[GOPcapitalist]

I regard any American who fires on the troops of his nation as a traitor and I do not care what State he comes from or what he thinks his 'new'nation is.

Do you feel the same about renegade bands of American troops who fire upon civilians and other American troops? It happened in St. Louis in 1861 when a renegade union commander armed a band of paramilitaries known as the Wide Awakes into the federal service and opened fire on civilians in the streets.

How about American troops that attack other American troops that they deem not to be radical enough for their tastes? That same band of renegades from St. Louis did just that in Missouri by instigating a war with the Missouri State Militia.

How about American troops that attack American elected officials? Our same band of Wide Awakes in Missouri subsequently marched on the state capitol and chased the legislature out of town to install their own replacements.

The Founding Fathers NEVER intended for American troops to be employed in widescale action against the American people. That is why they gave us a 2nd amendment and that is why they recognized that the people ought to be able to and should resist unjust exercises of power regardless of where they come from, be they a foreign invader or even American troops under a renegade commander and would-be despot.

"By the principles of the American revolution, arbitrary power may and ought to be resisted even by arms if necessary. The time may come when it shall be the duty of a State, in order to preserve itself from the oppression of the general government, to have recourse to the sword" - Luther Martin, delegate to the Constitutional Convention, 1788

[lentulusgracchus]

Do you feel the same about renegade bands of American troops who fire upon civilians and other American troops? It happened in St. Louis in 1861 when a renegade union commander armed a band of paramilitaries known as the Wide Awakes into the federal service and opened fire on civilians in the streets.

How about American troops that attack other American troops that they deem not to be radical enough for their tastes? That same band of renegades from St. Louis did just that in Missouri by instigating a war with the Missouri State Militia.

This business of creating a private army, a sort of Black Republican Sturmabteilung, has never been taken seriously or looked at closely as far as I can tell. Sandburg told the story, but only in terms honorific to the intrepid Captain Lyon, Hero of the Union.

The fact that Lyon did something fairly close to what Aaron Burr tried to do, and for which Swartout and Bollman were arrested by the federal authorities, one doesn't read about much.

Missouri was a State.