(although “steering” and “NASCAR” are mutually exclusive terms)
The only response to this is, “No, but they did fight at the Alamo. With Santa Anna.” 
:reads thread:
:wonders how much further North she can move:
Kidding, of course. But I’ve come across this attitude, too, and then the “Bless your heart” which is sooooo condescending.
Kudos to the OP for trying but I’ve never seen any point to arguing with them.
It seems that the whole thrust of the Declaration of Independence is to establish the legality of the United States in terms, not of any national or international law, but in terms of natural law. “…are and ought to be Free and Independent”, IOW. What I remember of the justification for secession was based on states’ rights, and/or arguments that blacks were inherently inferior to white people, and that therefore abolition was in transgression of “natural law”.
But I am not aware of anywhere where the Supreme Court ruled (prior to the late unpleasantness of 1861-1865) that the Union was indivisable. I am open to correction on this, of course. But how can a state (in the North Carolina/Virginia/Alabama/etc. sense of the word) be considered “sovereign” if you disallow the secession that makes it sovereign? Kind of a logic-chopping arguement, I realize.
I believe it was Shelby Foote at the end of Ken Burns’ series on the Civil War who made the claim that, prior to 1865, people said “the United States are” such-and-such, and after that, they said “the United States is”. Before the Civil War, we were a collection of states. After that, we were one nation.
What you are saying about the Founding Fathers being heroes because we won the War of Independence is true, of course.
Regards,
Shodan
After the war they kept Jefferson Davis locked up for a while, but never brought him to trial. They didn’t bring him to trial because they realized they’d probably lose the case as well as point out a troublesome fact, so he was allowed to quietly skip out on bail.
Not all of us from the South live in the past. And trust us - we sane ones dislike the crazies more than you do!
When my sister in law decided to do some genealogy research on my family, she discovered one of my ancestors was a slave owner. His 8 slaves were listed in the census sometime in the early 1800’s. I’m still squicked out by that. Makes me feel dirty.
Shodan? Is that you under all that crinoline? 
If the Supreme Court had ruled on it, and the southern states had disregarded the ruling, would you consider their actions completely unjustified?
The Court had never ruled on it – the Constitution imposes a “case or controversy” requirement on the Supreme Court. It cannot issue advisory opinions, or rule on a hypothetical. The issue could not be considered until a succession had actually happened, and frankly, if you believe, having declared themselves independent and unbound by the Constitution and laws of the United States, that the southern states would make meekly submitted to a Supreme Court ruling that their actions were illegal… then I must disagree. 
No, their actions were “illegal” simply because the Constitution itself makes no provision for a state to secede, and the general legal principle is that a government must keep its word. The southern states had agreed to the Constitution, and in 1861 they breached that agreement.
I am not convinced that the entire way of life was based on slavery. Can you convince me?
I’m from the South (Houston, Texas), but now live in Connecticut.
There’s a statue in our town here in Connecticut that memorializes those “who fought to save the Union.”
I’ve taught my son that the Civil War was a terrible war in which some of our ancestors fought for the losing side, and that despite their sacrifice, it was a good thing that the South lost. If they had won, slavery would have persisted, and we would have ended up with two much weaker nations that never would have stopped bickering and fighting.
(I have made reference to the “War of Northern Aggression,” but it has been purely tongue-in-cheek.)
“Don’t blame me, I voted for Jefferson Davis”.
-Joe
Well, I’m not going to try and convince you, but I’ll add that it seems by 1860, during the second industrial revolution, that the more savvy-this-time northeastern textile mills were turning out more products than ever before, products that were made of southern cotton. I can’t say it was their entire way of life, but by that time, it was certainly the centerpiece of the southern economic system.
Even if true, not the same thing at all. Not nearly.
Don’t forgot how meekly Andy Jackson submitted to the Supreme Court’s rulings on the forcible removal of the Cherokee from their homeland.
As to the OP, I once got into an argument with my husband’s co-worker, a native Georgian, who asked why there wasn’t a statue of Lee at West Point. I responded, in all seriousness, “Because he’s a traitor?”
Whoa boy, that was the wrong thing to say.
Well, bless your heart.
No - I don’t think the union was indivisible. Secession was immoral because race slavery is immoral, not because the Constitution has no out clause.
I am a little surprised to hear you argue that “whatever is not mandatory is forbidden” in the Constitution - IOW, the fact that the Constitution does not say that states can leave means that they cannot.
No, clearly they would not have. But ISTM that onen only argue the legality of non-succession in the same way you did the War of Independence - it’s legal because the government can enforce it. (That does not sound quite right to me as a statement of your position - if you want to correct me, go ahead.)
It seems that the indivisibility of the Union was established by the Civil War. Before that, it was an open question, perhaps even legally.
You would know more about that than I.
Regards,
Shodan
True, I guess clarification is needed from the original post, as we both know slavery, albeit large, wasn’t even the entire way of life for all southern blacks.
While of course not everyone could own slaves, the southern economic system was very much dominated by big planters and Big Slavery. If you didn’t own slaves, you probably just didn’t have the money. Planters dreamed of getting enough $$ to buy more land and slaves, and then using it to get more money, then more land and slaves, ad inifinitum. Poorer people might well still have one, but either way their big aspiration was to join the planter class.
Slavery consumed the political sphere, which was made of that same planter class. Other people had little-to-no say in government, and the government failed to provide the seeds of any alternative, restricting public education. In the spiritual realm, well, southern clergy increasingly turned their pulpits into centers of pro-slavery propaganda. In the cultural, Romance was king (Romance with a capital R). Genteel southerners again dominated due to their liesure time, and particularly liked Walter Scott’s novels, imagining themselves as heroic nobility.
Slavery took over every dream and every city and every economy. If you didn’t have slaves, you wanted them! And everything you did or did not do revolved, in the South, around how many slaves you owned. Your manners, your education, your politics (The Whig party was eventually permanently destroyed as it couldn’t hold itself together in the face of Southern pro-slavery sentiment). And if you failed to tow the line, the south had some nasty precursers to lynching. Few were killed in these incidents, but many transplanted northerners and anti-slave southerners were forcibly expelled, often tarred and feathered and literally run out on a rail. They just weren’t pro-slave enough.
Ummm … well … I can’t find the exact page in the Big Book o’ Morals, but I’m pretty sure that a state which condones, encourages, and defends slavery is mentioned in there somewhere …
w.
However, abolition was not proposed at the time of secession. I suppose they were worried about the prospect of abolition, but it was not part of Lincoln’s platform. The Declaration of Independence included a list of grievances, not things that might become grievances at some later time.
During WW I my grandfather, who was a plumber, went from Brooklyn to Georgia to work on army bases. It wasn’t fun since his last name was Sherman.
I don’t think telling them he was Jewish would have helped much.
As for the OP - I wonder when they’ll get to the “the blacks had it better as slaves” bit?