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The Federal Monopoly
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 In
most teaching about the American Civil War, the pupil
“learns” that there was a necessary association between
slavery and
secession.  The
war ended happily, he is told, because slavery was destroyed and the Union was
saved.
But there was no inevitable
connection between slavery and secession. In fact, the first secessionists
were Northern abolitionists who wanted no part of a Union that tolerated
slavery. They just didn’t acquire enough influence to persuade their
fellow Northerners to declare their independence.
Suppose they had. Suppose New
England had pulled out of the Union in indignation over slavery. Suppose the
remaining states had declared war in order to save the Union, and after a
bitter five-year struggle, costing nearly a million lives, New England had been
conquered.
Then what? History might record
that the victorious Union took a fierce revenge by occupying, looting, and
setting up puppet governments in New England for several years;
furthermore, that it also amended the Constitution not only to protect
slavery in the South, but to extend the right to own slaves to every state
and all U.S. territories.
In that case, “saving the
Union” might not seem such a wonderful thing. It would have come at
the price of saving slavery. The causes of Union and slavery would have been
synonymous for later generations.
A more chilling thought is that the
Union victory over New England might not only have saved slavery, but
conferred moral legitimacy on it. Abolitionism might be associated with those
nasty rebels who tried to destroy the Union, and slavery with the cause of
patriotism! To the victor belong the spoils — including, to a great
extent, the moral sense of the population.
Both sides in the actual Civil War
were engaged in subjugation. The South was protecting chattel slavery; the
North was denying the right of secession on which this country was founded.
At the time the Constitution was
adopted, several states, including Virginia and New York, ratified it on the
express condition that they might withdraw from the Union at any time they
deemed it in their interest to do so. This was in keeping with the Declaration
of Independence, which says that people have both the “right”
and the “duty” to “alter or abolish” a government
destructive of their rights.
Nobody at the time challenged
these states’ claim to a right of secession. Not only did the
Declaration support them; as a practical matter, nothing could stop them.
The federal government was too weak.
The Civil War established that the
federal government had grown strong enough to prevent and punish any
independence movement. From then on, no state could secede for any
reason, no matter how tyrannous the federal government might become.
The military ratio has widened
enormously: today the states still have rifles, but the federal government
has a nuclear arsenal. Nobody talks about secession (at least not very loud).
This is what makes it possible for
the federal government to dictate to the states. If the Union were still
voluntary, the Supreme Court wouldn’t dare, for example, to strike
down the abortion laws of all 50 states, because many of those states would
have seceded immediately after such an outrageous usurpation of their
power.
Ah, but we no longer speak of
federal “usurpation” — and why not? Because the
powerful can change even our moral sense, unless we are extremely vigilant.
So most of the country has accepted as legitimate the court’s claim
to authority over state abortion laws.
As Andrew Jackson once said of
Chief Justice Marshall, “John Marshall has made his decision —
now let him enforce it!” Translation: The power to interpret the law is
meaningless without the power to enforce it. If only the federal government
can enforce the Constitution, only the federal government can interpret it.
So, as a practical matter, there is
no longer any such thing as a federal “usurpation” of power.
Nobody can enforce the Constitution against the federal government, so why
bother trying? Which makes the Constitution pretty useless for the purpose
of limiting that government.
When you look back on a famous
victory in any war of the past, don’t be too sure the right side won.
Joseph Sobran |
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| Copyright © 2005 by the
Griffin Internet Syndicate, a division of Griffin Communications This column may not be reprinted in print or Internet publications without express permission of Griffin Internet Syndicate 
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