And if pigs could fly, then we'd debate their aerodynamic qualities, but since they can't, we won't. False analogies are another thing you do a lot.
So Deep South Fire-Eaters declared their secessions, as they clearly explained, to protect their "peculiar institution" of slavery -- that's the fact, not even debatable.
It is of course debatable, but it is irrelevant to the larger principles involved in the entire conflict.
Of course you refocus on Slavery, and not on the more important principle involved. Slavery was legal in that time period. People had a right to be independent of a Union that no longer suited their interests.
Where does your moral argument come into the question? You don't have a right to prevent independence from people who want it. It does not matter that you consider them immoral. They have that right non the less.
But Lincoln never recognized those states as having lawfully left the Union.
According to the Declaration of Independence, it is not relevant whether the King recognizes the God given right to independence. The right remains regardless.
Northern economic interests had nothing to do with it.
It was nothing but. Let me show you that map again.
Again, what happens to New York when 80% of that pile moves to Charleston and Savanna?
Imagine most of that trade represented by those tariffs being taken away from New York and given to Charleston.
Easily a financial hyper crises in New England. Well worth starting a war to prevent.
DiogenesLamp:
"Of course you refocus on Slavery, and not on the more important principle involved.
Slavery was legal in that time period.
People had a right to be independent of a Union that no longer suited their interests." But despite your repeated claims, there was no higher principle than slavery involved -- none.
Everything you keep repeating was actually irrelevant to historical leaders of the time.
And as I've often pointed out to you: slavery did not start Civil War, neither did declarations of secession nor did forming a new Confederacy, nor did tariffs & trade, or any such debate as you propose over a "right of secession" -- none of it.
All of those thing could have happened and still no Civil War between Union & Confederacy.
What provoked Civil War was dozens of Confederate seizures of major Federal properties -- forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.
What started Civil War was the Confederate military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861.
What confirmed Civil War was the Confederates' formal declaration of war against the United States on May 6, 1861.
What made Civil War a "total war" was the Confederates' military aid to pro-Confederates fighting in Union states.
Again, the analogy is the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor -- whatever theoretical or philosophical reasons motivated them, those did not start WWII for the US.
All such debates could have gone on forever without war, until the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Then war began, and ended as the Civil War ended, with unconditional surrender.
DiogenesLamp: "Again, what happens to New York when 80% of that pile moves to Charleston and Savanna?"
But, as I have now explained, more than once on this thread, 80% of New York's trade could never move to Charleston, regardless of politics.
DiogenesLamp: "Imagine most of that trade represented by those tariffs being taken away from New York and given to Charleston.
Easily a financial hyper crises in New England.
Well worth starting a war to prevent."
Pure rubbish, words written by somebody who understands little of Lincoln or America at that time.