[NTHockey]

>>Jefferson Davis was a treasonous traitor.<<

Here we go again. 500 posts later, we will have changed no minds and we will be as polarized as the U.S. Congress. I have one question for all the Yankee critics of the Confederacy: Under what circumstances, if any, is any state able to opt out of its membership in the Union?

150 years ago, we had a President from Illinois who started a war against the states, disregarding the Constitution and freed the slaves. Today, we have a President from Illinois who is waging war against the states, disregards the Constitution and wants to make us all slaves.

[rockrr]

It was the south who initiated hostilities not the north.

[oh8eleven]

NTHockey wrote - 150 years ago, we had a President from Illinois who started a war against the states
Ah, one too many pucks to your head?

[mac_truck]

Under what circumstances, if any, is any state able to opt out of its membership in the Union?

With the consent of Congress..the same way you came in.

[x]

I have one question for all the Yankee critics of the Confederacy: Under what circumstances, if any, is any state able to opt out of its membership in the Union?

It could do so with the consent of the country as a whole. When territories petition Congress for admission to the union, Congress admits them. Presumably, if a state wanted to be "de-admitted" Congress could do that as well.

That would give all the parties concerned a chance to work out the terms of dissolution, rather than make it a matter of one will against another, each appealing to arms in order to prevail. A constitutional convention could also dissolve the union, though that's a much riskier procedure.

150 years ago, we had a President from Illinois who started a war against the states, disregarding the Constitution and freed the slaves. Today, we have a President from Illinois who is waging war against the states, disregards the Constitution and wants to make us all slaves.

Part of the problem then and now is that people throw around words like "slave" and "slavery" rhetorically and ignore what slavery actually is and who actually is enslaved.

That sort of overblown rhetoric makes meaningful discussion difficult. At some point you have to recognize at the very least that there are very different degrees or gradations of "slavery" -- some a lot more real than others.

And who did actually start that war? Who fought it for that matter? It wasn't the federal government versus "the states." There was another purported national government involved, one with all the powers of Lincoln's -- and then some.