Thanks for the post. I also have Yankee roots, but I have come to view the War Between the States as clearly being a war of Northern Aggression. The Southern States (as sovereign State-Peoples) had (and still have) legitimate rights to secede that were (and still are) constitutionally authorized under the category of reserved powers, which are referenced in the Tenth Amendment. Moreover, some States originally ratified the Constitution (and entered the Union) under the condition that they could later elect to withdraw from the Union (see ratification statements of New York, Virginia, and Rhode Island). Their ratification statements were accepted as legally sanctioning the Constitution, so their conditional terms of contract were also tacitly accepted. In so revising the contract to include secession for themselves, the right of secession also was (or, at least, became) a reserved constitutional right for the other State-peoples as co-equal sovereigns with same reserved powers. The alternative organic theory of Union articulated by Marshall, Story, Webster, and Lincoln was largely a revisionist myth that Lincoln as president, in turn, employed to save the Federal Government’s and the Republican Party’s (and, hence, his own) power over the Southern people and any other State or region of States that might choose to secede. It is a travesty that the Northern States were co-opted into brutally invading the Southern States based on Lincoln’s specious constitutional theory of union. Unfortunately, it may be true that the Northern States were all too willing to participate in this farce due to their boiling prejudice against the South, which many Northerners self-righteously viewed as a “hostile slave power” (even though white-supremacy and racism was rampant throughout the Northern States as well). Even more sad is the fact that many Northerners still have this prejudice against the South, even though it was their armies that pillaged the South and made economically destitute for decades afterwards.

Best Regards,

Cato

Thank you. Ron Maxwell’s speech was right on target!

Fortunately, the memory of the Civil War and of both the Union and Confederate dead will be etched in the minds of Americans for many generations; thanks to Mr. Maxwell.

Bill Ayers? He’s a criminal who shouldn’t be received in polite company; let alone by the POTUS. Perhaps that says more about Mr. Obama than Mr. Ayers. Wouldn’t it be nice if BHO threw Ayers under the bus, like he’s done to so many others….Ah! We can dream!

I thought Gods and Generals was under-rated.

Blow up armored cars but under no circumstances should we commemorate Lee, who Lincoln offered command of the Army of The Potomac before Lee declined and went South to his Home.

Somebody should write the story of our blue-blood bomb throwing anarchists from the 60’s. They slid unctiously right into the establishment of today, like a well lubricated…well, never mind.

Thanks for pointing out this speech. It is so sad to see such close minded, thought police in our nation’s centers of “learning”.

Tom