds of most Americans but was all but snuffed out by Lincolns war"
-Thomas J Dilorenzo the real Lincoln
 
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Tolkien R.R.J

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From Union to a Consolidated Nation

In saving the union, I have destroyed the Republic.”
-Abraham Lincoln


Before the war a union a collection of states... after the war we began to speak of a nation”
-Ken Burns


Before the war, it was said "the United States are." Grammatically, it was spoken that way and thought of as a collection of independent states. And after the war, it was always "the United States is," as we say today without being self-conscious at all. And that sums up what the war accomplished. It made us an "is."
-Shelby Foote author of “The Civil War: A Narrative.”

“[After the war] the old decentralized federal republic became a new national polity that taxed the people directly, created an internal revenue bureau to collect these taxes, expanded the jurisdiction of federal courts, established a national currency and a national banking structure. The United States went to war in 1861 to preserve the Union; it emerged from war in 1865 having
created a nation. Before 1861 the two words "United States" were generally used as a plural noun: "The United States are a republic." After 1865 the United States became a singular noun. The loose union of states became a nation”
-James M. McPherson


After the civil war meaningful states rights ended and our constitutional republic along with it. Lincoln and the civil war began a new American empire that made states and the people submissive and no longer decided their own fate, were no longer sovereign, and no longer self governing people but were now subject to the almighty federal government who was willing to force the people into its mold, or destroy them. Walt Witman said the result of the war was “Consent to our mandates or be shot.” Instead of the founders view that government was to protect man's unalienable God given rights and liberty.

The war “Destroyed voluntary union of the founders and made all Americans servants rather than masters of their own government... transformed the American government from a constitutional republic to a consolidated empire”
-Thomas Dilorenzo author of The Real Lincoln and Lincoln Unmasked


Lincolns northern opponent Stephen Douglas said of Lincolns political goals as wanting to impose “On the nation a uniformity of local laws and institutions and a moral homogeneity dictated by a central government” That election was said by historians to be a contest between “One consolidated empire [ Federalist/Whigs] and “confederacy of sovereign and equal states of Jefferson and Jackson”, “Lincoln goes for consolidation and uniformity in our government while I go for maintaining the confederation of the sovereign states” said Douglas. The changes came fast, just a few years after the war Harvard professor George Tickmon stated “It does not seem to me as if I were living in the country in which I was born.” Abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher in a speech in conquered Charleston South Carolina said “The nation, not the states, is sovereign.”

“To nationalize as much as possible, even currency, so as to make men love country first before their states, all private interest, local interests, all banking interests, the interests of individuals everything should be subordinate now to the interests of the government”
-Senator John Sherman of Ohio


“That plural reading of the components of the Union had effectively been demolished, never to have meaning again, by a war that established a unitary polity governed from Washington that put an end, in all practical senses, to the idea of independent, sovereign states and individual states’ rights. There was to be one country, indivisible, and hereafter the language it uses is, fittingly, “the United States is.”
-Kirkpatrick Sale Emancipation Hell: The Tragedy Wrought by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation


A war witch crushed the south, destroyed states rights, and transformed the concurrent republic into an absolutist nation.”
-From Founding Fathers to Fire Eaters: The Constitutional Doctrine of States' Rights in the Old South 2018by James Rutledge Roesch



Changes to the Constitution


The civil war changed who we are. It made everything different”
--Dennis Frye Chief Historian at Harpers Ferry National Historical Park


Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, precious relics of former history, must not be construed too largely.”
-General William T. Sherman


The civil war marked the beginnings of an all powerful federal government in America, something the founding fathers did all in their powers to stop. With the Lincoln administration and with the passing of the 14th15th amendment soon after the war. We moved further to a more centralized government and denied states sovereignty. It destroyed the concept of delegated and reserved powers, gone was the concept of government authority voluntary from the people. It changed America from a constitution of states to promote common interest, to a national cohesion controlling states by a centralized government.

“A great centralizing force has been set in motion”
-Leonard Curry


The war destroyed the limited government created by the founding fathers and made possible a revolution replacing the old government, based as it was on limitations of power, with a new structure formed from consolidated power.”
-Dr Charles T Pace Lincoln as he Really was Shotwell Publishing Columbia South Carolina 2018


11 of the 12 antebellum amendments limited federal powers. 6 of the next 7 would increase federal power at the exspence of the states as the political power shifted from south to north. In antebellum America each state acted for the most part as its own country. People saw themselves as citizens of the state first, country second.

"In 1861 there was no such thing as a "American citizens" individuals were citizens of their sovereign states."
-Jerry Brewer Dismantling the Republic 2017


Under Lincoln it is said the reverse happened. Northern states objected as well to this transformation as new Jersey said of the amendments and changes in government philosophy

“Transfers to congress the whole control of the right of suffrage in the state.. a power which they [the states] have never been willing to surrender to the general government, and which was reserved to the states as a fundamental principle on which the constitution itself was constructed the principles of self government”

Later the federal government would take more power from the states with the passing of the 17th amendment. Today the tenth amendment is completely ignored. Senators instead of being appointed by the states, now do the bidding of fund raisers from around the country and political party allies in D.C

The civil war called forth a new constitutional order...the principles of this legal regime are so radically different from our original constitution drafted in 1787, that they deserve to be reorganized as a second American constitution”
-George R Fletcher Columbia University Law Professor


You will not be able to find any historian who will claim the government we are under today in America, is similar to that of Americans under the antebellum government.

Today's federal government is considerably at odds with that envisioned by the framers of the constitution”
-John Olin George Mason University


Many think our present federal government is the same one our founders fathers established. Nothing could be further from the truth....after the [civil war].... government power over the people underwent a radical change in the limits of government authority”
-James and Walter Kennedy The South Was Right

Union victory in the war destroyed the southern vision of America and ensured that the northern vison would become the American vision. Until 1861, however, it was the north that was out of the mainstream, not the south”
-James McPherson Battle Cry of freedom
 
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Tolkien R.R.J

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Supreme Court Reigns Supreme


To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.”
– Thomas Jefferson letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820



“…the opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.”
– Thomas Jefferson



The war between the states established... this principle, that the federal government is, through its courts, the final judge of its own powers”
-President Woodrow Wilson


The federal government made itself the sole arbitrator of constitutionality, through the supreme court. Not surprisingly the federal government has used this role to decide that there are in fact no limits to its power. Consequentially Americans are no longer sovereign over their government... they fought a war of secession against just such an empire. To than turn around and create a similar empire of their own would have been the height of absurdity”
-Thomas J Dilorenzo Lincoln Unmasked


In the antebellum period the supreme court did not have the final say in any matter but was to simply judge its opinion. To imagine the founders as fighting the largest military in the world [Great Britain] to create a new government to protect life and liberty to than entrust everyone's liberty to a few politically appointed judges stretches the imagination. There was no three coequal branches, [won't be found anywhere in constitution] in antebellum America judges could not create policy, it had nor authority to enforce its rulings, they did not have lifetime appointments, were not independent, and did not have final say on constitutionality of a law. As the federalist papers say the legislative has the most authority and the Judiciary “Is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power....it may be truly said to have neither force nor will.” When President Jackson was informed the supreme court decision went against his policy he said “Thank you for your opinion, but my opinion is different and equally valid.” The sovereign states courts had the right to review and judge federal court rulings and law when they overstepped and could override unconstitutional rulings.


With No Check on Federal Government From the States = Rapid Growth and Power of Federal Government

When all government domestic and forighn in little as in great things shall be drawn to Washington as the source of all power. It will render powerless the checks provided of one government [states] on another, and will become as vegal and oppressive as the government which we have separated”
-Thomas Jefferson

The united states of America became a very different kind of nation than it had been.... with manufacture and banking as the economic driving forces, with a powerful, dominating central government replacing the looser, locally oriented confederation put into place by the founding fathers.” -Dr Charles T Pace Lincoln as he Really was Shotwell Publishing Columbia South Carolina 2018


The US government has grown into a monstrous tyrannical body that would not even by reorganized by its founders”
-Lochlainn Seabrook The Constitution Of The Confederate States Of America Explained


With the death of state sovereignty and transformation of the government by Lincoln. The federal government now has sole power to interpret its own power and forcing the states and American people to comply as it has no other authority. It has become as Mike Church said “Mordor on the Potomac” Not only have the states been reduced and put under authority of the federal government, but the 9th and 10th amendments are ignored almost completely in today's politics. Without that check on government, our checks and balances and separation of powers can only slow the federal expansion. With all power at the capital, elites and interest groups control politicians to their bidding. Than you end up with self serving politicians instead of servants of we the people. The constitution would be helpless against a centralized power. Jeffersonian democracy is all but gone in American politics.


The war . . . has tended, more than any other event in the history of the country to militate against the Jeffersonian idea, that “the best government is that which governs least.”
-Richard Yates Illinois Governor , January 2, 1865


Lincoln...undermined the constitutional safeguards of freedom as he opened the way to centralized government with all its political evils”
-Edmund Wilson


Hapless would be the condition of these states if their only alternative lay between submission to a government of self construed, or, in other words, unlimited powers and the certainty of coercion.”
-J.K Spauling State Sovereignty and the Doctrine of Cohesion 1860


With no check from the states, President Lincoln violated the constitution in multiple ways, ran up 2.5 billion in national dept, distributed public lands, printed national currency, instituted a national bank, “Standardized fiscal transactions across state lines for the first time”

[To help conform the public to go along with national banking Lincoln added a 10% tax to state banks to help impose a national bank monopoly [The power to tax is the power to destroy] and hired Jay Cooke to use newspapers ads to attack state chartered banks, so national bank would dominate. Those who supported national banking such as Senator John Sherman of Ohio [Brother of General Sherman] said “the permanently increased government power embodied in the bill,” would foster “a sentiment of nationality.” This “A nationalized money supply helped transform America from a constitutional republic to an empire”]collected numerous forms of taxes “Taxes on everything imaginable” From perfume, playing cards to bowling to going to the theater , instituted a income tax, created the bureau of internal revenue [ Early IRS with 7,000 employees in 63] created the department of agricultural, instituted a federal draft, facilitated the industrial revolution in America at the exspence of agrarian lifestyle, laid massive rail, founded the transcontinental railroad, gave 58 million acres to rail companies etc.

“Furry of new laws, regulations, and bureaucracies created by president Lincoln and the republican party”
-Thomas J Dilorenzo


the republican dominated congress passed a series of measures that transformed the national economic landscape for all time....significtley expanded the role and fiscal reach of the government and helped create a national economy that dwarfed its predecessors...When Lincoln took office, the main role of the federal government was to deliver mail. The government also foreign policy, defended the frontier with a small army and collected import duties, but primarily Washington was a post office..by the end of the war, the government supported an army of a million men, a national debt of 2.5 billion, distributed public lands, printed a national currency, and collected an array of internal taxes...with the south absent....republicans passed the pacific railway act...created a country more closely resembling a national state than a dispersed region...the Lincoln administration gave away 158 million acres to railroads, passage for the first time in american history of a progressive income tax raising 55 million during the war, the government also floated large bond issues, printed 150 million I greenbacks. The national bank act of 1863 resurrected the Hamiltonian idea of a national banking system... This transformation in national power overshadowed the liberation of four million slaves in terms of its long range impact on all Americans”
- David Goldfeild War is good for Business Americas civil war Magazine



[The civil war was] “The fiery crucible which the old nation was melted down, and out of which modern America was poured”
-Historian William Hess


For more constitution violating, government expansion, union transforming efforts by Lincoln see here.

The Lincoln Myth- was Abraham Lincoln America greatest President?

Lincoln myth- Lincoln Saved the American Republic and the Constitution

In the American government system states rights and liberty could not be separated”
-Clyde Wilson Nullification Reclaiming consent of the Governed


“Lincoln...undermined the constitutional safeguards of freedom as he opened the way to centralized government with all its political evils”
-Edmund Wilson


Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people. When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers, and destroyers press upon them so fast, that there is no resisting afterwards. The nature of the encroachment upon the American constitution is such, as to grow every day more and more encroaching. Like a cancer, it eats faster and faster every hour. The revenue creates pensioners, and the pensioners urge for more revenue. The people grow less steady, spirited, and virtuous, the seekers more numerous and more corrupt, and every day increases the circles of their dependents and expectants, until virtue, integrity, public spirit, simplicity, and frugality, become the objects of ridicule and scorn, and vanity, luxury, foppery, selfishness, meanness, and downright venality swallow up the whole society. “
John Adams, Novanglus Letters, 1774


The primary result of the Republican Party victory was permanent instalment of Hamilton’s blessings—a national debt, a protected market for industrialists, and a collusion between bankers and politicians”
-Clyde Wilson Lies my Teacher told me



Deification of the State

The people were no longer the center, the government was”
-Clyde Wilson From Union to Empire


"Abraham Lincoln personified every trait that opposed to the republic founders under the Constitution of 1787."
-Jerry Brewer Dismantling the Republic 2017


Starting with Lincoln and following generations of politicians led to what professor Delorenzo calls the “Deification of the state.” The civil war started in America the philosophy that the federal government is the ultimate authority. This has led to rapid growth in the federal government, because there is no higher authority, than the government thinks itself god. There is nothing it cannot touch. It can take away any right from anyone. It thinks it must not just solve all the ills in the country, it must control all modes of behavior and set its own standards. It will regulate the lives to conform to its own image that is beneficial to itself, resulting in more power to itself. People became servants of the state rather than the government servants of its citizens.

Liberty became less important than the well being of government”
-Al Benson Jr and Walter Kennedy Lincolns Marxists


States rights was suppressed by force, and the American idea of consent of the governed was replaced by the European idea of obedience to the state”
-Clyde Wilson From Union to Empire


By contrast, now all “the land of the free and the home of the brave” bends the knee to Washington D.C no matter how outrageous or oppressive its orders.”
-James Rutledge Roesch From Founding Fathers to Fire Eaters The Constitutional Doctrine of States Rights in the old South Shotwell publishing


This is in drastic contrast to the founders who's view was Governments are instituted among men to protect those unalienable rights that come from a higher authority than man [government] that is god. The founders constantly acknowledged that biblical higher power that they were accountable to. Man was not the ultimate authority in fact all men were created equal. This philosophy that reorganizes a creator, produces a limited government. Government is not the ultimate authority but is to protect all citizens god given liberty. It also believes that man should alter and abolish a government that is destructive to those rights of the people. This was stomped out by the civil war, the government is ultimate authority, not the citizens, nor even god.

The civil war was that the right to govern is paramount over the right to live, that man is made for government, rather than that government is made for man, and that for men to claim the right of self government is to deserve and incure the death penalty”
-Charles L.C minor The real Lincoln 1928


"What we call liberty our founders called bondage...we have not freed the slaves we have extended the plantation, know, we are all slaves"
-Peter Marshall JR The Great War Debate


Lincoln “Remade America”
-Gary Wills


The real revolution in that country was not what is called the revolution, but is a consequence of the civil war.”
-T S Eliot 1949


Overthrow the present form of Federal-republican government, and to establish a strong centralized government in its stead...national banks, bankrupt laws, a vast and permanent public debt, high tariffs, heavy direct taxation, enormous expenditure, gigantic and stupendous peculation . . . No more state lines, no more state governments, but a consolidated monarchy or vast centralized military despotism.” “instead of crushing out the rebellion,” the “effort has been to crush out the spirit of liberty” in the Northern states.
- Clement L. Vallandigham D-Ohio spoke of the reason for Lincolns war 1863



Yet with government run education, the American people

Have been taught to celebrate this betrayal of the founding fathers..The vast bulk of Americans proceed through twelve years of government funded education [by an interesting coincidence] teaches them all about the wonders of federal government, how lost they'd be without it, and how foolish it would be to worry that the constitution might not authorize most of what it does. Portrayed as a benevolent force innocently pursuing the common good....cost less benefits granted by selfless crusaders for justice”
-Tomas Woods Nullification How to Resist federal tyranny in the 21st Century


“The American public was also relentlessly propagandized by the government and its private sector accomplices, such as Jay Cooke, into believing that it could now look to the federal government for solutions to its problems. This made it easier for future generations of politicians to convince the American public to acquiesce in further expansions of government and further restrictions on personal liberty that would have caused the founding fathers to reach for their swords”
-Thomas Dilorenzo The Real Lincoln
 
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LionL

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"From Confederation to Consolidation the Political Effects of the Civil war"

Oh, you mean the "American Civil War".

I got very excited seeing the title of this thread. I know a great deal about the English Civil War, a little about the Spanish Civil War, and of course the Vietnam and Korea Civil Wars.

When you said "The Civil War", I assumed you would be referring to one of these. Sadly not.
 
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