Were Lincoln and FDR REALLY that bad?

[Art Eatman]

tcsd, why would secession "not work"? Would there somehow not be "international" trade between these new countries? With trade, would there not be jobs?

I don't see how size or population would be an important factor, just from looking at the European example.

A loose confederation of allied-interest states, with these states set up as independent countries, could still support such things as "Confederation" military or transportation systems.

Complex, maybe, but certainly not impossible. The harshest arguments against it would come from those who are more concerned about their own and central powers, who even now tend to disregard "the good of all people".

Art

 

[Foreign Devil]

If you think bureaucracy is bloated and taxes are too high now just imagine if every state maintained a border patrol, an immigration service, a customs service, an army . . .

 

[Quartus]

That's an interesting point, but irrelevant to the discussion.

MY take is that any state that attempts to leave the Union is essentially destroying the country and such efforts need to be defeated.

Well, evidently that was Lincoln's take, too. But the question we are discussing is, "Was secession legal"". Whether it was a good idea or whether we like it or not is another discussion.

Ok. Show me. Please, show me any part of the Constitution which says the state of Maryland can pack up and leave. Show me the provision which says "oh, but a single state can trump the authority of all other states and the federal government".

Please, cite anything at all to back up that statement.

Wrong question, Benjamin. The burden of proof is on YOU to show that it was NOT legal. I don't have to find a law that says I may mow my lawn. If the local constable wants to arrest me, the burden of proof is on HIM to show a law against what I am doing.

The problem is that most of us are so conditioned (by years of bad schooling) to the status quo, that we simply ASSUME that the Federal gummit has power to to pretty much whatever it pleases, and the burden of proof is on anyone who disagrees. That's NOT A Good Thing.

As has been pointed out, the Federal government was not explicity granted the power to PREVENT seccession, therefore it did not have that power.


It is the destruction of that very principle of government that Lincoln is guilty of.

 

[Baba Louie]

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.†AL

The words of a BAD MAN? Pragmatic, yes. Whatever it takes. Preserve the Union. A Union party member (what a surprise)
Interesting.

"We have faith that future generations will know that here, in the middle of the 20th century, there came a time when men of good will found a way to unite, and produce, and fight to destroy the forces of ignorance, and intolerance, and slavery, and war." FDR

Elected 4 times to office, beloved by the poor and common man of the day.

Were they really that bad?
In whose eyes?
The nation?
The rich?
The poor?
The Constitution?
Then (when they were currently in office) or Now (when we get to revise history to our current standards)?

This has been an enlightening thread. Kind of shows where ya stand on present day things and yer understanding of historical thingies.
Imagine yourself being elected on the eve of the nation being ripped asunder and saying, "Bye. Ya'll don't forget to write" or being elected during a really depressed economy, watching 15 million (10% of the population) people unemployed and starving and saying "Ya'll on ya own now. Buck up boys. It ain't that bad and it ain't Uncle Sam's place to help ya out. Don't forget to vote."

Yeah right

Maybe, just maybe, they were the right men at the right place at the right time. Maybe. Sure was the last job they ever held, eh?

 

[Joe Demko]

This has been an enlightening thread. Kind of shows where ya stand on present day things and yer understanding of historical thingies.
Imagine yourself being elected on the eve of the nation being ripped asunder and saying, "Bye. Ya'll don't forget to write" or being elected during a really depressed economy, watching 15 million (10% of the population) people unemployed and starving and saying "Ya'll on ya own now. Buck up boys. It ain't that bad and it ain't Uncle Sam's place to help ya out. Don't forget to vote."

Bravo! Bravissimo!

 

[dischord]

This has been an enlightening thread. Kind of shows where ya stand on present day things and yer understanding of historical thingies.
Imagine yourself being elected on the eve of the nation being ripped asunder and saying, "Bye. Ya'll don't forget to write" or being elected during a really depressed economy, watching 15 million (10% of the population) people unemployed and starving and saying "Ya'll on ya own now. Buck up boys. It ain't that bad and it ain't Uncle Sam's place to help ya out. Don't forget to vote."

Logical fallacy: Appeal to emotion.

 

[mercedesrules]

IMO, any person that strives to make the state bigger and more powerful is a devil. Anyone that trys to shrink state power is a saint. Both of these presidents were the former.


MR

 

[Benjamin]

Thus spake Quartus

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY take is that any state that attempts to leave the Union is essentially destroying the country and such efforts need to be defeated.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




Well, evidently that was Lincoln's take, too.

Bull.

States started seceeding right after the election of Lincoln, while Buchannan was still president. IIRC Lincoln was innaugurated on the 5th of March, by which point Buchannan had still done nothing.

There was no war until the Confederacy attacked the American fort Sumter @ Charlestown SC. In response to a hostile army attacking American property, Lincoln responded, as was his duty.

Do you dispute that a military attack against the United States requires a response?

The burden of proof is on YOU to show that it was NOT legal.

That was the point of my post from 5/4 11:24 am, and again at 2:35. There's a lot in the Constitution that says the states were voluntarily forming a new relation both between each other and with a new government which had certain regulatory powers over them, each of which had certain responsibilities towards the other. Common defense, commerce, electoral duties, etc.

You're saying that years of bad schooling has conditioned me to extensively reference the constitution to document an actual source of federal powers?


---------------------

Declaration stated, based on Locke's second treatise, that it was a Good Thing for the colonies to sever ties with the United Kingdom. The relation between the UK and the colonies was not comparable to the relations between South Carolina and Virginia against the rest of the Unitd States. There was no long train of abuses; SC and VA had their congressional reps and Senators who could change the legal framework of the Country; their legislature's electors were accepted in the electoral college.

Finally, cropcircle, you said everything other than the 3rd Amendment has been subverted beyond recognition. I respectfully submit that the nation has changed. We're not a rural, agrarian nation reliant upon natural borders for protection from foreign nations. Credit has become not simply acceptable, but vital for commerce, despite everything the Virginians feared.

 

[dischord]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, evidently that was Lincoln's take, too.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bull.

States started seceeding right after the election of Lincoln, while Buchannan was still president. IIRC Lincoln was innaugurated on the 5th of March, by which point Buchannan had still done nothing.

There was no war until the Confederacy attacked the American fort Sumter @ Charlestown SC.

Are you arguing that had the Rebs not fired on Fort Sumter (or otherwise taken hostile action), then Lincoln would have let South Carolina secede?

 

[braindead0]

Congress has the power to use the militia to suppress insurrections, and must guarantee to every state a republican form of government. I think that implies that states are not allowed to secede.

It implies nothing. As soon as a State declares itself no longer part of the union it is no longer a State. Thus, there is no insurrection the (essentially now seperate country) new country is no longer subject to the U.S. Constitution.

As stated previously, the power force States to remain subject to the Constitution was not specifically delegated to the Federal government.....

 

[Quartus]

That was the point of my post from 5/4 11:24 am, and again at 2:35. There's a lot in the Constitution that says the states were voluntarily forming a new relation both between each other and with a new government which had certain regulatory powers over them, each of which had certain responsibilities towards the other. Common defense, commerce, electoral duties, etc.

Your posts missed the point badly. You have not cited anything in the Constitution that authorizes the Federal government to use force of arms to keep its member states from withdrawing from that voluntary union. You have cited nothing in the Constitution to suggest that the Union was anything OTHER than voluntary. There is nothing in the Constitution (nor the writings of the FF) to suggest that the several States were permanently giving up their sovereignty to a superior power. There is nothing in the Constitution which prohibits a State from leaving the Union.

You're saying that years of bad schooling has conditioned me to extensively reference the constitution to document an actual source of federal powers?

Well, you haven't done that yet, so I'd say your schooling has conditioned you to believe that the Federal government has powers that are not explictly spelled out in the Constitution, an idea which is explicitly denied in the Constitution.

Bull.

States started seceeding right after the election of Lincoln, while Buchannan was still president. IIRC Lincoln was innaugurated on the 5th of March, by which point Buchannan had still done nothing.

And having LEFT that union, a Federal military force on THEIR soil which refused to withdraw became a hostile military force, and fair game for attack by any rules of war. Not to mention the fact that Lincoln deliberately provoked a military attack by attempting to reinforce Ft. Sumpter. Oh, yes, he was just doing his duty. AGAINST the advice of calmer minds, BTW. Lincoln intended just exactly the result he got - an excuse to force the issue to war.

The relation between the UK and the colonies was not comparable to the relations between South Carolina and Virginia against the rest of the Unitd States.

True - the colonies didn't enjoy a VOLUNTARY relationship with England, as the States did with the other States.

I respectfully submit that the nation has changed. We're not a rural, agrarian nation reliant upon natural borders for protection from foreign nations.

The fact that our nation has changed means nothing - either the words mean what they say, or we do not have a Constitution at all. If they can be summarily dismissed because we don't happen to like them at the moment, they aren't worth toilet paper.

"Bind them with the chains of the Constitution" is empty posturing, apparently. He didn't really mean that the Federal government should actually be required to OBEY that document.




Your argument is not one whit different than the liberal revisionists of today with their "living document" tripe.

 

[one45auto]

Like most, I was raised to regard Abraham Lincoln as a hero and Franklin Roosevelt as the President who saved America. However my research as an adult corrected those impressions. Lincoln's treatment of my state more than disproves the image of a man trying to save the Constitution. Simply put, Maryland sympathized with the South - having as it did an agricultural economy. Lincoln, fearful of losing Maryland and having the Federal capital surrounded on all sides by the Confederacy, ordered the return of troops from several of the Northern States as a show of force. These troops marched through downtown Baltimore on their way to the Camden train station and during the journey were heckled by the citizens who scolded and threw rotten vegetables at them. The soliders responded by opening fire on the crowd (in much the same manner as the Guardsmen did at Kent State), killing several and inspiring a Baltimore schoolteacher then living in Louisiana to pen the poem "Maryland, my Maryland" which is now the official State song. In it, the phrase "avenge the patriotic gore that flecked the streets of Baltimore" refers to that very event. As public resentment for that act grew, Lincoln - desperate to avert a vote on secession, had the pro-Southern legislators arrested and imprisoned (without any right to Habeus Corpus) in Fort McHenry while pro-Northern puppets were appointed to replace them. Only then was the vote taken. To further crush any dissent, Lincoln ordered Federal prosecutors to arrest and/or harrass Maryland citizens who expressed Southern sympathies. Wearing red and white, the "secession colors" as they were then known, was banned. It was only after the war, in 1880 to be exact, that the red and white Calvert crests were included in the State flag together with the black and yellow of Lord Baltimore as a symbol of the reunification of the State. Now, what would you call a modern day ruler who ignores the laws of the land, imprisons political opponents without charging them, denies bail, appoints puppet legislators to enforce his will, harasses innocent civilians for their support of an opposing view, and bans free speech? That's easy - a dictator.

As for FDR, as many here have already stated he may - may have had the best of intentions, but as well all know the road to hell is paved with them. He was primarily responsible for creating the myth that the role of Government is to take care its citizens, in essence the nanny state. Prior to his administration most Americans, in the wake of a tragedy, asked "what are we going to do?" whereas today they ask "what's the Government going to do about this?" His handout and giveaway programs, although they helped some, did more harm than good and paved the way for larger and more expensive Federal handouts. His blackmailing of the Supreme Court during his administration was another action which appalled me. It's rather a long story, but basically when a majority of the justices threatened to declare portions of his New Deal un-Constitutional he returned the favor by threatening to increase the number of justices to sixteen in order to appoint a majority of jurists who would side with him. What a guy, eh?

 

[Quartus]

A most disengenuous reply. When you are eligble for SS, you will take it, even though you say you will not now. You may expect you won't receive benefits because you are young. While benefits may be less than you like, you will get them. You will take it and be glad to get it. Unless you change your name and SS number you will get it. You can stand by whatever statement you want. You will not have much choice unless you lie or commit fraud.

For those who are unaware, one must APPLY for Social Security benefits - they dont' just hunt you down.

http://www.socialsecurity.gov/r&m2.htm

 

[cropcirclewalker]

The sad thing is that he is from Mass. The same state as Sam Adams and John Adams (I don't think they were related), Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's ride and Lexington and Concord.

He hasta be a product of government schools.

 

[longrifleman]

Article V


The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States shall call a convention for proposing amendments, which, in either case, shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress; provided that no amendment which may be made prior to the year one thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any manner affect the first and fourth clauses in the ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate.

I respectfully submit that the nation has changed. We're not a rural, agrarian nation reliant upon natural borders for protection from foreign nations.

The folks who wrote the constitution knew that it would have to be changed. They made clear provisions for this. The system (if you can call it that) we have today is a clear and intentional perversion of the principle that as many people as possible should be involved in deciding the future of the country. One of the reasons we have so many problems today is that most people realise that their imput is not wanted and will be ignored anyway. Most people realise elections are mostly for show so don't bother to vote.

There was no long train of abuses; SC and VA had their congressional reps and Senators who could change the legal framework of the Country; their legislature's electors were accepted in the electoral college.

If there is no right of scession any 51 states can gang up on any single state and hose them any way they want. No wait, that has already been done to the western states. Never mind.

 

[Benjamin]

Feeling like a 1 legged man...

Dischord

Are you arguing that had the Rebs not fired on Fort Sumter (or otherwise taken hostile action), then Lincoln would have let South Carolina secede?

I never met the man, and can't speak on his behalf, but...look at the events.

On 20 December 1860 the South Carolina convention to consider secession adopted the measure. That is, on the 20th, South Carolina said "we're out".

Buchannan did nothing.
Lincoln innaugurated on March 5, 1861.

War doesn't start till mid April, after the Confederacy attacked Ft. Sumter.

South Carolina said they seceeded before Lincoln ever took office, so I don't think it's a question of 'would he have let them'. After reading a pile of Lincoln documents, including some of his papers, I'm sure he wouldn't have sent an army in to reclaim the state offensively. He was trying, through diplomacy, public statements, and the like, to nudge states 'back'.


Quartus

You have not cited anything in the Constitution that authorizes the Federal government to use force of arms to keep its member states from withdrawing from that voluntary union

- I'll show you that as soon as you tell me when the Fed used force of arms to keep states in. The 16 April 1861 call for militia & the like was in response to a military assault on the United States. The executive and legislature are explicitly authorized to direct the armed forces of the nation for common defense, and to put down insurrection.

It was both stupid and wrong of the Confederacy to attack the United States.

a Federal military force on THEIR soil which refused to withdraw became a hostile military force, and fair game for attack by any rules of war. Not to mention the fact that Lincoln deliberately provoked a military attack by attempting to reinforce Ft. Sumpter.

Ignoring the point that there was no right of secession...
A hostile military force? By staying buttoned up inside the fort and not firing? Fort Sumter was designed to secure Charlestown -- her guns could fire on the city. Were its occupants so inclined, they could have bombarded several spots. This is in the heart of the supposed Confederacy. No such offense came from America. The resupply mission was a food shippment. The Governor of SC, and several other parties, were notified in advance that it was just food. Please tell me you're not trying to argue that feeding hungry soldiers is an attack upon the Confederacy.

Were Lincoln trying to force a conflict, there were dozens of other ways to do it. The resupply was a compromise.

The fact that our nation has changed means nothing

It means a great deal, more than I can hope to sum up in a few lines. Black persons can be citizens. Women can vote. You get a chance to vote directly towards the electors, instead of having your state legislature vote for you.

The Constitution has been amended, legally tweaking the meaning. One particular example to expand state's rights that springs to mind was the 18th Amendment....which we all know was an unmitigated disaster.


one45 - Did your accounts mention the crowd firing at the soldiers, or did just mention pelting with stones and veggies?
Most have the bodycount @ 4-6 soldiers and 9-12 locals.

The troops weren't a show of force, it was a part of the first troops to protect DC, since VA had seceeded. I'm sure you know what a rail hub Baltimore is/was. The 6th Massachusetts had to march about a mile and a half from one rail depot to another.

Yes, Lincoln darn well did have the right to suspend the writ of habeas corpus in congressional recess. It was a case of rebellion in which the public safety required suspension.

He was primarily responsible for creating the myth that the role of Government is to take care its citizens

What?
***?
Read the Constitution! Read Art 1 Sec 8 and look at what the founders told Congress to do for us!
Provide for the common defense. That's not taking care of citizens?
Provide for general welfare of the US.
Regulate commerce and certain economic points, set rules for naturalization, bankruptcy, punish counterfeitting, make post offices, promote science and useful arts, punish naval crimes, flesh out the court system, maintain armed forces, regulate the militia.


All of which are positive duties to take care of the populace and nation.
= Do stuff for us.

 

[Glock Glockler]

This has been an enlightening thread. Kind of shows where ya stand on present day things and yer understanding of historical thingies.
Imagine yourself being elected on the eve of the nation being ripped asunder and saying, "Bye. Ya'll don't forget to write" or being elected during a really depressed economy, watching 15 million (10% of the population) people unemployed and starving and saying "Ya'll on ya own now. Buck up boys. It ain't that bad and it ain't Uncle Sam's place to help ya out. Don't forget to vote."

That's brilliant. The govt causes the problem and then offers to provide the solution, which will mean that it has to grow exponentially in power and will need far more money in taxes. Me thinks you might be served better by asking why the nation was poor under Roosevelt and why the South wanted to seceed before you rush to give the govt unlimited power.

Also, I find it ironic that you seem to think that it was good solution to the South wanting to go on their own for the North to come in and start slaughtering people, that's a great move to prevent them from forming their own govt, just kill them instead.

It was also a great idea to raise taxes and institute limits on how much food farmers can grow, those things are great ways to combat hunger and unemployment

 

[Glock Glockler]

Ignoring the point that there was no right of secession...

The Constitution doesnt explicitly authorize me to whistle off tune while watching TV, so do I have the right to do it?

Last time I check the Constitution didnt expressly deny secession and the 10th Amendment says that 'if it's not expressly granted to the Feds or prohibited to the states, that it's up to the states or the people.

What about that is unclear?

 

[Quartus]

Ignoring the point that there was no right of secession...

I'm not ignoring it, I'm denying it. The states DO have a right to secede. You have not cited anything to show otherwise. There is nothing in the Constitution that says otherwise. The written Constitution is the law of the land.


And yes, a military force that is on foreign soil without permission and is refusing to leave when ordered to do so IS a hostile force, even if it does nothing but pick its collective nose and sing Sweet Adeline.

And to say that the attack on the South was just a response to the firing on Ft. Sumter is less than accurate. That was certainly the excuse (a sought after excuse), but the purpose of going to war was to force the southern states back into the Union.



BTW, I think the southern states were wrong to secede and stupid to fire on Sumter, but they had every legal right to do both.

 

[Michigander]

The following excerpts are from:

Confederate Cause and Conduct in the War Between the States
by Hunter McGuire and George L. Christian
originally published in 1907

"A popular notion is that the State-rights -- secession or disunion doctrine -- was originated by Calhoun, and was a South Carolina heresy. But that popular notion is wrong. According to the best information I have been able to acquire on the subject, the State-rights, or secession doctrine, was originated by Josiah Quincy, and was a Massachusetts heresy."

This writer says Quincy first enunciated the doctrine in opposing the bill for the admission of what was then called the "Orleans Territory" (now Louisiana) in 1811, when he declared that "if the bill passed and that territory was submitted, the act would be subversive of the Union, and the several States would be freed from their federal bonds and obligations; and that, as it will be the right of all (the States), so it will be the duty of some to prepare definitely for a separation, amicably if they can, violently if they must."

Whilst this author may be right in characterizing the development of the doctrine, and fixing this right as a "Massachusetts heresy," he is wrong in fixing upon its first progenitor, and in saying that the date of its birth was as late as 1811; for in 1803, one Colonel Timothy Pickering, a senator from Massachusetts, and Secretary of State in the Cabinet of John Adams, complaining of what he called "the oppression of the aristocratic Democrats of the South," said:

"I will not despair; I will rather anticipate a new confederacy.... That this can be accomplished without spilling one drop of blood I have little doubt.... It must begin with Massachusetts. The proposition would be welcomed by Connecticut; and could we doubt of New Hampshire? But New York must be associated; and how is her concurrence to be obtained? She must be made the center of the confederacy. Vermont and New Jersey would follow, of course; and Rhode Island of necessity."

In 1839, ex-President John Quincy Adams, in an address delivered by him in New York, said:

"The indissoluble link of union between the people of the several States of this confederated nation is, after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other, the bonds of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attached by the magnetism of consolidated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited States to part in friendship with each other than to be held together by constraint."

Mr. William Rawle, a distinguished lawyer and jurist of Pennsylvania, in his work on the Constitution, says, "It depends on the State itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principles on which all our political systems are founded, which is that the people have in all cases a right to determine how they will be governed."

On the 9th of November, 1860, Mr. Horace Greeley, the great apostle of the Republican party, and who was often referred to during Mr. Lincoln's administration as the "power behind the throne -- greater than the throne itself" -- said in his paper, the New York Tribune:

"If the Cotton States consider the value of the Union debatable, we maintain their perfect right to discuss it; nay, we hold with Jefferson, to the inalienable right of communities to alter or abolish forms of government that have become oppressive or injurious: and if the Cotton States decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless; and we do not see how one party can have a right to do what another party has a right to prevent."

On the 17th of December, 1860, just three days before the secession of South Carolina, he again said in the Tribune, "If it [the Declaration of Independence] justified the secession from the British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein and why?" Again, on February the 23rd, five days after the inauguration of President Davis at Montgomery, he said:

"We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of American Independence -- that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed -- is sound and just, and if the Slave States, the Cotton States, or the Gulf States only, choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear moral right to do so."

And in this connection, Mr. Lodge then uses this language:

"When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of the States at Philadelphia, and accepted by the votes of the States in popular convention, it is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton on the one side to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but an experiment entered into by the States, and from which each and every State had the right to peaceably withdraw -- a right which was very likely to be exercised."

Mr. James C. Carter, now of New York, but a native of New England, and perhaps the most distinguished lawyer in this country to-day, in a speech delivered by him at the University of Virginia, in 1898, said:

"I may hazard the opinion that if the question had been made not in 1860, but in 1788, immediately after the adoption of the Constitution, whether the Union as formed by that instrument could lawfully treat the secession of a State as rebellion, and suppress it by force, few of those who participated in forming that instrument would have answered in the affirmative."

I found this article here.

 

[Mr. Clark]

Thank you, Michigander.

 

[Foreign Devil]

>The sad thing is that he is from Mass. The same state as Sam Adams and John Adams (I don't think they were related), Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere's ride and Lexington and Concord.

He hasta be a product of government schools.<

They were cousins.

 

[Baba Louie]

Logical fallacy: Appeal to emotion.

And the truth sometimes hurts when it hits one in the face. People nowadays SO want to think these men were EVIL, when all they were doing was trying to keep the ship afloat.

It's that simple. But then, I'm a simpleton and have been dismissed from class. Carry on.

 

[cropcirclewalker]

I concur. Thank you Michigander.

http://www.crownrights.com/books/right_of_secession.htm

splains it.

I hope that whomever is grading Benjamins Capstone Paper doesn't read it.

 

[C96]

Baba Louie - I think you have it right. Apparently making these two out to
be minions of the devil will make life better today. It can be good to
have some understanding of history but this seems to more character
assignation. And to what end ?

allan