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Originally Posted by joepole
>In addition, when the South seceded, they did so illegally (not that there is any legal way to secede.) The land, infrastructure, homes, government institutions, etc. were all funded, acquired by or under the authority of the Union, and in seceding, the Confederates were in essence stealing the land, roads, and infrastructure from the Union.
1. Where did the Federal government get its money? Was the South not paying taxes at the time?
2. Isn't that how we got our country in the first place? By doing the same thing to the British?
You don't understand that people are proud to be associated with an institution that was willing to go to war (that it was almost certain to lose) to defend its principles?
The civil war was about states' rights. Slavery was an issue, but not the most important and certainly not the only.
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1. The Federal Government got its money from citizens of the United States, not from citizens of the "South".
2. We got our country by LEAVING the geographic location of England to start a new country, not TAKING the geographic location of England.
People are proud to be associated with an institution that was willing to go to war to defend its principles of keeping other human beings as slaves? No matter who makes the decision, slavery is/was wrong. The war was about the states' rights to choose whether or not they abolished slavery.
Furthermore, you are asserting that the states had some sort of supremacy or sovereignty (which never existed) over the Federal government. The states did not join the Union as states, they joined as territories, were purchased or conquered, then were given the power of states.
In Abraham Lincoln’s Special Message to Congress, July 4, 1861, he outlined the rationale of the advocates of secession:
“They invented an ingenious little sophism, which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is that any state of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully, and peacefully, withdraw from the Union, without the consent of the Union, or of any other state. The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only for just cause, themselves to be the sole judge of its justice, is too thin to merit any notice.”
Lincoln continues:
The States have their status IN the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law, and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence, and their liberty. By conquest, or purchase, the Union gave each of them, whatever of independence, and liberty…Unquestionably, the States have the powers, and rights, reserved to them in, and by the National Constitution; but among these, surely, are not included all conceivable powers, however mischievous, or destructive; but, at most, such only, as were known in the world, at the time, as governmental powers; and certainly, a power to destroy the government itself, and never been know as governmental—as a merely administrative power…Whatever concerns the whole, should be confided to the whole—to the general government; while, whatever concerns only the State, should be left exclusively, to the state.