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gutzmank
ParticipantUntil some other means comes into being, we have to make do with the state-initiated amendment process.
ParticipantNot just “We don’t care”: abolitionists like W.L. Garrison had promoted nothern secession partly on the ground that fugitive slaves would no longer be returned, thus slavery would fail.
ParticipantToombs needn’t have been a subscriber to a northern magazine–he could have found that in the 1860 Republican Platform.
As to the citations, email Holt and ask him. He’s highly responsive. Tell him I said “hello.”
ParticipantI don’t know.
ParticipantWho is the last Democratic president of whom the history profession doesn’t have a generally positive impression? Wilson? Over time, they like all Democrats. They’ve even come around to admiring Johnson.
ParticipantNo, there’s not a broad power “to determine the various levels of economic freedom within a particular State” delegated by the 14th Amendment. Sen. John Sherman, R-OH, told his constituents during the ratification campaign that the amendment would have no effect in Ohio. Why? As the Court said in Slaughterhouse, it was intended to ensure the rights of the freedmen.
I evaluate a recent book making the point to which you allude here:
ParticipantThomas Jefferson in two of his state of the union messages and James Madison in two of his called on Congress to establish a universal network of roads, canals, and bridges. Each said in one of those messages that a constitutional amendment empowering Congress to do that would have to be ratified first. None was. Because of this, Madison in his last president act issued the Bonus Bill Veto Message, in which he explained that Congress had no such power, and so he had to veto this bill.
This last is described in my James Madison and the Making of America, and Tom Woods and I have a chapter about the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System in Who Killed the Constitution?
Why no such amendment ever was adopted is an interesting question.
ParticipantThe question boils down to whether secession was constitutional, in which case everything Lincoln did to repress it was unconstitutional–if not the case, then reasonable steps by the president and Congress to suppress the rebellion arguably were constitutional (bearing in mind that Congress, not the president, was assigned constitutional authority to do such things as raise armies, suspend the writ, etc.).
ParticipantPlease elaborate.
ParticipantDred Scott v. Sandford (1857) is sometimes said to be the first Substantive Due Process case, as in his opinion for the Court Chief Justice Taney read a substantive protection — the right to take one’s slaves into the territories — into a procedural provision of the Constitution. If it doesn’t make sense to you now, it didn’t make sense to a good many people then, either.
ParticipantYes, indeed. It gave the East Indian Company an exemption from the Navigation Acts, thus allowing it to undersell competitors.
ParticipantFor what purpose?
I don’t tend to recommend numbers of The Federalist, as I believe their significance is wildly exaggerated. I’d point you to my Madison biography:
http://kevingutzman.com/books/Madison.html
As for constitutional disputes of the 1830s, see Belz’s edition of the Webster-Hayne Debate, which is available from Liberty Fund for next to nothing. It’s also not hard to find Abel P. Upshur’s or Joseph Story’s books on the subject. Don’t read Story first. You can find an explanation of that advice in chapter 1 of my recent book on Jefferson:
ParticipantThere’s a chapter on Jefferson’s Indian policy in my latest book, Thomas Jefferson–Revolutionary: A Radical’s Struggle to Remake America.
http://kevingutzman.com/books/books.html
Jefferson favored assimilating the Indians into American culture, with its republican government, modern science, agricultural rather than hunter-gatherer basis, etc. He looked upon their stone-age cultures as backward and believed that becoming American would benefit both American citizens and Indians.
When people see the word “genocidal,” they think of mass murder. Another part of the definition has to do with eliminating a group’s culture. Since Jefferson wanted to assimilate Indians into American culture rather than leave them to their pre-Columbian ways, I suppose that fits. He certainly did not favor murder of Indians.
I haven’t read that part of Ivan’s book.
ParticipantThey tweeted one of my essays 13 minutes after you posted this query, and Tom Woods and I were among the featured experts in their documentary on Nullification.
Here we are on the case:
ParticipantUnder our current system, presidents make wars whenever they want, Congress legislates on whatever it likes, and federal judges make rulings completely unrelated to the Constitution. What would be worse if there were a constitutional convention? I favor the limited one advocated by the Compact for America, and I’m a member of the Compact for American Education Foundation’s board of advisors.
Here’s my account of the rise of the current movement:
Here’s my review of an anti-Article V book by the then-president of the Arizona Senate:
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2015/07/02/review-andy-biggs-the-con-of-the-con-con/
Here I debate a John Birch Society official about it on The Tom Woods Show:
Ep. 498 Should We Hold an Article V Amendments Convention? A Debate
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