My forebears sacrificed and bled to found and preserve states like New York, and Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, and Maryland, and Virginia, and North Carolina, and West Virginia, and Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Ohio, and Indiana, and Illinois, and Missouri, and Iowa, and Nebraska, and Colorado, and Oregon, and California. I am not going to offend their memory, or my posterity, by willingly giving up one square inch of those states, or of any of the other states of the republic of which they are a part, to those who seek to destroy them.
OK,I hear what you're saying.But,when speaking of states like Vermont you surely meant to say "to those who have succeeded in destroying them".
Vermont....Massachusetts....California (among others) are lost.They're not coming back.No amount of bloodshed...real or symbolic...can save them.That's the sad...no,*tragic*...reality.