Members and friends of the Dragoons of Sons of Confederate Veterans Campo 1524 met at the Masonic Lodge in Prattville on Thursday evening November 14th. Over two dozen people were in attendance. Compatriot Rob Schwartz played his guitar and sang for everyone in the social hour before the camp meeting including leading everyone in Dixie. Commander Grooms welcomed everyone and then Chaplain Brantley led everyone in an Invocation followed by Color Sgt Dennis leading everyone in the pledges and salutes to the flags. Harold discussed all the upcoming events including the canned food drive, parades, Salvation Army bell ringing and Christmas Social and then introduced our guest speaker, our camp's own compatriot Davis. He presented an in depth discussion of the causes of the Secession of the Southern States. Events leading to secession highlighted included the Missouri Compromise, the Tariff of Abominations as well as the later Morrill Tariff, the Nullification Crisis, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act which led to Bleeding Kansas essentially the first shots of Lincoln's War, the Dred-Scott SCOTUS decision, John Brown's terrorist raid at Harper's Ferry VA, as well as publications such as Uncle Tom's Cabin which stoked emancipation embers for some but at the same time caused the South to ratchet down on their defense of slavery in part to prevent slave uprisings and uncompensated loss or confiscation of property. Direct causes of secession some cited by the documents created by the states in their exodus from the Union included abolitionists calling for immediate uncompensated emancipation without any consideration as to the welfare and issue of the freedmen, the abolitionists promoting domestic terrorism including slave revolts and harboring criminals implicit in these activities, the North seeking to restrict property rights in the commonly held territories in the west, the northern states ignoring the Fugitive Slave Clause in the US Constitution and, the tariffs and inequitable distribution of monies for federal expenditures. On the question as to whether secession was constitutional, the argument rested on the 10th Amendment which states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, not prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." William Rawle in his "A View of the Constitution" (a part of the curriculum at West Point Military Academy) argued that the states had a legal right to secede from the US and it was a "fundamental right of a people to choose their own form of government". The states went about secession the right way calling conventions and drafting articles of secession. It is argued that the issue of slavery was the sole issue driving the Southern state's secession but VA, TN, AR, and KY all initially declined secession but after Lincoln called up troops to invade the Southern states and by necessity these border states, they too left the Union. The SCOTUS case Texas vs. White in 1869 became the precedent on the question of secession's constitutional standing when Chief Justice Chase used the preamble to explain the "more perfect union" described there inferred an "indestructible Union composed of indestructible states" but in Jacobson vs. Massachusetts in 1905, the very first sentence overruled Texas vs. White in saying the US doesn't derive any of it's powers from the preamble unless such powers are expressly delegated in the instrument of the Constitution proper. A very informative discussion of this topic critical to the actions of our forebears and their states in 1860.
