Re: A peculiar notion

[gturk@concentric.net]

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