| February 14 |  |
Editor says, what if Abraham Lincoln tried to change the fundamentals in his second term? Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s).
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In 1866, the second Philadelphia Convention opened on this day under the Chairmanship of Walter Bagehot.
Second Philadelphia ConventionLess than a century before, another English journalist, Thomas Paine had stood at the apex of American political thought. But unlike Paine, Bagehot had never crossed the Atlantic, and perhaps this remoteness provided the broad perspective that enabled him to discern the constitutional issues that lay behind the outbreak of the American Civil War. "It is impossible", he wrote in 1861, "not to observe that the whole mischief has been, not caused but painfully exacerbated by the unfortunate mixture of flexibility and inflexibility in the United States Constitution".
America's stability had depended upon a voluntary union of the states. This was no longer true by the time Andrew Jackson left office. The result was a string of ineffectual Presidencies, because in the absence of broad agreement on issues of which the Constitution was largely silent, notably secession, the Chief Magistrate was simply unable to wield the kind of extra-legal authority envisaged by James Madison et al at the Philadelphia Convention. Quite simply, a sacred document and an unhereditary substitute for an uncrowned king was not a strong enough framework for the US Government.
That was the theory at least, a luxury Bagehot enjoyed whilst he wrote "The English Constitution" in 1865. And then he received the historic invitation from President Abraham Lincoln.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Prochaska, Frank "The View from Albion: Bagehot and the American Constitution" published in Today in History, February 2010 EditionStory Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Alternate Nations Source: History Today Magazine Labels: Walter Bagehot, Abraham Lincoln, Presidency, 1860 Election, America.
~ Interesting idea. but I doubt that Lincoln would have done it. Actually the original Articles of Confederation are very clear -- the Union is permanent. It's right there in the title. I haven't the foggiest notion why, during four years of war, and decades previous to it, no one ever mentioned that fact.
~ Unfortunately, the Constitution was not silent on slavery. Ed. Thanks - reference changed from slavery to secession It contained a number of provisions designed to protect that institution, either directly (Article I, section 9, par. 1, prohibits Congress from banning the African slave trade for twenty-one years) or uindirectly (the Senate and electoral college were both designed to give the less-populous slaveholding Southern states extra political clout).
Stan Brin is right about the Articles of Confederation calling for "perpetual union." However, southern political thinkers, most notably South Carolina's John Calhooun, came to argue that under the Constitution, which superseded the Articles, the USA was a "compact" of independent states. This issue is nowhere explicitly addressed in the Constitution, but there is a legal principle to the effect that if a measure (such as, in this case, secession or disssolution of the Union) is not provided for in law it should be regarded as having been considered and rejected. By this argument, had the Framers intended the Union to be a voluntary "compact" among the states, the Constitution would say so and would provide for orderly secession or for the orderly dissolution of the whole Union.
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