[rockrr]

“The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom and forebearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for ‘perpetual union’ so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession.” Robert E. Lee - January 23, 1861

[driftless2]

Thank you for that pertinent quote from Lee. And one thing no one seems to want to talk about now, if, according to the states righters, secession was legal in 1861, it's legal now. That goes under the theory of the "sovereign" states something not mentioned in the constitution.

If that were true, that would mean any state today could secede if it felt like it. That means some nuts could take over my state of Wisconsin and set up some phony baloney "independent" nation. What we would have then is utter chaos. Because at some point some nuts in any state could do the same thing. All Americans would be held hostage to the lunatics.

And just imagine trying to live in this new nation. You'd have to have new currency, new passports, new everything. In short, the idea of unilateral secession is lunacy. It was lunacy then, it would be lunacy now.

[central_va]

“The question of treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have been, if free States, instead of slave States, had seceded. On the part of the North, the war was carried on, not to liberate the slaves, but by a government that had always perverted and violated the Constitution, to keep the slaves in bondage; and was still willing to do so, if the slaveholders could thereby induced to stay in the Union. The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals”[5]

-- Abolishionist Lysander Spooner