The American Idea of Liberty

I was asked once:
"How and why did American ideas on liberty change over time?"

In my opinion the decline of liberty - marked by the rise in the power of the federal government - began with the Civil War. Lincoln's power grab for the federal government still haunts us today, as his successors in the White House have expanded the power of the federal government to a degree never imagined by the founders.

It seems that each generation finds new ways to expand the power of government, which exist in inverse proportion to the 'amount' of liberty afforded the citizenry. What was created as a Union of sovereign states loosely connected by a small federal 'manager' has been flipped inside-out.

To expound upon my initial point:
On May 27, 1861, the army of the Union -- a nation formed by consecutive secessions, first from Great Britain in 1776, and then from itself in 1788 -- invaded the State of Virginia, which had recently seceded from the Union, in an effort to negate that secession by violent force.

The historical result of the effort begun that day is well-known and indisputable: After four years of warfare which killed 620,000 people, the United States negated the secession of the Confederate States of America, and forcibly re-enrolled them into the Union... despite the fact that, because such secession was not expressly forbidden in the Constitution, it was by default LEGAL.

The Civil War caused and allowed a tremendous expansion of the size and power of the federal government. It gave us several firsts: Federal conscription law, progressive income tax, enormous standing army... along with higher tariffs.

James McPherson writes: "This astonishing blitz of laws . . . did more to reshape the relation of the government to the economy than any comparable effort except perhaps the first hundred days of the New Deal. This Civil War Legislation . . . created the blueprint for modern America."

In the context of a legal analysis of state secession, it was the Union's invasion of Virginia that is significant, and not the Confederacy's firing on Fort Sumter a month earlier. The Confederacy fired on Fort Sumter to expel what it believed were trespassers on South Carolina soil and territorial waters. By no means can the seizure of the fort be construed as a threat to the security of the states remaining in the Union, the closest of which was 500 miles away. If South Carolina illegally seceded from the Union, then both the Union's initial refusal to surrender Fort Sumter and its subsequent invasion were lawful and constitutional. Conversely, if South Carolina had the right to secede from the Union, then indeed the Union soldiers in the Fort were trespassers and also a potential military threat to South Carolina. Thus, assuming the right of secession existed, the Union had no right to retaliate or initiate war against the Confederacy. Its subsequent invasion of Virginia then marks the beginning of its illegal war on the Confederacy.