The issue was about the Constitution being a dead letter. Someone said TR killed it; I said Lincoln did; somebody else trumped me with a Supreme court case from 1792 about ex post facto laws not applying to civil laws. Then SOMEBODY hijacked it into a Civil War thread.
Puh-leeeze. That's just an after-the-fact pro-confederacy argument to rationalize why they would risk war and the destruction of the US to protect such an evil institution. A reading of all the contemporary newspaper articles of the time shows that the reasons or secession were: protecting the institution of slavery, expanding the institution of slavery, protecting the freedom of white men (to own, buy and sell black slaves), and "keeping your pure white daughters from deciding between death and the hellish lusts of the buck ni**er" [direct quote]
Read my post #34. The Constitution certainly was a dead letter, and like I wrote there, it was the southern politicians who killed it, all the while paying transparent lip-service to states rights and strict constitutionalism.
The theory of state primacy and secession is theoretically compelling, but I agree with several southern leaders - including one RE Lee - that it was not only unconstitutional (I can't seem to find any article that describes the procedure), but also morally bankrupt, because it holds the nation politically hostage to the whims of a minority while threatening the very existence of not only the union but also each state, and that it would invariably lead to war because no government that allowed such a thing could survive. Not my words, but Gen Lee's. On this, I agree with him.
Funny that saying that TR or Lincoln killed the constitution does NOT constitute a "thread highjacking", but saying that Jeff Davis killed it does.