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To: Scoutmaster
Because Lee recognized that dissolution of the Union, other than by "consent of all the people in convention assembled", was a revolution, he knew he was taking up arms against his country.

Funny US Grant thought the opposite:

The fact is the constitution did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to 1865. Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring. If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers.

                       US Grant Pres. USA

195 posted on 01/17/2011 7:07:41 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed, and I do not give a damn.)
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To: central_va
Grant didn't "think the opposite".

Once again, your surface-level reading (or quote lifting, as the case may be) does no one, including yourself any good. Here you can find a reprinting of his statement, in context. When read in context, the quote doesn't mean what you want it to mean.

Notice how he sets up the plain meaning here: "If there had been a desire on the part of any single State to withdraw from the compact at any time while the number of States was limited to the original thirteen, I do not suppose there would have been any to contest the right, no matter how much the determination might have been regretted."

Grant admits that while an informal secession may have been successful in the early days of the union, that door closed when the union admitted more states, and conclusively locked with the addition of the Louisiana Purchase.

But the times had changed, the circumstances had changed. The casual understandings of the relationships were no longer practical. Grant understood this. "Secession was illogical as well as impracticable; it was revolution."

"The fathers themselves would have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not irrevocable. They would surely have resisted secession could they have lived to see the shape it assumed."

Reading is fundamental...;-)

197 posted on 01/17/2011 7:46:20 AM PST by rockrr ("I said that I was scared of you!" - pokie the pretend cowboy)
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