Sunday Pages: Against Secession

Speeches by Jefferson Davis and Andrew Jackson

Once upon a time, Jefferson Davis was widely regarded as the most intellectual member of the United States Senate. He’s a fascinating, complicated guy. Shelby Foote talks all about him in the first chapter of the first volume of his Civil War series of books. Davis was a Southern gentleman, well liked even by his colleagues from the North. Were he not a racist piece of shit, history would remember him more fondly.

His hope was that the Constitutionality of secession would be decided at the Supreme Court, and not on the battlefield. But Jeff Davis personally believed, and always had, that States had the right to bail if they so chose. He talked about this in his farewell address to the Senate, delivered January 21, 1861—163 years ago this month:

It is known to Senators who have served with me here, that I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of State sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union. Therefore, if I had not believed there was justifiable cause; if I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation, or without an existing necessity, I should still, under my theory of the Government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action. I, however, may be permitted to say that I do think she has justifiable cause, and I approve of her act.

He would have approved, he said, if Massachusetts had decided to quit the Union when it was “arraigned before the bar of the Senate, and when then the doctrine of coercion was rife and to be applied against her because of the rescue of a fugitive slave in Boston.” (Replace “fugitive slave” with “pregnant Mississippi teenager seeking an abortion,” and you see how this applies to the country today.)

Secession, Davis continued,

is to be justified upon the basis that the States are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever.

His argument makes perfect logical sense, and presents the Founders as the wealthy, privileged, sexist, slave-owning elites that they were:

]I]t has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us, which has brought Mississippi into her present decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races.

On this woo-woo assertion, Jeff Davis calls bullshit:

That Declaration of Independence is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made. The communities were declaring their independence; the people of those communities were asserting that no man was born—to use the language of Mr. Jefferson—booted and spurred to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal—meaning the men of the political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man inherited the right to govern; that there were no classes by which power and place descended to families, but that all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body-politic. These were the great principles they announced; these were the purposes for which they made their declaration; these were the ends to which their enunciation was directed.

The “all men created equal” line is nothing more than a rhetorical flourish, Davis argues. “All men” means, first of all, men and not women, and second of all, all privileged white men. Only white male property owners were allowed to pursue happiness. Slaves had to pursue picking cotton, and to suggest that Jefferson, who owned and raped slaves, was lobbying here for their basic humanity, Davis asserts, is pure poppycock:

They have no reference to the slave; else, how happened it that among the items of arraignment made against George III was that he endeavored to do just what the North has been endeavoring of late to do—to stir up insurrection among our slaves? Had the Declaration announced that the Negroes were free and equal, how was the Prince to be arraigned for stirring up insurrection among them? And how was this to be enumerated among the high crimes which caused the colonies to sever their connection with the mother country? When our Constitution was formed, the same idea was rendered more palpable, for there we find provision made for that very class of persons as property; they were not put upon the footing of equality with white men—not even upon that of paupers and convicts; but, so far as representation was concerned, were discriminated against as a lower caste, only to be represented in the numerical proportion of three fifths.

Jeff Davis was what Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito might call an originalist.

If the North, and their new president Abe Lincoln, sought to free the slaves, well, fuck that noise. How dare they deprive well-off Southern white kids their God-given right to own Black kids! Mississippi and the rest of the Deep South would rather divorce than accept that. The differences were irreconcilable:

Then, Senators, we recur to the compact which binds us together; we recur to the principles upon which our Government was founded; and when you deny them, and when you deny to us the right to withdraw from a Government which thus perverted threatens to be destructive of our rights, we but tread in the path of our fathers when we proclaim our independence, and take the hazard. This is done not in hostility to others, not to injure any section of the country, not even for our own pecuniary benefit; but from the high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited, and which it is our sacred duty to transmit unshorn to our children.

Just as Davis and his confederates were willing to face the dread consequences of secession to preserve the atrocity that is slavery, so Texas governor Greg Abbott, probably the most evil leader we have in this country today, is willing to defy the federal government to preserve Texas’s right to drown migrants in the Rio Grande. As he wrote in a statement this past week:

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border. That is why the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.” Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 419 (2012) (Scalia, J., dissenting).

The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.

In Austin, there is no serious talk yet of secession, but rather of nullification—a state’s refusal to abide by settled federal law. Davis would have likely stood with Abbott, as, making the distinction between secession and nullification, he held that the latter “is only to be justified when the agent has violated his constitutional obligation, and a State, assuming to judge for itself, denies the right of the agent thus to act, and appeals to the other States of the Union for a decision,” which, as I understand it, is what Abbott is accusing President Biden of doing with regard to border defense.

In the quarter-millennial annals of U.S. history, nullification has only been seriously attempted three times: in 1798, when Kentucky held the (unpopular and horrific) Alien and Sedition Acts “altogether void and of no force” in that state; in 1957-58, when racist Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus refused to desegregate his state’s schools, and Eisenhower had to send in the fucking U.S. Army to enforce the law; and in South Carolina in 1832-33, when that rebellious state refused to comply with what its citizens called, ridiculously, the “Tariff of Abominations.”

The president in 1832-33 was Andrew Jackson—a problematic figure historically due to his administration’s abhorrent treatment of Native Americans and his personal ownership of over 100 slaves, but as aggro and alpha as any Chief Executive has ever been. Late in his presidency, when he was in failing health, an unemployed house painter tried unsuccessfully to shoot him; unafraid, “King Andrew” charged at the would-be assassin and violently attacked him with his cane. (Contrast this with Trump cowering at ramps.) This was not a guy you wanted to fuck with.

On December 10, 1832—three decades before Jeff Davis left the Senate and Mississippi left the Union—Jackson delivered his Proclamation Regarding Nullification. He left no doubt that 1) South Carolina’s tacit argument for secession was specious, and 2) the consequences of such a move would be highly unpleasant for South Carolinians (italics are mine):

The States severally have not retained their entire sovereignty. It has been shown that in becoming parts of a nation, not members of a league, they surrendered many of their essential parts of sovereignty. The right to make treaties, declare war, levy taxes, exercise exclusive judicial and legislative powers, were all functions of sovereign power. The States, then, for all these important purposes, were no longer sovereign. The allegiance of their citizens was transferred in the first instance to the government of the United States; they became American citizens, and owed obedience to the Constitution of the United States, and to laws made in conformity with the powers vested in Congress.…

 What shows conclusively that the States cannot be said to have reserved an undivided sovereignty, is that they expressly ceded the right to punish treason—not treason against their separate power, but treason against the United States. Treason is an offense against sovereignty, and sovereignty must reside with the power to punish it….

The laws of the United States must be executed. The president has no discretionary power on the subject: his duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution. Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you; they could not have been deceived themselves. They know that a forcible opposition could alone prevent the execution of the laws, and they know that such opposition must be repelled. Their object is disunion, but be not deceived by names; disunion, by armed force, is TREASON. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? If you are, on the head of the instigators of the act be the dreadful consequences—on their heads be the dishonor, but on yours may fall the punishment—on your unhappy State will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon the government of your country. 

Or, as Tupac Shakur succinctly put it in 1996’s “Hit ‘Em Up,” still the best dis track of all time: “You better back the fuck up ‘fore you get smacked the fuck up. This is how we do it on our side.”

Jeff Davis was familiar with Jackson’s proclamation. He alludes to it in his farewell address:

The phrase “to execute the laws” was an expression which General Jackson applied to the case of a State refusing to obey the laws while yet a member of the Union. That is not the case which is now presented. The laws are to be executed over the United States, and upon the people of the United States. They have no relation to any foreign country. It is a perversion of terms, at least it is a great misapprehension of the case, which cites that expression for application to a State which has withdrawn from the Union. You may make war on a foreign State. If it be the purpose of gentlemen, they may make war against a State which has withdrawn from the Union; but there are no laws of the United States to be executed within the limits of a seceded State. A State finding herself in the condition in which Mississippi has judged she is, in which her safety requires that she should provide for the maintenance of her rights out of the Union, surrenders all the benefits (and they are known to be many), deprives herself of the advantages (they are known to be great), severs all the ties of affection (and they are close and enduring), which have bound her to the Union; and thus divesting herself of every benefit, taking upon herself every burden, she claims to be exempt from any power to execute the laws of the United States within her limits.

I don’t need to tell you that this didn’t end well for Davis or for Mississippi.

Biden is way more chill than Andrew Jackson, so I doubt we’ll see the same sort of fire from him regarding Greg Abbott’s treasonous activities in the Lone Star State, or the full-throated support Abbott got from his fellow Red State governors. But Dark Brandon’s gonna have to go full Eisenhower at the border at some point, and shut these hateful traitors down.

Here’s the deal: federal law trumps state law. And—sorry!—none of the 50 states are allowed to leave the Union. (If MAGA don’t like it here, they can make like Tara Reid and go to Russia. Putin their whoremaster needs bodies.) As wonderful as the country would instantly become if Texas were de-annexed—I wrote about this on these pages a year and a half ago—that is not a viable solution to our problems.

Me, I’m with Andrew Jackson on this subject. I refuse to entertain the demands of the MAGA traitors. I don’t negotiate with terrorists, domestic or otherwise. I’m not giving an inch. There will be no withdrawal, no appeasement. I will cede no ground anywhere. I’m not ceding my Twitter page, I’m not ceding my Substack, I’m not ceding my house, I’m not ceding my citizenship, and I’m not ceding one square inch of land in these United States, in Texas or Mississippi or anywhere else.

Remember: Statues of Davis were torn down and melted. Jackson’s portrait, meanwhile, is in all of our wallets. I leave you with the last paragraph of the latter’s proclamation:

May the Great Ruler of nations grant that the signal blessings with which He has favored ours may not, by the madness of party or personal ambition, be disregarded and lost, and may His wise providence bring those who have produced this crisis to see the folly, before they feel the misery of civil strife, and inspire a returning veneration for that Union which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire.

The high destiny is upon us.

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ICYMI

If you’ve never watched The Five 8 before, Friday’s show is a good one to start with. Our guests were Steven Beschloss and Rev. Jeff Black. (You can read Black’s excellent piece on Trump’s affront to decency here.)

There was also this ditty about Leonard Leo, with Chunk’s superb animation. I got to indulge my inner Simon Le Bon:

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Photo: Olekinderhook. Statue of Jefferson Davis in Richmond, Va. that doesn’t exist anymore.