Yeah, I get all teary eyed when slave holders talk about their "rights" being trampled.
Why would you say such a stupid and pointless thing? Do you think that was clever? How many times do you have to be told that very FEW people in the South owned slaves? You apparently just like to hurl sarcastic insults without considering the facts of the case.
Libertarians on this forum talk all the time about the WOD and 'invasion of privacy' when the truth is they just want to smoke dope. The Southerners were about to be invaded, and whether you owned slaves or not, the Union was coming. What would you do, huh?
All I ask is that you look at it from their view. It is easy to wear 2003 goggles and diss those from the past because you are not there.
Let's look at a situation from the present day. A European can claim that same point of view expressed above to any "right" you hold dear. They can poo-poo talk you have of "rights" because your government is so barbaric that it kills -- flat out kills -- those poor wretched souls to whom life has been difficult and who have simply committed some crime that in enlightened Europe they would be placed in prison for. So much for yor "rights." I guess it would be justified if Europe invaded to set this injustice right. Too bad if your family dies, too bad if your possessions are destroyed, it's just too bad -- because the ends justify the means. No one in Europe gets teary eyed over a people climing "rights" when they kill minorities in the name of the state.
Or another one. During the cold war, the Soviet Union thought it cruel that fat cat industrialists were exploiting the labor of the working man in the US. Fat cat CEOs were living large while poor working men were worked to early graves to satify the opulent lifestyle of the rich and famous. They had the power to destroy the United States for that crime. In 1962 they almost did. In your world they would be justifed. Would it have been acceptable for the Soviets to have nuked us? After all no one in the Soviet Union got teary eyed when fat cat industrialists "rights" were on the line.
You know, in the Jacksonian world honor is important. The southern states joined the union under the proviso that the federal government would not interfere in slavery as that was to be wholly a decision of the individual states who would eliminate it under a schedule of their choosing. When it became apparent that this was not the case, the southern states viewed their honorable agreement as being broken, therefore action had to be taken. They chose secession because they were honorable men.