Was the Union Army's Invasion of the Confederate States a Lawful Act?
An Analysis of President Lincoln's
Legal Arguments Against Secession
by James Ostrowski
This paper, included in Secession, State, and Liberty (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1998), edited by David Gordon, was delivered at the Mises Institute's conference on the political economy of secession. It is ©1998 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. All rights reserved.
On 27 May 1861, the army of the United States of America (the Union) a nation which had been formed by consecutive secessions, first from Great Britain in 1776, and then from itself in 1788 invaded the State of Virginia,1 which had itself recently seceded from the Union, in an effort to negate Virginia's secession by violent force.
The results of the efforts begun that day are well known and indisputable: after four years of brutal warfare, during which 620,000 Americans were killed, the United States of America forcibly......
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Approximate Pages: 58 (260 words per double-spaced page) |