In the manner that Barack Obama has no intention of interfering with American's right to own guns or bake non-gay wedding cakes.
The President has the ability to cause problems for people if he wants to, and I think no one doubted that he would, despite his assurances to the contrary.
This indicates that you are well aware that the secession of the Southern states was unjustified and was nothing but a hissy fit for losing the election.
I don't particularly care what a people's reasons are for wanting to leave. The Declaration of Independence tells me they can leave for whatever reason suits them.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
And you probably consider Federalist George Washington a proto-Confederate.
Well, He and Robert Lee were both Virginians fighting for independence from a larger and more powerful Union, so I guess if the shoe fits...
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Did you miss the bolded parts? The Declaration of Independence does not justify leaving "for whatever reason suits them." It justifies leaving when a government becomes "destructive of [the] ends" of "securing" the unalienable rights enumerated in the Declaration - including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The states that seceded from the Union seceded for exactly the opposite reason - they seceded in order to restrict the rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for the millions of slaves who were held in bondage in their states.
Let me point out something else, which puts the Confederate effort into a clearer perspective, in terms of the "Law Of Nations" (as according to Vattel, the authority that the Founding Fathers looked to). The Revolution was justified in terms of the compact theory of Government (popular in the Anglo/Norman/Celtic world since Magna Carta). It was a true Counter Revolution, premised on the beleif that the Government had broken the compact.
But whereas the Colonies did not have sovereignty before the Revolution, the status of the original States as independent Nations was internationally recognized by the Treaty Of Paris, two years after Washington's victory at Yorktown. And, hence, under that prevailing understanding of the Law Of Nations, it was recognized that those new Nations were the judges of their own internal affairs.
Now it is true that the new States gave up some of their sovereignty to the new organization, in ratifying the Federal Union. But they did not give up the right to leave that Union, nor to subject their internal institutions & social values, in the new specifically limited Compact (Constitution)to some form of a collective. In terms of legality, then, they remained in a stronger position than their Colonial forefathers.
Now, as a Conservative Ohioan, I am very glad that the Southern States are still in the Union. But the social ostracization of pro-Confederates, to me, violates both the spirit of 1776, and the Constitution. as well as any sense of elemental fairness. It also illustrates the hubris always present when one generation assumes the right to pass judgment on others who walked in different times, in ways that reflected their own experiences, not the shallow & myopic experiences of their later critics.
William Flax