[republicanwizard]

"The Constitution never gave the federal government the right to force any state to remain in the union. Therefore, the states retained the right to leave the union when the people of those states decided that it was in their interest to do so."

This is inherently not true. I have already cited statements in the Constitution to the contrary. At the very least, permission of the Congress was required.

"The Constitution would not have been ratified had there been a prohibition on leaving the union. New York and Virginia explicitly put that right into their ratification documents. Without NY and VA in the union there would have been no union and without the right to secede the people of those states would have never ratified the Constitution."

Those reservations do not have binding legal authority and are not necessarily valid. Ratification did not give the states the right, willy-nilly, to break whatever clause didn't suit their purposes.

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Yes, the South was violating the rights of African-Americans and deserved to be punished.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Yes, the South was violating the rights of African-Americans and deserved to be punished.

As you know, President Lincoln suggested in his second inaugural that if the guilt lay on the whole people, north and south, and if the war was the result, that no man could say the judgments of the Lord were not righteous altogether.

Walt

[Sequoya]

Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address said; " If there be any among us who would wish to disolve this union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."

When New England threatened to seceed Jefferson said, If any state in the union will declare that it prefers seperation . . . I have no hesitation in saying, let us seperate.

John Quincy Adams also thought there was a right to seceed see his address in 1839 on the Jubilee of the Constitution.

The right to seceed was accepted by most people prior to Lincoln's war.

[Sequoya]

Yes, the South was violating the rights of African-Americans and deserved to be punished.
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Not according to the Supreme Court. Walt quotes the SC when it suits his purpose but when ignores it when it doesn't.

A decission after the fact does not make secession unconstitutional any more than Dred Scott made slavery right.