Anybody who ever comes through the DC area can get to it fairly easy and they should stop by.
The rump government of Northern Virginia had been given orders to clear Alexandria of Confederate troops and sympathizers, and they were prepared to do so. First, the Confederate troops and their sympathizers assembled on Washington street and marched South out of town.
A handful of people ever returned.
So, there's a memorial in the middle of that street ~ and heavy rush hour traffic passes on both sides.
There are those who think it should be moved for its own protection. Then there are the others who've found in it an inspiration or a lesson.
We stopped on a sidestreet and I walked back to the intersection and waited on a break in the traffic to get over to the middle with the memorial.
It's larger up close, but still human scale. It was dedicated to our fathers, sons, and comrades.
Which is about as simple and stark a dedication that anyone could ever come up with.
“A “right of secession” is not listed in the US Constitution, but the Founders’ Original Intent is clear and consistent — secession is only authorized by mutual consent or from a material breech of contract.”
Jefferson’s already been quoted in the thread saying that if the federal government should impose things contrary to the compact then the individual states were permitted to secede.
“Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 was, in effect, engineered by Deep-South Fire-Eaters, who walked out of their Democrat Convention rather than accept the nomination of Senator Stephen Douglas for President.”
Lincoln would still have defeated Douglas without the split. Lincoln didn’t need to carry a single southern state to be elected.
“Deep South slave-holders had neither “mutual consent” nor material breech-of-contract to justify declarations of secession.”
No, but the state legislatures did. Their purpose is to safeguard the powers of their individual state from privation.
“secessionists began committing innumerable acts of increasing violence”
Like John Brown?
“Before its official Declaration of War, no Confederate soldier had been killed by any Union force.”
True, but southern civilians were killed by gunrunners. The response of Buchanan was to recognise the south. It was Lincoln who chose to go to war with the South.
“In its War of Aggression against the United States, the Confederacy not only seized every possible Federal property within its borders”
Within it’s borders? That doesn’t sound like aggression to me.
“also sent forces into every Union state and territory on its borders, and some well beyond.”
Nonsense. The first time that confederate forces crossed into Union territory was at Gettysburg. Prior to this, every battle had been on Confederate territory. If the South were the invaders, why is it that the North was the first to invade?
“This is hardly comparable to mass murders in other wars.”
So now you’re whitewashing Confederate casulties due to the scorched earth campaign. If they were sincerely ‘friends’, why did Sheridan devastate the Shenandoah, and Sherman torch Atlanta?
That doesn’t sound like ‘friends’ to me. That sounds like an occupation.