Craig,
Thank you for your reply.

I would contend that, indeed, true differences over principles of government authority (or political preferences) do manifest themselves fairly cleanly along geographical lines. If it were not so, we would never hear about "blue states" and "red" ones. It's true today and it was true then.

Certainly Southerners tried to turn the centralist's bent to their own benefit. So would I, were I in their shoes; so do I in every day life today; doesn't mean I think it's the best way for government to be; doesn't mean it indicates how I'll vote. The fact they did so in no way argues that the Southern states did not clearly understand that they were each sovereign; nor does it imply they didn't understand the rightful interpretation of the Constitutional framers' intent concerning the relationship between the individual sovereign states and the federal government.

I see no one arguing that one could be pro-slavery without being racist. Did you think I implied that somehow?

I was not saying that the issue of slavery was "a facade". I said it was "short-hand". There's a big difference. The first implies to me that it was a "straw-man" issue, irrelevent, not real, etc. The latter, on the other hand, means slavery and the issues of who was going to decide where it existed and how it was handled was very much a result of underlying basic sectional differences concerning the Constitution and the relationship between the U.S. government and its creators, the Sovereign States thereof.

For the life of me, I can't understand why something so obvious eludes so many people outside the South. Is it because they don't think "state rights" should be an issue today? Is it that they can't imagine us with a Federal government who doesn't butt into every nook and cranny of our lives, leaving decisions to smaller, more local voices? Is that the reason they think it must not have been a deeply important issue to people in the 19th century, either?

Penny (who thinks if we don't look at history and try to understand it, our future has more problems than necessary)