“Guess it (the justification for firing on Ft Sumter) ultimately depends on whether you think their (the South’s) secession was legal or not.”
Wasn’t the South’s secession as “legal” as the separation from England in 1776?
When it comes to secession, questions of what’s legal are moot. Ask what the meaning of freedom is: do free people have the right to decide for themselves whether to remain governed by a tyranny?
“do free people have the right to decide for themselves whether to remain governed by a tyranny?”
Who is the south in this analogy, Crimea, Ukraine, Russia?
“Wasn’t the South’s secession as “legal” as the separation from England in 1776?”
No, by no stretch of the imagination can they be compared as equivalent. King George was denying the colonists and their lawful colonial goverments the Rights of Englishmen guaranteed by the colonial Charters granted by the previous monarchs and other English authorities going back to the magna Carta. The vote for independence was accomplished by legislative organizations previously authorized by sovereign authority.
The secession of the Confederacy was accomplished in direct violation of the Constitution and the Articles of Confederation, and the plebiscites were fraudulent in their lack of authority in the first place and in their conclusion following vote fraud. When the vote defeated secession, the secessioneist leaders kept staging additional votes with changed rules until the vote fraud reached the preconceived result for secession they were trying to falsely claim.
When it comes to secession, questions of what’s legal are moot. Ask what the meaning of freedom is: do free people have the right to decide for themselves whether to remain governed by a tyranny?