Civil war is a misnomer. It was always a war between the states. Anyway, this should be an interesting time to live in the USA. Law is definitely not static.
No offense....but this sentence shows that you're not familiar with Supreme Court jurisprudence at all. Discrimination based on gender has long been subject to heightened scrutiny according to the Supreme Court. Do you really think that women do not have rights under the equal protection clause...because that's what your comments seems to imply....and it's just blatantly incorrect. And as for your hypothetical....whether you like it or not....Roe was based on a due process right....that being....up to a certain point...a woman's due process right to privacy trumps everything else. If the Supreme Court all of the sudden decided that life begins at conception....they would still have to address the woman's privacy right and weigh all considerations. If they came to conclusion that the privacy right should no longer trump in that instance....I would disagree with it but I would not want to re-fight the Civil War over it.
This such a dumb point. The Federal government would have too much power, leave it to the states. Why can the states decided it when the federal government can't? What if Alabama wants to bring back slavery?
You know it really wasn't-- slavery was the ultimate cause or arguably so, and the end of slavery the proximate result. But the constitutional issues were very real, and the political "flow chart" which the war redrew was the actual issue. The south had had a defacto veto power over the overall decisions of the nation, which had been strengthened each time events made the region insecure. It never was sufficient to prevent the rise of a new insecurity in the next half decade, and the union had arrived at the point where it was unwilling to further constrain its direction and growth to appease a frankly (then) backward region holding a bit over 35% of the populace, whatever the price of the adjustment... If you want to call it the "American War" or the "United States War" in the same sense that we speak of the "Korean War" or the "VietNam War," fine; though no third party was involved to label it so. But it was in reality a conflict in which citizens of the same communities but different political persuasions came into organized violent conflict in the effort to determine which ideas should prevail; why wouldn't you call it a civil war?
I stopped reading here. Slavery was THE operative cause of the Civil War. There is no argument to be made against it. All the other causes were all slavery based, such as the silly "states rights" explanation.
And it's not surprising that "states' rights" made its big comeback in the 1960s, along with the rebel flag atop state capitols.
Actually it really wasn't-- the North made no effort to impose a new order until well after the South initiated hostilities. Slave states Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri held for the Union. But you've stopped reading by now. The issue was whether participation in the Union was voluntary or not. Slavery was just the ghost in the room. If you stop reading you can avoid learning too many details, but you'll be wrong a lot. There's a pretty interesting sequence of events between the start of the election campaign and the bombardment of Sumter... but you're not reading this so I'll stop...
Maryland held for the Union because Lincoln suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus and arrested all the Maryland secessionists so that they couldn't vote for secession the next day.
Yes and part of Virginia seceded from Virginia to stay in the Union. My understanding is that Maryland provided many soldiers to the Union and few to the South... but I may be wrong. Anybody know?
This is an incorrect prevarication. No one wants to change secession rules when they're happy with the country's direction. The question is WHY the South wanted to secede. The North didn't because anti-slavery forces were gaining. You can scream all you want about states rights, but the only real issue of why the South wanted to secede in the first place is slavery. Period. As to your other points, because I'm feeling charitable: Delaware Maryland and Missouri had no slave culture and certainly weren't a bit plantation center. Slavery wasn't a key issue to them. Kentucky had a low percentage of slaves as well. However, why were there no northern states who joined this "ideological" debate? Interesting, eh? The only true comparison should be to Virginia. I've posted this before, but there was a fascinating constitutional convention in Virginia in 1830 that was essentially the pro-slavery east vs. the less pro-slavery west. The slavery forces won. The West resented this, and as soon as they had their chance they seceeded because they felt they could get fairer taxation and representation as a new state within the north. If this was really about ideology or some nebulous concept of states rights, why in the world did West Virginia follow the northern aggressors?
Wrong. West Virginia broke away because they had far more to gain being a free state than a part of the slave state of Virginia.
True....except for the eastern shore which was (is) very agricultural and depended fairly significantly on slave labor.
This certainly is a good moment to retire: we've got a rightwing president, rightwing Senate, rightwing House...And we'll have a rightwing justice.
Well yeah. Crabcakes and produce stands on the side of the highway every two feet. *sniffs* Oh how I miss driving to the shore in the summer.
he means it is bs - his claim is that slavery is the true cause and not as a byproduct of plantation based agrarian Southern economy. We are really splitting hairs anyways. It all got pulled together into a war between the states. I think a better question is - regardless of the composition of the court - given what we know medically in 2005 versus 1974 - would the Court revisit Roe vs. Wade - you know how I feel - as "barbaric" as the London bombing was - partial birth abortion is no less barbaric. Screw the right to privacy in that case - any society that cannot protect its unborn is headed down the crapper.