Meanwhile, in
my old home state:
Unless a handful of wavering Democrats change their minds, the Republican-controlled Missouri legislature is expected to enact a statute next month nullifying all federal gun laws in the state and making it a crime for federal agents to enforce them here. A Missourian arrested under federal firearm statutes would even be able to sue the arresting officer.
This is called "nullification." We had a war about this once. The nullifiers lost. To their modern imitators I say, with
Andrew Jackson, that theirs is a "strange position" and an "impractical absurdity":
I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.
On another occasion, asked by a visitor from South Carolina if he had any words for the people of his (nullification-mad) state:
Yes I have; please give my compliments to my friends in your State and say to them, that if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.
Or we might toss in William Tecumseh Sherman's supposed reply to a journalist who asked how he could justify the destruction his men were visiting on the South:
They asked for it.
The South Carolina Letter of Secession states:
ReplyDelete"The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution."
This was another reason SC seceded...because the NORTH was nullifying the Federal Fugitive Slave Act. Lots of history has been full of lies...do your own research, it's out there. If you honestly care, you will.
Link here:
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/southcarolina_declaration.asp