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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #140831 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

About the Author
John Remington Graham is a Pelican Publshing author.

Customer Reviews

Secession in history vs the Lie told in American History
I found this book by accident. After I started reading I could not put it down! John Graham has written the most comprehensive study on the late War Between the States. He brings to light the causes of war, little know facts about the people who conducted the war to the conduct carried out by Stanton through his insane generals. After reading this book everyone will know that the United States was destroyed by the war and through the illegeal acts of President Abraham Lincoln. History, law, truth and justice were only part of the things lost during the war. The 600,000 men, untold numbers of civilians and the 8 billion dollars spent to destroy the south were a waste that can all be attributed to Lincoln. What a price was paid for the government we have today! A must read for all students of law and history. I would give ten stars if I could!

"...the truth is great and will prevail..."
"..when the work of the lie is done, the lie will rot, the truth is great and will prevail, when none cares whether it prevails or not..." - Coventry Patmor circa 1850's.

I have ordered copies of A Constitutional History of Secession by John Remington Graham, a member of the Minnesota bar, for my sons, some friends, and the library of the high school that my sons attended. This with the hope of overcoming, with at least some, the kernel of what I believe to be Patmor's correct characterization of lie v. truth in regards to too much of our history - in this case truth as set forth in that book.

That any State had a Constitutional right to secede is undeniable, the author makes that case airtight. From the dust cover, where Professor Clyde Wilson, University of South Carolina was quoted, "Had I the power, I would require every professor of history, political science, and law in America to read Graham's work. Nowhere is there a truer and more thorough treatment of the origins and nature of freedom and self-government. This work is essential for those who would like to recover those great blessings."

If you are interested in the statesmanship of Chief Justice Taney after his dreadful opinion in the Dred Scott case; if you are interested in why the author believes Lincoln's predecessor's speech "...should be carved in stone of a conspicuous monument for the guidance of every leader who might in the future guide the destiny of a federal Union..."; if you are interested in the how and why of Stanton's undermining of McClellan "... the image given by the common lot of civil war historians, preposterous in the light of the facts, is that McCellan ..."; if you are interested in why "... the capitalists financed agitation against slavery, - not the rational arguments of Lydia Maria Child, but the vulgar appeals of Harriet Beecher Stowe, "...for they wished ..." ; if you are interested in why the Missouri Compromise was repealed and why the repeal led to war then you may agree with the author that "... Lincoln's objectives were to quiet the agitations in the North against the South, and to remove the cause of the discontent by restoration of the Missouri Compromise, which should never have been repealed at all. ..."

If you are interested in a myriad of "whys and how's", in short, if you are interested in "sovereignty of the people" v. "... States Right is simply code for slavery then or discrimination now", you must give a fair reading to A Constitutional History of Secession.

A Compelling History of the Right of Secession in the Anglo-American tradition
~The Constitutional History of Secession~ is the history of the legal practice of secession in the Anglo-American world. The learned jurist John Remington Graham is possessed of a profound expertise on American, British and Canadian constitutional law. He has written a compelling defense of the right of secession. Secession, the right of self-determination, and the principle of "rule by consent of the governed" were among the foremost principles animating the American War for Independence of Seventeen-Seventy-Six. Yet the consolidationist sophists malign and deny these tried and true principles of free government. Graham however traces British and American constitutional history and developments with great clarity and buoys the case for secession. He offers an amazing exposition of seventeenth century British constitutional developments, which culminated in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in which the Crown peacefully passed from James II to William and Mary without armed conflict. The accession of William of Orange to the throne was met with popular support, as the usurpations of William II were not amenable to the populace. This so called revolution set a standard for peaceful political separation, and it was exactly what the American Continental Congress sought from Great Britain. Likewise, peaceful separation was what the southern states that formed the Southern Confederacy wanted when those eleven states formally separated from the United States. Secession does not have to mean war and violence, but war was thrust upon American colonials and southern confederates when their previous government refused to acknowledge their right of self-determination. As the Declaration of Independence proclaims, "...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." As Confederate President Jefferson Davis proclaimed, "All we ask is to be left alone." The Glorious Revolution forms the foundation of Graham's treatise as he advances his thesis and makes the case for secession. As Donald Livingston proclaims in the preface, "The central focus of this work will be revolution, not as an armed overthrow of an established government, but as a rational and orderly process, specifically allowed by fundamental law."

In making the case for secession, Graham substantiates the compact nature of the Union as well, which correspondingly legitimizes interposition, nullification, and secession. Two early constitutional commentaries including St. George Tucker's View of the Constitution of the United States (1801) and Pennsylvania Federalist William Rawle's A View of the Constitution (1829) both affirm a right of secession.

John Remington Graham further traces American constitutional developments, and in doing so he substantiates the compact nature of the Union, and makes a profound case for the Constitution as a compact, which in effect legitimizes the right of secession. He further explains all of these episodes in constitutional history with amazing detail and clarity:

**The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions which were in continuity with the colonial-revolutionary tradition of State remonstrance, protest, interposition and nullification of unconstitutional acts of central government authorities.

**The Hartford Convention and the anti-war, anti-embargo northern secessionist movement which emerged after the unwelcomed War of 1812 with the British.

**The Webster-Hayne Debates on the nature of the Union is explained in detail. Likewise, Daniel Webster's case of foot-in-mouth disease is made manifest as Hayne hearkens back to his deeds at the Hartford Convention.

**The Missouri Compromise and constitutional question of slavery and the sectional strife over the spread of slavery into the territories is explained.

**The secession of the eleven southern states from the Union and the circumstances leading to their separation are explained in detail. Likewise, the birth of the Southern Confederacy and the north's violent refusal to accept their separation is painstakingly documented.

**The unlawful and violent conquest of the South, the unconstitutional political repression in north and south, the illegal suspension of the writ of habeas corpus throughout the whole nation and the oppressive Reconstruction Acts are explained with amazing clarity and detail.

**Graham fast forwards to the twentieth-century. In our time, Quebec has asserted the legal right of secession as a viable political alternative if its relationship with the central government of the Canadian Confederation does not prove to be more mutually-beneficial and less detrimental to the interests of Quebec's citizenry in coming years. With a distinctive francophone culture and nearly half of the populace voting for secession in the last popular referendum, we may well witness the peaceful separation of Quebec from Canada in our lifetime.

All things considered, John Remington Graham has done a remarkable job at making the case for secession and has made a lasting contribution to constitutional scholarship. His book is well-documented and awash in powerful quotations from British and American statesmen. There is a preponderance of evidence in the Anglo-American constitutional heritage which makes secession a lawful exercise. Likewise, he is very logical in tracing the deducible nature of State sovereignty. Graham in final application points out that self-determination as expressed in an act of secession emanates from the right of people themselves to self-government. Essentially by presenting the secession of the American colonies and the Southern Confederacy in its proper historical and legal context, Graham has made a valuable contribution to understanding the Anglo-American political tradition. John Graham who presently served as an expert advisor on British constitutional law to the amicus curiae (i.e. friend of the court) for Quebec in the secession state decided in 1998. As Jefferson astutely opined, "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes..." Thus, secession is never to be approached lightly, and the act of secession negates the value, benefits and security of the Union.

* * * * * * * * * * *
"Whenever government becomes destructive of these ends (i.e. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government." -Declaration of Independence of the American Colonies, July 4, 1776

"Sovereignty is the highest degree of political power, and the establishment of a form of government, the highest proof which can be given of its existence. The states could have not reserved any rights by articles of their union, if they had not been sovereign, because they could have no rights, unless they flowed from that source. In the creation of the federal government, the states exercised the highest act of sovereignty, and they may, if they please, repeat the proof of their sovereignty, by its annihilation. But the union possesses no innate sovereignty, like the states; it was not self-constituted; it is conventional, and of course subordinate to the sovereignties by which it was formed." -John Taylor of Caroline, New Views of the Constitution, Nov. 19, 1823

"I saw in State Rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy. The institutions of your Republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence which ought to have belonged to them, by reason of those defects and abuses of principle which the Confederate Constitution was expressly and wisely calculated to remedy. I believed that the example of that great Reform would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of Republics. Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization; and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo." -Lord Acton in a letter to Robert E. Lee, Nov. 4, 1866