“You never realize how strong you are until being strong is the only choice you have.” - Anonymous

From “The Human Condition: A User’s Manual,” by Arnold Kunst

10 April

“He ]Lincoln] would preserve the Union and the principle of self-government on which the Union was based: the right of a free people to choose their leaders and to expect the losers to acquiesce in that decision. If Southerners did not like him, they could vote him out in 1864. But they had no right whatever to separate from the Union, and he was not going to let them go, for that would set a catastrophic precedent that any unhappy state could leave the Union at any time. No, he regarded the philosophy of secession as ‘an ingenious sophism’ which had no logical, historical, or legal defense. The Constitution specifically stated that the Constitution itself and the national laws made under its authority were the supreme law of the land. Therefore the states could not be supreme as the secessionists claimed; the Union was supreme, perpetual, and permanent, and could not be legally wrecked by a disaffected minority.” – Stephen Oates