At 10:06 PM 8/12/97 -0400, Michael Froomkin wrote:
On Tue, 12 Aug 1997, Steve Schear wrote:
I don't think the North would have accepted any withdrawl, not matter how it was decided within the South.
right.
The North would never have accepted the withdrawal, because it would have meant the North's economic demise. 'The name of our federation is not Consolidated States, but United States. A number of States held together by coercion, or the point of a bayonet, would not be a Union. Union is necessarily voluntary -- the act of choice, free association. Nor can this voluntary system be changed to one of force without the destruction of "The Union"... A Union of States necessarily implies separate sovereignties, voluntarily acting together. And to bruise these distinct sovereignties into one mass of power is, simply, to destroy the Union -- to overthrow our system of government.' -- Judge Abel P. Upshur in "The Federal Government: Its True Nature and Character", 1840. In other words, the Union characterized by free choice, voluntary association and other libertarian concepts was replaced during the Civil War by a subtly despotic "Union" under Lincoln. -geoff