Nullification nonsense

So various state legislatures are trying to nullify Federal laws they don't like? Good luck with that. We've been trying to do that with Federal marijuana legislation here in California for the past 30 years, but the DEA still does regular drug raids.

The typical argument is that the 10th Amendment gives all rights not explicitly dedicated to the federal government to the states. Yawn. William Tecumseh Sherman pretty much nullified the 10th Amendment when he burned and raped his way across South Carolina to punish them for putting state supremacy ahead of federal government supremacy. I'm seeing nothing saying any of this nullification legislation is going to be any more enforcible than South Carolina's declaration of secession from the Union was. Well, South Carolina managed to enforce their secession from the Union for four years, but we all know what happened there in the end... as Governor Earl Long of Louisiana is reputed to have said when the Lege urged him to defy a Federal desegregation order in 1958, "Are you fucking nuts?! We're talking about the U.S. government, they got the goddamned atomic bomb!"

In the latest silliness, the State of Texas is trying to "nullify" the TSA checkpoints in airports. Yeah, good luck with that. Governor Faubus of Arkansas tried something like that too back in 1957. Didn't quite work out for him:

The 101st Airborne kinda outguns and out-mans the Texas Rangers. Just sayin'!

-- Badtux the Reality-based Penguin

150 years ago...

The South had declared full insurrection and William Tecumseh Sherman had turned down a job at the War Department, and also turned down a short-term commission to lead a Union regiment after the bombardment of Ft. Sumpter led to Lincoln calling for 75,000 short-term volunteers to put down the rebellion against the duly constituted government of the United States of America. From all appearances Sherman seemed to be settling down to run a streetcar company in Missouri. But the unsettled nature of things, and his continued concern about the fact that Lincoln's administration seemed to not understand that this was going to be a long and bloody war requiring people who were willing to do things that maybe weren't so nice, led him to change his mind. On May 8, 1861, Sherman dispatched a letter to Washington saying he was ready to serve in a position commensurate to his last rank in the military but for three *years*, not for some bogus three *months* because the war would take a minimum of three years to win (it actually took four). On May 14 his offer was accepted and he was placed in charge of a new regiment, the 13th Infantry, which was then in the process of being formed.

No Southern homes or businesses had been burned yet. I am eagerly awaiting the time, three years from now, when I can 150-year-live-blog Sherman burning Atlanta then slashing and burning his way to the sea, gutting the heart of the treasonous Confederacy and doing more than anybody else to cause its collapse.

-- Badtux the History Penguin

Live blogging the American Civil War

On May 2, 1861, General Winfield Scott, hero of the Mexican War and commander of Union forces, introduced his Anaconda Plan to President Lincoln as a doodle on the back of a letter that had been sent to him by a young man named George McClellan who had proposed his own plan for attacking the Confederacy. General Scott thought McClellan's plan was unworkable but had a few ideas that were useful for his own plan.

It was clear that this plan for strangling the Confederacy would require a lot more troops than had previously been envisioned. Thus Abraham Lincoln on May 3, 1861, called for more troops. In his “Proclamation 83 – Increasing the Size of the Army and Navy,” the President called for over 42,000 volunteers for three-year enlistments. Additionally, he called for the Regular Army to be increased to 22,700 and the Navy by 18,000. Unfortunately, President Lincoln also looked at the front of the letter and decided this young man named McClellan had promise and that he'd try McClellan's plan to capture Richmond, which, remember, held the only forge and foundry capable of making steam engines in the entire South. That was a decision he would later come to sorely regret. In the end it was General Scott's Anaconda plan with the addition of Sherman slashing another gaping hole through the heart of the Confederacy as another coil of the Anaconda which would win the War of Southern Treason for the United States.

Probably around 5PM on May 5, 2001, the news hit the St. Louis evening newspapers. A gentleman by the name of William Tecumseh Sherman who ran the local streetcar company read that news, and pondered it. A few weeks earlier in rejecting an offer of employment by the War Department he had chastised the President for what he felt were unreasonable expectations as to the length of the war and the resources needed to prosecute it. This new proclamation, he undoubted thought, meant that the President clearly had now been convinced that the war would be neither short nor cheap. He did not yet know of Lincoln's infatuation with General George B. McClellan's quick-and-easy Virginia invasion plan, so within a few days Mr. Sherman would make a decision that had profound implications upon the course of the war...

-- Badtux the History Penguin

150 years ago...

(Former) Major General W.T. Sherman had resigned his position at the Louisiana Military Academy (later known as LSU) and, after a brief meeting with Lincoln in Washington where he concluded that Lincoln was clueless about the nature of the upcoming war, which he was sure was going to be long, bitter, hard-fought, and bloody, was working for one of his relatives in Missouri running the St. Louis Railroad, a streetcar company. On April 6 he had received a telegram asking if he would come to Washington and go to work as chief clerk and Assistant Secretary of War in the War Department. His telegram in reply was short, sweet, and to the point: "I cannot accept". In a longer letter following afterward he explained that he had a family and an obligation to them, and did not feel that Washington D.C. was the place for him.

Then of course on April 12, the War of Southern Treason started as South Carolina secessionists fired upon U.S. soldiers using weapons seized from U.S. arsenals. At this point Sherman started re-thinking his decision, especially after the pro-Union governor of Missouri offered to put him in charge of the Unionist forces in Missouri... but it would not be until May 8 that Sherman changed his mind and dispatched a letter to Washington saying he was ready to serve in a position commensurate to his last rank in the military but for three *years*, not for some bogus three *months* because the war would take a minimum of three years to win (it actually took four), and on May 14 his offer was accepted and he was placed in charge of a new regiment, the 13th Infantry, which was then in the process of being formed.

No Southern homes or businesses had been burned yet. I am eagerly awaiting the time, three years from now, when I can 150-year-live-blog Sherman burning Atlanta then slashing and burning his way to the sea.

-- Badtux the History Penguin