absurdity

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You are absolutely correct, O'Bruadair. The war was caused by the fact that the North would not allow the South to secede in peace. However, your argument is heavily flawed elsewhere and since cwalenta999 is unwilling to argue with you, I will.

Let us first analyze this statement:

"The original states entered the union as independent entities. They delegated certain limited powers to the federal government but reserved all other powers (including the power of secession) to themselves or the people."

So, you are telling me that the states, as in the state governments, ratified the Constitution? WRONG! The people voted for representatives who ratified the Constitution. The states did not give the Federal government its power, and even the Anti-Federalists admitted this (see the infamous Brutus' XII quote).

Would you like to quote the Constitution (ie that 9 STATES must ratify the Constitution to make it legitimate)? Sure, every Southern apologist does. The fact is that the states in their governmental capacities and their "division-of-people" capacities are two different entities. A state could be defined as merely a division of people, like a town or village. The US elects its Presidents via the Electoral College, which is divided via STATES, but do the people (indirectly) vote for the President or do the state (governments) elect him/her?

Tell me, what is the first line of the Constitution? "We, the People", correct? Look up the statement made by Patrick Henry when the Constitution was being written/ratified (If you are too lazy, he essentially said: Who authorized anyone to say "We, the People"? If the states are not members of this pact, then it must be a great, big accord between the PEOPLE).

So, if the people gave the Fed. gov. its sovereignty, then the people obviously reserve the right to secede, not the states (governmental capacity again) themselves.

Furthermore, let us read Jefferson's Miscellany:

It has been often said that the decisions of Congress are impotent because the Confederation provides no compulsory power. But when two or more nations enter into compact, it is not usual for them to say what shall be done to the party who infringes it. Decency forbids this, and it is unnecessary as indecent, because the right of compulsion naturally results to the party injured by the breach. When any one state in the American Union refuses obedience to the Confederation by which they have bound themselves, the rest have a natural right to compel them to obedience. Congress would probably exercise long patience before they would recur to force; but if the case ultimately required it, they would use that recurrence. Should this case ever arise, they will probably coerce by a naval force, as being more easy, less dangerous to liberty, & less likely to produce much bloodshed.

Wow! Harsh words coming from the great defender of states rights! Apparently, even if you believe that the states gave the Fed. its sovereignty, the states have a NATURAL RIGHT TO COMPEL THE OTHERS TO OBEDIENCE. This quote is even from the Articles of Confederation era, and the Articles explicitly granted sovereignty to its separate states.

Moving along, I expect to hear that the American Revolution established the right to secede. Wrong again, my Confederate-loving friend. The Am. Rev. established the right of revolution against a government that was infringing on your God-given rights. I see no such right that the Confederacy was protecting during the Civil War. After all, the right to own slaves is not a right at all. It is a blatant contradiction of the spirit of the Declaration.

To recap: The people entered the Federal pact, not the states. Therefore, if the southern states had, say, voted to leave the Union via a convention or whatnot, that should have been fine. However, it is doubtful that such an attempt would have been successful. After all, only, say, "maybe 5% of the Southern population" would have voted for such an asinine movement.

Of course, I am not trying to justify the specific paths that Lincoln took to reunite the Union or the destruction of the South. However, I do believe that the starting the war was justified if, and only if, the main purpose was to reunite the Union (as Lincoln obviously intended).

Personally, I would have left the South secede. I have met enough Southern-folk to understand why shiny things moving in circles (cough:Nascar:cough) would entertain them j/k :P.

Edit: Oh, and just in case you feel the need to label me as some "public school average Joe", I happen to be a home school student with a VERIFIED IQ of 166 (yes, I know I just reified the IQ term, and, no, it was not some fly-by-night IQ test).

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You are still assuming that the states in question are the states in their GOVERNMENTAL CAPACITIES! Please study the differences! Even Madison asked Jefferson if he knew the difference between the STATE and the LEGISLATURE on matters of the Federal pact.

You just agreed with me by saying:

"Very plainly here “the people of the United States” means the people of each state meeting in convention. This is the soverign entity that ratified the Constitution to start with and this is the one who has the power to withdraw from that compact."

Notice that I said the same thing earlier. I said that a convention (with reps of the people) could withdraw the people or other group from the Union! Read my post! We do agree on this! Now, it comes down to, would the South have been able to rally sufficient support for those conventions? I doubt the people would have truly cared about seceding for the sake of the rich %5.

Furthermore, if a very small percentage of the people vote for/against the Constitution, it STILL HAS THE POWER TO BIND EVERYONE. If only one percent of the US votes for a President, electing said President, does that mean the other 99% can safely ignore every bill he/she signs into law? Right there is your third-world country. Granted, not everyone voted or was or is allowed to vote, but show me a common election or convention that allows everyone to vote. Can people under 18 vote for Presidents/reps? Obviously not. Creating a new nation and forcing others who live in it (and did not agree to the Const.) to obey its rules is an odd situation, but the states themselves did authorize the ratifying conventions as a peace offering between the Federalists to the states. The states themselves apparently saw nothing wrong with the process (Well, except Rhode Island, but it saw the light after the US treated it as a foreign nation).

I think you should understand that the US is not a democracy, but a republic. The will of the people is executed via representatives. That is simply how it is done. The Founding Fathers believed that even the people could not be trusted with absolute power. So, the people voted for the Constitution via representatives; the ratification of the Const. was a republican process. It was legitimate.

The main problem is exactly as cwalenta999 said. The Constitution is not clear on the subject. The closest it comes to secession is "No state shall enter into a confederation or treaty." We can argue all we want, but the fact is that everything is based on how different people interpret the Constitution and the Founding Fathers' intentions. If the US Senate of 1838 was a bunch of fools, then we can hardly trust their judgment. What matters is the Founding Fathers' intentions. Anything else is null and void.

By the way, why did you not respond to my Jefferson Miscellany quote? Obviously it contradicts your whole argument since he is a Founding Father supporting the prevention of secession. Jefferson was a pioneer of the rights of the states (see Kentucky Resolution), so why did he say such a thing? Maybe unilateral secession is NOT ALLOWED after all, hmmm?

Edit: BTW, cwalenta999, your last sentence is a great argument. I believe Timothy Sandefur made a similar one. He only changed the wording to something like "if unilateral secession were allowed, then all the powers of the Federal government would be useless." Indeed, imagine if a state could secede on its mere notion every time the Feds made a decision the states did not like!

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I just wanted to let you know that I DO NOT believe the US created the states. I believe in what is known as "dual sovereignty". That is, for the uninitiated, that the US is sovereign in its realm, and that the states are sovereign in their own. They should be separate units. The problem is that the states CANNOT secede. Only the people, through the properchannels, can exit the Union.

Also, I really should clarify my position here. I may have contradicted myself earlier or not be really clear on certain issues. I may have also been too reactionary to your posts. I apologize for this transgression.

My honest belief is that the states and U.S. are separate units. However, the people give power to both. I also believe that when one enters an agreement, one must seek the approval of the other members of the contract to exit the contract (unless of course one's associates infringe on or break the contract themselves). The South, I admit, did convene for conventions, but after the Constitution was ratified the people became ONE PEOPLE, UNDER ONE FLAG.
Heck, if you even want to renounce your US citizenship, you have to contact the government, which is really just a vessel for the power of the people. At one time, if you even stayed outside the US for too long, you lost your citizenship. The problem here is that the states (or people, whatever) did it unilaterally.

[THE5ASPECTS]

There is no right or wrong question! It all depends on your view on the problem. both sides had their rights and wrongs, and arguing only builds tension.