Talk:Virginia Ratifying Convention

Proposed expansion?

This article is a daughter of Virginia Conventions. Editors are invited to expand it along with the main article with additional sourced contributions. Thanks in advance. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:37, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Right to withdraw - not what the source actually says

Virginians reserved the right to withdraw from the new government as “the People of the United States”, “whenever the powers granted unto it should be perverted to their injury or oppression,” If this is based on p.306 of the source, that's not what it says.[1] Doug Weller talk 15:02, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

It does say on p. 306, “A preamble to that declaration said that ‘the powers granted under this Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.”

It does not say derived from the states, it does not say derived from the people of Virginia alone. The vehicle for expression of the United States was to be the peaceful amendment procedure, either through a super-majority of Congress to ratification by a super-majority of the people in the states, or through another Constitutional Convention of all of the states, called by a super-majority of the state legislatures. The Constitution is not a call to national dissolution for the United States. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 21:00, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

"the people of the United States" in their constitutional "amending process" - again

On 22 July, 76.164.80.142 deleted a passage tried by Doug Weller almost two years ago, referring to “the people of the United States” entire, having the right to secede, in contra-distinction to three-fourths of the states in concert, let alone a faction among the populace of one state alone.

The deleted passage as written also omitted the Convention’s confirmation that any failings found in the Constitution in the future should be “remedied through its amending process”. By implication, that meant there could be no lawful secession by force of arms imposed on "the people of the United States" by a narrow commercial or geographic minority. Lawful secession would require two-thirds majority in the House and the Senate, and three-fourths of the state legislatures in the Union ratifying.

The editor making this week's deletion explained, “The citation is taken completely out of context. It is used to provide a false reason that states could secede in the future." Here is the link to the book on page 306: The Virginia Convention II - conclusion.

It is of some historical note that in 1860, secessionists in Congress floated an amendment to allow individual states to secede in a one-step simple majority resolution of their state legislature. But that caucus could not attain even a simple majority in either the House of Representatives, nor in the U.S. Senate. They failed even before secessionists vacated the offices that they had dedicated by an oath before their God, an oath to commit themselves on their honor to uphold, protect and defend the US Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Secessionists subsequently in the events of 1860-1861 acknowledged "lawful secession" for the purposes of rebellion to perpetuate and extend slavery into the 20th century by (a) singular, isolated state legislatures meeting away from their state capitol amidst streets of rioting mobs, (2) conventions without plebiscites for ratification, (3) rump sessions of legislatures without a quorum, and (4) dispersed fragments of former legislators passing resolutions of secession in exile out-of-state while embedded in a rebel army.

-- This article should not imply that the Virginia Ratification Convention of 1788 intended any such national development for the Union or for their posterity, never mind the 600,000 loss among its manhood. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:02, 23 July 2019 (UTC)