RE: [DL] old post, but mainly directed at Chris McGlothlin....

["Mr. Christopher McGlothlin, M.Ed." <sosentinel@adelphia.net>]

At 12:09 AM 8/5/2002, you wrote:
>I see your point of course, but since the Virginia State legislature 
>believed the US Constitution no longer applied to their State, they could 
>hardly invoke it as a reason for West Virginia's secession to be 
>considered unlawful.

         Well, regardless of how I might feel about it, the whole argument 
about whether or not the US Constitution applied to Virginia was settled in 
the Union's favor. Had the South won, they could've argued the Union had no 
right to annex land from another sovereign nation, but they didn't, so they 
had to argue from the Northern understanding of The War and the 
Constitution: that Virginia never left Federal authority.

>Virginia must have said it was unlawful under the CSA constitution,

         They didn't, actually. As noted above, arguing anything under the 
CSA Constitution in this (postbellum) Supreme Court case would've been a 
waste of time. Virginia argued the Northern (aka, the winner's) 
perspective, and even the Yankees wound up saying, "Yeah, they're right, 
but let's just ignore that, OK?"

>  but their moral right to enforce this on a group of US citizens who were 
> forced to leave the US against their will in the first place is extremely 
> questionable.

         No one forced them to leave the Union. The State the western 
Virginians were citizens of voted to leave the Union. If that was a legal 
move, they had but to move North. If secession was illegal, nothing changed 
their Union citizenship status.
         If secession was legal, as Virginia citizens, they were subject to 
whatever laws the Confederacy and the State imposed on them. If secession 
was illegal, they had no obligation to obey any sort of insurrectionist 
coercion.
         Dividing Virginia was illegal in any case, and the North admitted 
so before the Supreme Court. Case closed, IMHO.


Deo Vindice,
Mr. Christopher L. McGlothlin, M.Ed.

Educator & Freelance RPG Writer
Member, Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts & Design
Moderator of the New Gamers Order Listserver

"Look upon me! I'll show you the life of the mind!"
--Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), _Barton Fink_