p. 232 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa

The Civil War was not a matter of states rights vs. the national government. Make the case of that argument using the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which Pierce, Buchanan and Lincoln all enforced. Who was Anthony Burns?

[It's always important to remember that slavery was going to die either by the mathematics of the new territories and new states passing a Constitutional amendment, or under the weight of its own economic need to expand and its failure to do so. This impending failure must have had an impact upon the often conflicting political rhetoric of the South from Stephens, to Douglas, to Buchanan, to Davis, etc.]

p. 202 & 205 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa

Describe the split in the Democratic Party Convention held in Charleston, South Carolina in May, 1860. Note that the Democrat Buchanan rejected the successionist ideas of Jefferson Davis, seemed indifferent to slavery in the name of "the law," and counseled restraint above all else.

p. 205 Lincoln argued that the Union stood in the same relationship to the state as a state to a county, which fits with both Buchanan and Madison. Davis, on the other hand, inherited Calhoun's theory of undivided state sovereignty, which meant that an individual was bound by his promise to his state but not by his promise to the nation.

An argument: Slavery was doomed if left to popular sovereignty (this is the reason Stephen Douglas split the Democratic Party); with the new territories there would eventually be enough votes for a Constitutional Amendment against it. Calhoun understood that the South depended entirely upon favorable rulings in the Courts for slavery's survival, such as that provided by Justice Roger Taney in Dred Scott. This is much like gay marriage today where the gay marriage movement fails whenever it is left to popular vote, but survives only by way of judicial activists in the tradition of Taney.

p. 197 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa

Buchanan agreed with Lincoln that there is no right of succession. So what put Buchanan squarely on the side of Calhoun (who did believe in a right of succession) and the South?

p.191-192 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa

In the Federalist, Madison wrote for the first time in history about a government that was "partly federal, partly national." What was the divide between Calhoun and Buchanan on this issue? What did Calhoun mean by saying that the country cannot be a little bit pregnant? Describe how these two points of view effect the right of revolution vs. the right of succession. Compare to European Union today.

p.188-190 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa

State the heart of the argument for succession as a Constitutional right. How do you refute that argument?

p.183-185 A New Birth of Freedom, Jaffa

How is no-fault divorce analogous to Southern nullification? "But a compact to form a government, like a marriage, although entered voluntarily, does not leave the contracting parties free thereafter to do as they please." What is the 'positive good' theory of slavery that Calhoun supported?

Calhoun did not believe the Union was a contract that states could enter and leave as they please, but he saw nullification and possible succession (failing nullification) as the proper route.

The marriage analogy is similar to Douglas' popular sovereignty argument that Buchanan rejected. Buchanan believed in the 'positive good' of slavery, and that if all the states did not recognize slavery as a 'positive good' then that would justify succession.

Buchannan believed the South could justify resistance on the basis of the natural law of self preservation, but he could "see no justification for resistance to slavery." p. 185. Under slavery, the positive law denied the slave the right to defend himself against the theft of his property in the fruit of his labor and the violence to his person that might be committed with impunity by his master. But the sovereign rights to life, liberty, and property are inseparable from one's being." p. 184