Lincoln's quote is precise: secession was not a right in the sense that it was free for the taking; it was something that would have to be either agreed to or fought for. Nothing in the Constitution guarantees the right of secession.Redbrickbear said:You still have no basic argument against the independence of states except "muh slavery".Booray said:Always cracks me up to see the Old South defenders resort to the "independence" as the purpose of their cause. Tell it to the slaves.Redbrickbear said:The United States would have continued on and been fine. From New York to Nebraska and with its capital still at D.C.Booray said:Redbrickbear said:fadskier said:Shows that Lincoln was human. You're making my point. Honor him for the great he did despite his faults...Redbrickbear said:"Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live here with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life." -Abraham Lincolnquash said:
"She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery--the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits--a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association."
DECLARATION OF CAUSES: February 2, 1861
A declaration of the causes which impel the State of Texas to secede from the Federal Union."
"I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality." -Abraham Lincoln
"I have no purpose or desire to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races." -Abraham Lincoln
"I tell him [Douglass] very frankly that I am not in favor of negro citizenship." - Abraham Lincoln
"I agree... he [african americans] is not my equal in many respects certainly not in color, not in moral or intellectual endowment." - Abraham Lincoln
"I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation. I have no right to say all members of the Republican party are in favor of this, nor to say that as a party they are in favor of it. There is nothing in their platform directly on the subject. But I can say a very large proportion of its members are for it, and that the chief plank in their platform is most favorable to that separation. Such separation, if ever effected at all, must be effected by colonization [outside the country]." --Abraham Lincoln
"Judge Douglas is especially horrified at the thought of the mixing blood by the white and black races: we are agreed for once---a thousand times agreed." - Abraham Lincoln
[In his personal memoirs (1891), Gen. Sherman wrote that he met with Lincoln after the March to the Sea. The president was eager to hear stories about how thousands of Southern civilians mostly women, children, the elderly and the infirm had been plundered, (sometimes raped or murdered), and rendered homeless. Crimes committed by troops against the ex-slave population were also numerous. According to Sherman, Lincoln laughed uproariously at the stories. One of Sherman's biographers (Lee Kennett, Sherman: A Soldier's Life, Harper, 2002), who otherwise writes very favorably about the general, concludes that if the Confederates had won the war then they would have been "justified in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against non-combatants."]
What did he do that was great? Kill 600,000 people?
You live in the most prosperous, powerful and free country that has ever existed. But for Lincoln that would not be true.
You don't think that country would have been successful? Of course it would have.
The idea that you must crush any independence movement and kill hundreds of thousands of people so that "we can be prosperous" would be the same reasons Britain would have used to prevent American independence.
Nebraska has little in common with New York; eventually their interests separate. If you let the country balkanize in the way the South suggested, you end up wit the European Union. Not that bad, but also not the greatest country that ever existed. E Pluribus Unum distinguishes our republic from the other great republics; the South wanted to throw that away.
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off their existing government, and form a new one that suits them better." - Abraham Lincoln
You may think of slavery as a "meh, no big deal." Most civilized humans view it differently
And my primary argument against Texas secession is that it would be a colossal cluster, doing unimaginable harm to both parties. It is just a stupid day dream.