Steven P. McNicoll wrote:
"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
...

Civil war???


Yup. There is nothing in the Constitution that prevents a state from
leaving a union that it freely joined. The southern states were forced to
rejoin the union.

Aside from the language prohibiting individual states from enterring
into a confederation.

Seceding first, and enterring into a confederation later is an
intellectually dishonest shell game, not an action that is
permissible under the Constitution.

And the states that seceded absolutely were not seceding to
preserve freedom. They seceded because the states that had
already abolished slavery within their borders, or had never
permitted it in the first place, had become united in their
dedication to prohibit the expansion of slavery into the
Western Territories. That made emancipation inevitable.
The slave states saw the hand writing on the wall,
turned tail and ran.

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FF