I appreciate the court decision, but is it your opinion that this court decision settles the argument as to whether states can legally withdraw from the Union or are you stating that due to this decision by a court representing the winning side, they created a new law that made secession illegal? I believe the latter is the case. It is clear from the writings of our founders that many of the signers of the Constitution would never had done so, unless they understood their right to withdraw if the country, in their view turned away from its founding principles.

This issue of the legitimacy of secession stands at the center of the "causes" of the Civil War. I will always believe that individual states had the right to withdraw from a Union, which they believe no longer acted for the benefit of their individual state. I am happy that slavery ended as a result of the Civil War, but that does not change the constitutional question that forcing the Southern states back in to the Union of states was beyond the scope and the authority of the U.S. president. I believe, even Lincoln felt he was on shaky ground and was driven by one personal ideal "preserve the Union."

I agree with this quote "Nor would the Republican Party, which enjoyed a political monopoly after the war, have insisted that the Southern states rewrite their state constitutions to outlaw secession as a condition of being readmitted to the Union. If secession was really unconstitutional there would have been no need to do so."

Ah, the eternal argument.

Jim