Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Jay and a few others would have understood secession since they did the very same thing from England.
You guys can argue all day long about slavery and the need to hold the Union together, but what it always comes down to, and why so many hundreds of thousands died, is because the Southern States believed they had the right to secession from on over-bearing northern centralized government and form "a more perfect union" once again.
Google Thomas Jefferson quotes if you want more about the right of man to dis-establish tyrannical governments.
If you look at modern day States' Rights and their legislative resolutions/laws, State constitutional amendments, and numerous lawsuits against the Fedgov regarding obamacare and illegal immigration, it is very similar to the Southern States fighting for their rights back in the 1800's. Slavery was obscene and we all give kudos to Lincoln for making that an issue. However, the "civil war" was actually more about the economics of the North and the South, and how the North kept dictating to the South. What is the noun for the verb "dictating"? It is dictator.
Once again, STATES' RIGHTS are at the forefront for restoring our Constitutional Heritage. The Fedgov must go down in the trash heap of history.
Long live the 9th and 10 Amendments!!!
Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Jay and a few others would have looked at you in amazement at a comment that ridiculous. The colonists did not 'secede'. They rebelled. They didn't pretend their actions were legal, unlike the confederate rebels. They didn't expect their acts to be unopposed. They knew that they were starting a war that would lead to their independence or their execution, and they accepted it. And they also won their rebellion, unlike others.
You guys can argue all day long about slavery and the need to hold the Union together, but what it always comes down to, and why so many hundreds of thousands died, is because the Southern States believed they had the right to secession from on over-bearing northern centralized government and form "a more perfect union" once again.
Someone should have told the leaders of the period that.
"What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery." -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Secession Convention
"This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.
If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable" --- -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi
"History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity." -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention
Once again, STATES' RIGHTS are at the forefront for restoring our Constitutional Heritage.
And when the South launched their rebellion in 1861, one of the first thing they tossed into the dumpster was the concept of state's rights. Hopefully next time around we won't be led by Southerners and maybe state's rights will survive.