“And that is ultimately what the civil war was - a revolution that failed. And - as Buckley would have predicted - it left chaos, death, and a worse government in its wake.”
The is the most important concern of a revolution: If you lose, and you are the ones trying to create a government based on liberty and freedom, then you have left those that do not desire liberty and freedom in a stronger position.
My personal belief is that the entire political situation was about to change. Unfortunately, the war broke out first. The South had every right to demand their rights, and I am not talking about slavery. History is always easy to second guess but we only have today to judge ourselves. We can only hope we make the right decisions and history agrees.
Would these same people ( Turn in their Firearms ) If the Supremos rules against them? James Madison understood all of this - The legislature of the State could ‘impose’ itself.
“But it is objected, that the judicial authority is to be regarded as the sole expositor of the Constitution in the last resort; and it may be asked for what reason the declaration by the General Assembly, supposing it to be theoretically true, could be required at the present day, and in so solemn|a manner.
On this objection it might be observed, first, that there may be instances of usurped power, which the forms of the Constitution would never draw within the control of the judicial department; secondly, that, if the decision of the judiciary be raised above the authority of the sovereign parties to the Constitution, the decisions of the other departments, not carried by the forms of the Constitution before the judiciary, must be equally authoritative and final with the decisions of that department. But the proper answer to the objection is, that the resolution of the General Assembly relates to those great and extraordinary cases, in which all the forms of the Constitution may prove ineffectual against infractions dangerous to the essential rights of the parties to it. The resolution supposes that dangerous powers, not delegated, may not only be usurped and executed by the other departments, but that the judicial department, also, may exercise or sanction dangerous powers beyond the grant of the Constitution; and, consequently, that the ultimate right of the parties to the Constitution, to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated, must extend to violations by one delegated authority as well as by another—by the judiciary as well as by the executive, or the legislature.”