Secession & The American Civil War

To start, I will go ahead and address arguments made by you in your opening arguments - I did not rebut because I assumed that the opening statement should not include rebuttals.To begin, my opponent asserts four main historical facts relating to the plight of the South. I have every sympathy for the South - I am a southerner myself. These four issues certainly did exist, but each were not as bad as it might seem:*Northern states, which refused to recognize slavery, were under no obligation to recognize slaves. Under the 10th amendment, all powers not vested in the federal government are left to the states, or the people.[1] Recognizing property is not a right that is mentioned in the Constitution, so it therefore falls to the states.*As you mention, this was caused by both sides; Therefore, the blame here is split evenly.*Most southerners (3/4s) did not own slaves, so their security was not threatened;[2] those that did were certainly prey to insurrections, but that is going to happen. Why? Because, out of the 9 million southerners, only 5.5 million were white. In other words, around 3.5 million southerners were black or another race.[2] That's a lot of people to have control over, and the fact of the matter is the human spirit is inclined towards freedom.*As I explained about, most southerners did not own slaves. Reasonable reparation was actually considered, but the onset of the Civil War kind of ended that idea.With that said, those are not major issues... At all. The Founding Fathers made it clear that secession is an option only when there is tyranny, and the South was not under tyrannical Northern rule - if anything, they were the tyrants.I agree, secession is not mentioned in the Constitution. I do not agree a 'right to secede' exists in the Constitution; the founders laid out the people's right to secede in the Declaration of Independence, and had no need to repeat it in another document. I also disagree that the 9th amendment addresses any governmental right; the purpose of that amendment was to note that there are many more rights not listed in the Constitution, and those cannot be attacked by government. Finally, to your last argument, the North was under no obligation to leave its forts and military installations. The land was theirs, and the fort cost a great deal of money from US taxpayers. It would be wrong to say the South had a right to steal what amounts to installations bought and paid for by residents of the United States.. The South got angry that the North refused to leave and attacked (clearly showing they had no intention of peace in the first place), which unfortunately sparked a war.As to the ones in your most recent post, I have addressed them in order of statement:I agree with you 100% when you say that the Founding Fathers' actions were illegal, and they know so and did it anyway to preserve their rights. Like many people in that era, the Founding Fathers believed the law of man does not trump the natural law that is granted to all citizens, and they fought to preserve the higher law - natural law. On the other hand, I do not think the Declaration of Independence was an act of revolution. It served an identical purpose to the South's secession - to try and solve issues. Do you think that America wanted to go to war with Britain? Of course not. They hoped that there would be no war, but they were prepared to fight if there was. The same could be said with the south, except that the South failed to meet the criteria to secede and instigated the conflict.I agree that representatives can facilitate the process, but there was no justification to secede (ie. no tyranny). However, I reject the idea that a government can truly be considered representative when the options of a large number of citizens (in this case, the slaves) are completely ignored. The South's did indeed use blackmail. Their threat to secede obviously threatened the removal of strategic points belonging to the US (like Fort Sumter), military installations, trade agreements/revenue, etc., all of which belonged to the whole of the country.We have a Supreme Court for a reason, to determine the legality of laws. The South had every right to petition the court if a law was harming them, rather than flee when they realized they were on the wrong end of history in regards to slavery.I do not see any proof slavery was supposed to be legal in US territories. I noted such myself; however, it is worth nothing the wording was there. I cede the Texas v. White bit.The US government obviously saw some use for it, as they refused to leave and continued stocking it, but having a lack of use for something is not justification for stealing it. If you have something you can't use and I want, can I come and steal it from you at gunpoint? Of course not. Also, could you provide solid proof behind your asserting of land deed restrictions?Sorry if this is a bit short; I had to save a lot of space to cover both sections. Back to you!References:1. The Constitution2. http://www.pbs.org...3. http://www.historytoday.com...