At last we agree. At least partially.
It is not a “Lost Cause myth” that secession was taught and almost universally accepted prior to Lincoln’s war. I have given you a good number of examples of that — in history, from both primary and secondary sources — and there are far, far more. To deny these facts does not make it less true.
We agree that a dissolution of the Union CAN take place. You, however, limit the authority to dissolve the Union to a “National Convention” or an “act of Congress.” Our Founders would have been horrified. When the Constitution was agreed upon as a compact that governed “the Union,” EACH STATE had to individually approve participation in the Union it created.
IN the SAME EXACT way, each State had the authority to withdraw from the Union in the same manner — unilaterally. Period. The only reason that is not the case today is because the Federal government usurped that authority from the states via violent warfare (Lincoln’s war) and since them Federal tyranny through judicial fiat, and legislative regulatory statute.
I must note here that, if ANY government entity BEYOND the several sovereign states and their citizens may prevent their right to self government and thus force “Union” upon them, then their governemnt is not, and cannot be, one “of the people, by the people and for the people,” as Lincoln was wont to say, can it?
And yes, the Confederate Cause was a “revolution.” It was a continuation of the first American Revolution — the freedom of the Colonies (which became States) to self-government and self-determination. And, it was the ONLY option left to the peoples of those states when the Federal government imposed their will upon the region.
Again, I appeal to the current circumstances that the United States are in, as all the evidence necessary to demonstrate the real goals of Federal control over states and people, and the failure such creeping tyranny ultimately brings.
JDW
I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession." But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy.
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I'll follow Madison's reading of the Constitution not Calhoon's ranting.