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I am afraid that the Southern version of history requires that secession be about the Constitution, not slavery, and that Lincoln be the culprit who set the country aflame. Curiously, the Left has its version of the indictment, as represented in Gore Vidal's Lincoln, where Honest Abe, by a sort of Nietzschean act of will, transforms the Union into a Nation, and binds it forever to Manifest Destiny and corporate interests. I have posted material from Jefferson Davis and John Calhoun making it clear that racial subordination, and chattel slavery specifically, was the core issue, but it is hard to get a concession. There is still the issue of the right of secession, and the impurity of the Union cause. My argument is that there is no mechanism for secession in the Constitution, and therefore no right, particularly no unilateral right. If secession had been contemplated by the Founder's, it would have been covered. Second, regardless of whether the Union cause was pure, it did not set us on the course of war merely because of the election of an individual, as did the Southern cause. War was a foreseeable outcome; therefore, the South had to have adequate reason to secede; even by its own lights, the election of a minority president of moderate abolitionist credentials should not have been sufficient provocation. It bears the culpability for plunging the country into war........ |
