“I didn’t say that only a small minority favored secession.”
That’s the argument of the poster I was originally responding to before you jumped in. If you’re not supporting that argument, then I don’t know why you are bothering to get involved.
“BTW, if we count the slaves and what they may have wanted, maybe secession really was only the choice of a small minority in some states.”
If we count the women, maybe the north would have wanted to secede too. Of course, nobody knows because it’s just wild speculation and it has nothing to do with the legal realities at the time.
“Can a state really break all ties with the union because of one simple majority vote of one body at one time? That goes against the spirit of checks and balances in the Constitution.”
The states formed the union and the constitution, and not the other way around. They are not chained permanently to an agreement they freely entered into, or held hostage to it by the will of other states. If that were true, then they had no legal sovereignty to enter the union in the first place, and we are still technically subjects of the British crown.
Meh. If anybody formed the union and the constitution it was the people of the country. That's why it wasn't state legislatures that ratified the Constitution but special conventions in each state.
They are not chained permanently to an agreement they freely entered into, or held hostage to it by the will of other states. If that were true, then they had no legal sovereignty to enter the union in the first place, and we are still technically subjects of the British crown.
We had a revolution in the 1770s. If you wanted a revolution in the 1860s, fine, but don't pretend like there was a clear legal process of secession. Force and power and pressure were involved from the beginning.
If you’re not supporting that argument, then I don’t know why you are bothering to get involved.
I thought this was an open forum and thought I had something to contribute. If you only want to read what you already think, that's your loss.