[Ohioan]

Read the document. The "union" was an attempt to accomplish specific functions. The specific functions--which did not include one faction imposing its will on internal affairs on another--became virtually impossible with the decline in mutual respect, and a common identity.

Constitutional Overview

The Founders never intended to impose form over substance. Why does the idea even appeal to you?

[arrogantsob]

The Constitution is the ultimate form for law.

[wardaddy]

Bill your posts are superb but lost on these guys

They exist through the prism of racial grievance and atonement

Who knows who they are really...or why they are here

The school of Zinn and Macpherson

[rockrr]

The specific functions--which did not include one faction imposing its will on internal affairs on another--became virtually impossible with the decline in mutual respect, and a common identity.

If you mean the slave holding states imposing their will upon the rest of the states, I agree wholeheartedly. The degree to which the slavers imposed the Peculiar Institution either directly, in the case of border states and new states or indirectly, as in the case of the Fugitive Slave Act, served to churn the passions between north and south.

[BroJoeK]

Ohioan: "The specific functions--which did not include one faction imposing its will on internal affairs on another--became virtually impossible with the decline in mutual respect, and a common identity...
The Founders never intended to impose form over substance.
Why does the idea even appeal to you?"

How about if we start here: huge regions in every Southern state were both respectful of Union and opposed to secession:

All told, millions of whites in the Upper South and Border States opposed secession, and that's not even considering slaves -- how much respect did those Unionists receive from Confederates?
But there's another important question: how much respect did Southerners on the US Supreme Court show, in 1857, in concocting their Dred Scott ruling?

Anyway, here's the bottom line: in 1776 and 1787 our Founders achieved mutual respect by, among other things, compromising on slavery.
All of the leaders recognized slavery as morally wrong and in need of abolition, gradually, eventually, lawfully, with some compensations.
They gave Federal government authority over international slave trade and slavery in territories.
They expected slavery to die out lawfully & peacefully.

By 1860 all that changed.
Now slavers claimed slavery was a positive good, better than Northern "wage slavery" and should be expanded, certainly into western territories and even via Dred Scott into Northern states.

That's what p*ss*d off Republicans, big time.

Respect is a two way street.