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To: Trod Upon
Lincoln was strolling down the path of war by refusing to abandon Sumter once South Carolina left the Union.

Lincoln (and Buchanan) did not recognize that SC had left the Union.

Here's the rub. You and I (and Lincoln and Buchanan) are all in agreement that any people anywhere have a legitimate moral right to revolt against their rulers if they feel they are oppressed. But what you are saying is that if anybody else (of the same People) disagree, they must simply submit and not have the same right to fight for what they believe in.

IOW, if in 1968 there had been a true attempt at revolution by lefties, or if there were one today, those of us who prefer the Constitution and the system it set up would have had no right to resist them.

The Loyalists of 1776 had every bit as much moral right to fight for their beliefs as the Patriots did. Some Loyalists no doubt fought on the side they did out of impure motives, such as who they expected to win. But then so did some of the Patriots.

Similarly, in 1861 there were honorable men and scoundrels on both sides, but the men of honor on both sides had a legitimate moral right to fight to defend what they believed in.

See that's what happens when you "appeal to arms," as the secessionists called it. Sometimes you lose the appeal, and when you do, you have no right left to claim the moral high ground.

Or, as Arnold put it in Twins, "Negotiate first, attack last."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGstM8QMCjQ

The CSA chose to attack instead of negotiating, because they needed to knock the Upper South and Border states off the fence. It didn't work out any better for them than it did in the movie. Just took longer.

219 posted on 09/03/2013 3:45:33 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Mark Steyn: "In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy.")
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To: Sherman Logan; Trod Upon
IOW, if in 1968 there had been a true attempt at revolution by lefties, or if there were one today, those of us who prefer the Constitution and the system it set up would have had no right to resist them.

From a legal standpoint, there was no difference between the South's rebellion in the 1860's and the Watts Rebellion in 1965 or the Detroit riots in 1967. The Union went into the South to restore order and the LAPD and California National Guard did the same thing in Watts. In both cases, civilians were killed.

The strategy of "secession" was to reduce the power/influence of the government in Washington and to increase the power/influence of the state governments because the slaveholders needed the machinery of the state governments to perpetuate their abuse of human rights (slavery) and the slaveholders were concerned that they could no longer count on support from the government in Washington.

To hear some folks nowadays, "secession" was supposedly about about protecting human liberty and personal freedom from a tyrannical government in Washington. In fact, "secession" was actually about increasing the power of the government at the state level so that slaveholders could continue to suppress human liberty and personal freedom. The slaveholders were Statists with a capital S.

222 posted on 09/03/2013 7:37:22 PM PDT by Tau Food (Never give a sword to a man who can't dance.)
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