Talk: Unionism


 "I consider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular government is not an absurdity.  We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority has the right to break up the government whenever they choose.  If we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of people to govern themselves."   

Abraham Lincoln.  May 7, 1861

"We are in the Union for richer or poorer, for better for worse, whether in a majority or minority, whether in power or powerless, without condition, reservation, qualification, or limitation, for ever and aye."

                             William Seward, 1851


Antebellum Unionists saw themselves as protectors of the experiment in republican government started by America's founders. The American Revolution had been fought, in large part, to overthrow the sovereignty of monarchs, those born to positions of power.  Instead, they had set up a government of "we, the people" (or "government of the people, by the people, and for the people") that would allow men to govern themselves under the "rule of law."  European monarchists had long scoffed at the idea that a people were capable of governing themselves and expected the United States to fail.  



Historical Background

"A republic (from Latin: res publica) is a sovereign state or country[which is organized with a form of government in which power resides in elected individuals representing the citizen body and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In modern times, the definition of a republic is commonly limited to a government which excludes a monarch ."  (A History of Republics).  


1.  The idea of representative democracy (republican government) was developed in Europe during the 18th century in an intellectual movement called The Enlightenment.   At that point Europe was ruled by monarchs and princes.

2.  The American Revolution  and the adoption of the U.S. Constitution  (1789) creates the first modern republic.     

3.  Attempts to establish democratic republics in Europe fail in Holland in the 1780s, France in the 1790s, and keep failing up through the multiple democratic revolutions in 1848.  

4.  The Alien and Sedition Acts   (State Nullification of Federal Law) were four bills passed by the Federalist-dominated 5th United States Congress and signed into law by President John Adams in 1798.  They made it harder for an immigrant to become a citizen (Naturalization Act), allowed the president to imprison and deport non-citizens who were deemed dangerous (Alien Friends Act of 1798) or who were from a hostile nation (Alien Enemy Act of 1798), and criminalized making false statements that were critical of the federal government (Sedition Act of 1798).

Thomas Jefferson, then the U.S. vice-president, ghost-writes the The Kentucky Resolution (1798) for the Kentucky legislature that says a state can nullify a federal law it deems beyond the power of the federal government.  It uses the  Compact Theory of Government that claims the Constitution is a compact (or contract) between states...

Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they [the 13 states] 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 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, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

The compact theory of government becomes the basis for claims that secession (as well as nullification) is legal.


Objections to the Compact Theory (the Unionist position)... 

In Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), Chief Justice John Jay stated that the Constitution was established directly by the people. Jay noted the language of the Preamble of the Constitution, which says that the Constitution was ordained and established by "We the people," and stated: "Here we see the people acting as sovereigns of the whole country, and, in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will that the State governments should be bound."

In Martin v. Hunter's Lessee (1816), the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the idea that the Constitution is a compact among the states, stating: "The Constitution of the United States was ordained and established not by the States in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the Constitution declares, by 'the people' of the United States.'" The Court contrasted the earlier Articles of Confederation with the Constitution, characterizing the Articles of Confederation as a compact among states, while stating that the Constitution was established not by the states, but by the people.

Likewise, in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819). 
       

5.   1833 Nullification Crisis

      
6.  There was talk of secession again during the congressional debates that led to the Compromise of 1850 over slavery in the western territories gained from the Mexican-American war.  Daniel Webster makes a famous three and a half hour speech (The Seventh of March speech)...


"Mr. President, I wish to speak today, not as a Massachusetts man, nor as a Northern man, but as an American, and a member of the Senate of the United States. . . . I speak for the preservation of the Union.  Hear me for my cause."  

I shall stand by the Union...with absolute disregard of personal consequences.  What are personal consequences...in comparison with the good or evil that may befall a great country in a crisis like this?...Let the consequences be what they will.... No man can suffer too much, and no man can fall too soon, if he suffer or if he fall in defense of the liberties and constitution of his country.  
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7.  Webster's speeches on behalf of Union in the tariff crisis and again in the Senate debates on the Compromise of 1850 were very popular in the North.  School children (who would later fight in the Civil War) were made to memorize them in public schools much like the Pledge of Allegiance is said today.


1851 G.P.A. Healy painting immortalizing Daniel Webster's 1830 reply to Hayne.
(40,000 copies were distributed nationwide).....


8.  Abraham Lincoln during the war...

Lincoln's Second Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 1, 1862....

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history.... The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail.  The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless. 


The Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. ....

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.




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