The Nuremberg Trial began on the 20th November 1945, 66 years ago today, and lasted till the 1st October 1946. The trials were held in the city of Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany, in 1945–46, at the Palace of Justice. The first and best known of these trials was the Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), which tried 24 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany. Here is part 1 of a 7 part documentary. In part one, the Chief Prosecutor for the United States, Supreme Court Justice Robert H Jackson makes his opening remarks.
150 years ago today, at the beginning of the American Civil War, the last Secession ordinance was filed on the 20th November, 1861 by the State of Kentucky’s Confederate Government. The Ordinance of Secession was the document drafted and ratified in 1860 and 1861 by the states officially seceding from the United States of America. Each state ratified its own ordinance of secession, typically by means of a specially elected convention or general referendum.
During the Civil War, the states of Missouri and Kentucky had competing confederate and unionist governments claiming authority over their states. Kentucky’s Ordinance was approved by a convention of 200 people representing 65 counties of the state, but without support from the unionist state government. The Confederacy officially seated the state in 1862, though it was contested throughout the war.
The Ordinance is a document well worth a read. The parallels between the sentiments expressed bear a striking resemblance to attitudes expressed by some who have strong exceptions to remaining in the European Union. The issues of States Rights, or Sovereignty, were hot enough to stoke the flames of war and it was the minority of the elected legislators who lead the charge to form a separate ‘government’. One could easily substitute the words ‘Treaty of Rome’ for ‘Federal Constitution’ and ‘European Economic Union’ for ‘United States’ and so on. I will never understand why there is so much fear attached to a closer union. Why does the UK continually behave like a nervous bride or groom? Marriages, despite the pitfalls, can last a considerable time and produce, at the very least, a few reasonable results. At least the economics are more stable. Divorces and separations, more often than not, lead to difficult financial circumstances, usually for the party who remains unattached. Ask anyone who’s been through a divorce. Remember the Union prevailed in that earlier conflict of 1861 to 1865.
The Ordinance of Secession was, of course, all in the name of Liberty.
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Civil War battle map of Kentucky, published in Harpers Weekly October 19, 1861 |
Kentucky
Whereas, the Federal Constitution, which created the Government of the United States, was declared by the framers thereof to be the supreme law of the land, and was intended to limit and did expressly limit the powers of said Government to certain general specified purposes, and did expressly reserve to the States and people all other powers whatever, and the President and Congress have treated this supreme law of the Union with contempt and usurped to themselves the power to interfere with the rights and liberties of the States and the people against the expressed provisions of the Constitution, and have thus substituted for the highest forms of national liberty and constitutional government a central despotism founded upon the ignorant prejudices of the masses of Northern society, and instead of giving protection with the Constitution to the people of fifteen States of this Union have turned loose upon them the unrestrained and raging passions of mobs and fanatics, and because we now seek to hold our liberties, our property, our homes, and our families under the protection of the reserved powers of the States, have blockaded our ports, invaded our soil, and waged war upon our people for the purpose of subjugating us to their will; and
Whereas, our honor and our duty to posterity demand that we shall not relinquish our own liberty and shall not abandon the right of our descendants and the world to the inestimable blessings of constitutional government: Therefore,
Be it ordained, That we do hereby forever sever our connection with the Government of the United States, and in the name of the people we do hereby declare Kentucky to be a free and independent State, clothed with all power to fix her own destiny and to secure her own rights and liberties.
And whereas, the majority of the Legislature of Kentucky have violated their most solemn pledges made before the election, and deceived and betrayed the people; have abandoned the position of neutrality assumed by themselves and the people, and invited into the State the organized armies of Lincoln; have abdicated the Government in favor of a military despotism which they have placed around themselves, but cannot control, and have abandoned the duty of shielding the citizen with their protection; have thrown upon our people and the State the horrors and ravages of war, instead of attempting to preserve the peace, and have voted men and money for the war waged by the North for the destruction of our constitutional rights; have violated the expressed words of the constitution by borrowing five millions of money for the support of the war without a vote of the people; have permitted the arrest and imprisonment of our citizens, and transferred the constitutional prerogatives of the Executive to a military commission of partisans; have seen the writ of habeus corpus suspended without an effort for its preservation, and permitted our people to be driven in exile from their homes; have subjected our property to confiscation and our persons to confinement in the penitentiary as felons, because we may choose to take part in a cause for civil liberty and constitutional government against a sectional majority waging war against the people and institutions of fifteen independent States of the old Federal Union, and have done all these things deliberately against the warnings and vetoes of the Governor and the solemn remonstrance of the minority in the Senate and House of Representatives: Therefore,
Be it further ordained, That the unconstitutional edicts of a factious majority of a Legislature thus false to their pledges, their honor, and their interests are not law, and that such a government is unworthy of the support of a brave and free people, and that we do therefore declare that the people are thereby absolved from all allegiance to said government, and that they have a right to establish any government which to them may seem best adapted to the preservation of their rights and liberties.
Source: Official Records, Ser. IV, vol. 1, p. 741.
[Adopted 20, Nov. 1861, in Russellville, by a group of Kentuckians styling itself as a "Convention of the People of Kentucky."]
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