Papapete backs into a corner:Vox, did they have the right to secede? Maybe. Did they have the right to keep slaves? Never….the law is what it is, not what we want it to be.”
This makes no sense. Clearly, the Southern states did, at one point, have the right to keep slaves. George Washington and other Founding Fathers owned them. If individuals in the South did not have the right to keep slaves, and the law did not change, at what point did they lose this right? Furthermore, if they had the right to secede, being sovereign, at what point did they lose their sovereignty prior to being invaded?
Keeping the Union together – by force – was far and away the strongest message given out by the North. If the war was only about slavery, not independence, then is there any reason that the South cannot secede today since it no longer practices slavery? Will the federal government permit it since the issue has, according to the single-minded slaveryists, never been examined, much less settled?
Drawing on Papapete’s early points about case law, if the law is nothing but what those in authority declare it to be, there is no justice or human rights to be found in it. This is the Nietzschean mentality which declares that there is only the will to power, and that might makes right. It is totally contrary to the stated aims and goals of the American Revolution and tends to support the concept that the war to keep the Union together by force, not free association, marked the end of the original American experiment.
Ultimately, the superficiality of the slaveryist concept is being eroded by current events in the European Union. There, as in 19th century America, independent state sovereignty is being insensibly engulfed by Brussels. A potential repeat of the American Civil War is entirely possible, and would clearly illustrate the concept of free association and union by force being entirely distinct from slavery. In this potential case, the sparking issue would probably be tax harmonization.