[Peace-discuss] hasta la vista, baby.

["E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森"]

      It seems far from settled.


      Parting Company

Over 150 years ago, the Northern Democratic and Republican parties 
favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major 
Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South's right to 
secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism 
justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not 
justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal 
Union in 1861." Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861/): "An attempt to 
subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing 
but evil – evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content."/ The 
New York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is growing sentiment throughout 
the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."

There's more evidence seen at the time our Constitution was ratified. 
The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island 
explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated, 
should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The 
Constitution would have never been ratified if states thought that they 
could not maintain their sovereignty.

The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that 
cost 600,000 American lives. Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln's 
Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, "It 
is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense." Lincoln said that the soldiers 
sacrificed their lives "to the cause of self-determination – that 
government of the people, by the people, for the people should not 
perish from the earth." Mencken says: "It is difficult to imagine 
anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought 
against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the 
right of people to govern themselves."

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