by John Remington Graham
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Product Description
This comprehensive history traces the quest for a peaceable and lawful revolution, from Britain's Glorious Revolution to Canada's current situation, with a special emphasis on the constitutional questions raised by the American Civil War. As the British constitution evolved, British leaders recognised the need for a civilised method of transferring power without bloody and destructive revolutions. Impressed by the smooth transition of the Glorious Revolution, America's founders incorporated similar ideas into the Untied States constitution, establishing a republican confederacy of free, sovereign, and independent states. Yet when the Southern states exercised their legal right to peacefully secede, America erupted into a civil war. Graham devotes several chapters to the Confederate secession, addressing the issues of Southern abolitionists, South Carolina's nullification crisis, the Missouri Compromise, the Southern confederacy, the Civil War, and the Reconstruction Acts.
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Give me Liberty or Give me Death--Time to Demand Restoration of the Constitution, 2008-11-10
20081214 DEPARTED AMAZON WITH OUTRAGE OVER THE MANIPULATION OF VOTES.
Published in 2002, this book summarizes all the reasons the individual US states may today freely contemplate secession from the United STATES of America. The author has special authority apart from his scholarship--he was among those who served as counselors to the high court of Canada that decided in 1998, irrevocably, that Quebec has the right to secede.
Two things about this book really impressed me apart from its obvious value in confronting our present reckless, arrogant, and more often than not criminal central government: first, slavery was on the way OUT in the South, and everyone knew it then; and second, the North used slavery as a strategic deception, a form of public deception acutely similar to the 935 lies Dick Cheney orchestrated on Weapons of Mass Destruction, to violate the Constitution multiple times over, and ultimately ruin the South for the benefit of Northern capitalists and the European banks behind them. Given that the Democratic Party is nothing more than a lighter version of the Republican Party--both criminally corrupt, this book is relevant NOW.
The introduction is by David Livingston, whose Wikipedia page is worth reading and opens with: "Livingston has developed some renown as a constitutional scholar and is an expositor of the compact nature of the Union, with its concomitant doctrines of corporate resistance, nullification, and secession. The doctrine coincides with federalism, states' rights, the principle of subsidiarity. His political philosophy embodies the decentralizing themes echoed by Europeans such as Althusius, David Hume, and John Acton and Americans such as Thomas Jefferson, Spencer Roane, Abel Parker Upshur, Robert Hayne and John Calhoun, which holds the community as the basic unit of political society."
The author makes the point early on that secession is about RESTORING the rule of law, and that it is a uniquely peaceful form of revolution, a rational and orderly process with antecedents in the "Glorious Revolution" and the accession of William and Mary.
The constitution right of secession is based in natural law and was THE animating principle of American constitutional thought until 1860, when Northern bankers were directed by the Rothchilds and Morgan banking families in Europe to create a war.
The author's research is deep and compelling. The States delegated LIMITED powers to the federal government (which they explicitly refused to call a "national" government), and at no time did they surrender their individual sovereignty, many of them sovereign from England well before the Declaration of Independence.
1775: Continental Congress authority was derived from the States, not the people.
1778: Articles of Confederation, "Every State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence." Further on, Union is perpetual UNLESS--and later of course, by compact of the States, this version was dissolved.
Citing James Madison: a breach of any article by any party leaves all other parties at liberty to consider the whole dissolved.
George Mason of Virginia is highlighted as true patriotic and intellectual hero who was responsible for the clause that specified that all powers not expressly DELEGATED to the federal government were reserved for the States.
The author demystifies the confusion between the Union created by the States and the Union confirmed by the People. While each State still retained its own sovereignty, the Constitution, unlike the Articles of Confederation, was confirmed by a Convention of People in each state, and thus achieved a new status as a republic in form--this does NOT, however, remove the sovereign rights of each STATE.
In discussing the nullification crisis the author illuminates the distinction between the States' sovereignty power--the power to make and unmake Constitutions--and the day to day powers DELEGATED to the federal government, hence not to be interfered with absent a need to nullify, or in extremis, to secede.
1798: Nullification is a precursor to selection. This matters today as the federal government seeks to place CEILINGS on State control of corporations and pollution. Such mandates can be nullified by the States if their leaders rediscover their heritage. Virginia and Kentucky passes resolutions specifying that the federal government was created for SPECIAL (i.e. limited) purposes and was not the exclusive and final judge of its own powers, which are derived from the States.
Stephen Douglas, although a servant of the financial powers, rose to great heights after Lincoln's "election" (the author says Lincoln's election was so rigged he did not bother to campaign), and proposed a withdrawal from forts in the south so as to avoid sparking a war. Lincoln refused. Similarly, General Winfield Scott advised Lincoln to let Fort Sumter go, and Lincoln instead ordered the provocative reinforcement of Fort Sumter.
The author is at pains to document that neither Congress nor the Executive may declare war on a member State; on four separate occasions the Founding Father explicitly denied this power to Congress.
The author suggests, and documents, that General George Brinton McClellan was not the incompetent that Secretary of War Stanton sought to libel and slander, but rather very respected by the South to the point that he could have won with minimal bloodshed, and reunited the Union rather than destroy the Southern half.
Costs of Lincoln's impeachable decision to war with the south are itemized by the author as including dictatorship, bankruptcy, enslavement of the white population and looting of the south, and conscription on a scale that made death on a massive scale inevitable.
In creating its new Confederacy, the South demonstrated its moral superiority and good intentions by forbidding the future importation of slaves; repeating the fugitive slave demands on the North, recognizing all Indian tribes in its western territories as sovereign unto themselves, and rejecting Alexander Hamilton's imperial pretensions for centralized government.
I have many other notes that I have posted at my primary website. In the comment below I provide a short link, and nine quotes from the book that would not fit here within the 1000 word limit.
On our present crisis in America:
Obama - The Postmodern Coup
The Bush Tragedy
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
On secession:
Secession: How Vermont and All the Other States Can Save Themselves from the Empire
Is Secession Treason?
One Nation, Indivisible? A Study of Secession and the Constitution
Details of my patriotic position can be found in:
Election 2008: Lipstick on the Pig (Substance of Governance; Legitimate Grievances; Candidates on the Issues; Balanced Budget 101; Call to Arms: Fund We Not Them; Annotated Bibliography)
My shared vision for the future:
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 The problem is, it's still a paper tiger, 2008-09-13
My problem with such substantive constitutional arguments such as this book, is that they are just that-- substantive, and hence subjective (in that they are subject to debate, counter, and rejection).
Meanwhile, that the Constitution does not reserve the sovereignty of the states, per se; even the 9th and 10th amendments don't reserve the right of secession, but only the powers not delegated to the government (which are subject to federal interpretation).
The national sovereignty of the states, rather, is reserved by the nature of national sovereignty itself-- i.e. it remains unbreakably intact under international law, unless specifically dissolved by the sovereign power in question (which in the case of these states, was the citizens themselves of the respective state).
Reading the Constitution and other documents, we do not see any such express and willful dissoution of any state's sovereignty; rather it's the opposite, if anything; therefore the issue is purely objective, and not subject to any discussion-- the states were sovereign nations under the Constitution... and so remain.
Until the states realize that they are sovereign nations under international law, which predate the Union, then all even the most perfect substantive arguments will simply be ignored, dismissed and ridiculed; you can lead people to the truth, but you can't make them accept it.
In conclusion, only a SOVEREIGN interpretation of state's rights will have any objective meaning; arguing the Constitution against the federal government, meanwhile, is simply telling the juggernaut that it has no right to crush you; while you may be right, it makes no difference.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
The Design vs. The Outcome of America, 2008-07-28
How did it come to be that we give Congress and the President approval ratings of less than 10%? Where are the checks that kept the federal government on a leash? Where the early fears of a federal machine consuming its creator valid? Are we experiencing the United Sates as designed in 1787? What were the possible turning points?
I suggest you read this book. What an enlightened trip into the past. This book should be required reading for citizenship and all citizens.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Understanding the Constitution, 2008-01-12
I find this book to be very well written, and well documented. It provides important historical perspectives on our Constitution and is a great aid in understanding what the founding fathers intended. Excellent book!
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
More and more the truth comes out, 2006-10-28
The well-documented and nobly presented information in this book shows clearly how history has been distorted and misrepresented by those who hate and have contempt for the south and the southern way of life. More importantly it restates the original intent of America's founders and the historical events in England that formed the foundation for their thought. It is clear from Mr. Graham's book and other recent texts (almost all written by northerners) that there was a profound sea change in our government that altered the nation's character and affected our international policies as well. It is often said that America resembled itself as much after the Civil War as Rome did after it was changed from a Republic to the rule of the Caesars. The basic effect of this sea change was the erosion of the sovereignty and legitimate authority of local governments and the increasing centralization of power in the hands of a few. In a phrase, it was the death of federalism. When the historical facts are reviewed without bias, as they are in Mr. Graham's book, it is clear that the southern states were not in rebellion but in protest and were the authentic defenders of sum and substance of the constitution of 1789. It was the north that was in rebellion, seizing power and sweeping the constitution aside and distorting its' meaning for the personal gain and power of the few. And so it has been ever since. The value in this book and other similar books, such as Thomas DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln," is not to shift blame or point fingers. Its value is in providing the evidence that dissolves the encrustation of lies and distortions to see what went wrong and why. Such an analysis is a critical first step to the badly needed restoration that will rescue America from its present condition as an undeclared oligarchy. Once we have the truth restored one other question remains: Do we have the personal and political courage to affect that needed restoration? Jefferson Davis said, "The principle for which we fight is bound to raise itself again at another time." It was principle not sectarianism that was behind the South's defense. The whole question is not that of the south against the north, but liberty against tyranny; the right and dignity of local peoples to rule themselves without the interference of black-robed oligarchs who live in the abstract vacuum of positive law and spew forth judgments based upon the relativism that is both the progenitor and spawn of positive law. Sell your bed and buy this book. It will not only illuminate the past but serve as a dependable guide to the understanding of the present and what must be done if America is to survive as a nation rooted in liberty.
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