Paul Finkelman says, "All of Constantine's examples are of minority regions
*forced* to join
countries that were led by monarchs or dictators.  The Ukraine had no
choice in joined in the USSR (which in any event denied all people their
voice in the government.  After the fall of the USSR it was not
 unreasonable to reconsider the relations between these places and the
 new Russia.  Jefferson would argue they might have a right to revolt
 because they were denied representation because the Soviet system, even
 under Gorbachev, was not democracy.  The South was not forced to sign
 the Constitution, or join the United States.  We might have been better
 off if the South had created a separate slaveholding republic and the
 North had been free to develop without the albatross of slavery.  But
 that is not how it happened."

One wonders when, exactly, Ukraine was forced to join the USSR, and where it
was before.  The word "Ukraine," "Ukrainia" in Ukrainian, comes from an Old
Slavic word for "borderland" (which is why the region of Croatia is called
"Krajina," a cognate word).  Borderland of what?  Of Russia, of course.
Ukraine and Russia were never separate, except momentarily, until now.

Finkelman's point about the southern states joining the Union voluntarily
only makes sense if the Union they tried to leave was the same as the one
they agreed to join.  Of course, as many scholars (including Finkelman) have
shown, the southerners agreed to join a pro-slavery Union, then left when
the Union morphed into something else.  Despite the fact of slavery's
immorality and of its centrality to their decision to secede, I do not see
how the Union could be said to remain binding on them in those
circumstances.

As to his statement that "Jefferson would argue they might have a right to
revolt
because they were denied representation because the Soviet system, even
under Gorbachev, was not democracy," I think it incorrect.  Jefferson never
said that so long as the Union was a democracy, no state could leave.  In
his famous June 1798 letter to John Taylor, he said that the time for
secession had not YET arrived because Federalist policies might yet be
negated.  The clear implication was that if they were not negated, the time
for secession might arrive.

Constantine Gutzman
Prof. K.R. Constantine Gutzman
Department of History
Western Connecticut State University

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