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Oops. My bad. I went and reread what I originally wrote to you about secession. Even though I didn't say it (and it could be taken otherwise), I was originally talking about the official secessionist documents that the people of each confederate state voted upon. My apologies for the misunderstanding. In S. Carolina's declaration of causes, there is some mention made of tariffs, subsidies, and taxation aimed at protecting the North. Funny though, that they forgot to mention those tariffs, subsidies, and taxation aimed at protecting the south...

"In their reckless lust for power, they seem unable to comprehend that seeming paradox - that the more power is given to the General Government, the weaker it becomes. Its strength consists in the limitation of its agency to objects of common interests to all sections. To extend the scope of its power over sectional or local interests, is to raise up against it opposition and resistance. In all such matters, the General Government must necessarily be a despotism, because all sectional or local interests must ever be represented by a minority in the councils of the General Government, having no power to protect itself against the rule of the majority. The majority, constituted from those who do not represent these sectional or local interests, will control and govern them. A free people cannot submit to such a Government. And the more it enlarges the sphere of its power, the greater must be the dissatisfaction it must produce, and the weaker it must become. On the contrary, the more it abstains from usurped powers, and the more faithfully it adheres to the limitations of the Constitution, the stronger it is made. The Northern(substitute American) people have had neither the wisdom nor the faith to perceive, that to observe the limitations of the Constitution was the only way to its perpetuity."

In reading Mr. Rhett's statement, I came across this paragraph - is this not where we are again, but not as a divided country, north and south, east and west, but as an American citizen against the vastness of the government in Washington? So many of the problems that lead up to the War, are again headlining our newspapers and other forms of media - immigration, taxation, etc. Are we on the doorstep of another Revolution or Civil War?