“There was no right for a state to leave the Union unilaterally.”
This was untested at the time. States power wasn’t so limited, and under the 10th amendment, federal power was. The argument was settled fairly clearly though.
But to go back and say that states needed a specifically enumerated “right” in the Constitution to secede is sort of ridiculous.
“So since their acts were illegal, that made them a rebellion.”
A matter of perspective, and perhaps a distinction without a difference. History calls it “Civil War” southerners proudly called themselves (and some still do) “rebels”. I presume that term of endearment has something to do with “rebellion”.
If you are arguing that southern heritage is somehow diminished by referring to the Civil War as a rebellion then you’d be wrong - but I’m not sure you are. In fact, I’m not sure why anyone on either side of the Mason-Dixon line should care about the Civil War being also called a “rebellion”.
My only regret about the Civil War outcome is the gradual loss of the 10th Amendment - which has allowed the government to grow unchecked ever since the Civil War. I suspect it will take something every bit as traumatic as the Civil War to eventually restore the 10th amendment to it’s original intent, if it were to ever happen at all.
Untested, but not unconsidered. Many of the leaders prior to the rebellion believed that secession in any form was not allowed. Madison himself denied that unilateral secession was permitted, but left open the idea of secession with the consent of the states.
A matter of perspective, and perhaps a distinction without a difference. History calls it “Civil War” southerners proudly called themselves (and some still do) “rebels”. I presume that term of endearment has something to do with “rebellion”.
Until early in the 20th century the offical name for the conflict so far as the military was concerned was "War of the Rebellion". I confess to being a traditionalist.
If you are arguing that southern heritage is somehow diminished by referring to the Civil War as a rebellion then you’d be wrong - but I’m not sure you are. In fact, I’m not sure why anyone on either side of the Mason-Dixon line should care about the Civil War being also called a “rebellion”.
I am not trying to diminish Southern heritage in any way, shape, or form. Unfortunately for many people around here, supporting their Southern heritage requires lying about my Northern heritage. That's what I try and correct.
That's a big part of the reason -- the bulk of it, imho -- for the war in the first place.
Whiggery won the contest for the country's agenda, at a cost of a million lives.
Nobody else fought a civil war "to end slavery". Another clue that it wasn't about the slaves, or slavery. It was about wrecking the South to move them out of the way.
When Southerners gave teeth to Manifest Destiny, they went to war with Mexico. The Northerners objected to that war, but they had no problem making war on the South for their own manifest destiny, which was to grab control of the empire that Presidents Jackson and Polk had created.
Anyone who wants to say I'm wrong, needs to explain all those fine Victorian townhouses and apartment buildings around Central Park and up and down Park Avenue and the Chicago Loop. People died, so the Four Hundred could live like gods. So did the Founders' republic.
“My only regret about the Civil War outcome is the gradual loss of the 10th Amendment - which has allowed the government to grow unchecked ever since the Civil War. I suspect it will take something every bit as traumatic as the Civil War to eventually restore the 10th amendment to it’s original intent, if it were to ever happen at all.”
I had posted much the same thing in an earlier comment. The 10th Amendment made clear the states were at loeast equals to the national government, and in some respects, superior to it. The Civil War (a label I think is wholly inaccurate for what transpired) set the stage for the amendments and laws immediately subsequent to it that so emasculated the 10th Amendment as to render it practically meaningless. The Civil War put the blindfold on the 10th Amendment and the 14th Amendment fired the volley that executed it. Since the 14th Amendment the national governemnt and the courts have been poking the corpse with sticks, in further torment. One of the clearest examples of how the 14th Amendment killed the 10th Amendment is Roe v. Wade. Prior to 1973 it was up to the individual states as to how they wanted to address the abortion issue. Roe v. Wade, and the “right of privacy” it pulled out of thin air, held that the states had no say in the matter at all, that abortion was a national right that superseded and trumped any state decisions.