I think pulling Jefferson's "every 19 years" out of context proves much.
  He wrote this is a letter and never said another word about it; never
pushed it, and certainly never acted on it.  As president he might have
said, in 1806, let's rewrite the Constitution.  He sure did not. Bosnian
  Serbs surely have a right to leave Bosnia; and southerners surely had
a right to go to Cuba or Brazil or wherever they might have been more
comfortable; that is different than deciding they can dissolve the
constitution and declare that the U.S. laws are no longer in force in
their states; and that U.S. property now belongs to them.

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.

Constantine Gutzman wrote:
> Paul Finkelman writes, " Is your theory that because the South did not like
> who won the election, the South had a right to make war on the United
> States, steal property
> owned by the rest of the Country, and set up its own country?
>
> "In other words, is your theory that if you don't like who wins the
> election, you have a right to start your own government?"
>
> He concludes, "If Virginia does not like a tax bill passed in Congress, can
> Virginia
> leave the U.S.?"
>
> Of course, to call the war of 1861-65 a "rebellion" is to assume what was at
> issue, which is that the first allegiance of an American had to be to the
> Union, not to his state.
>
> Actually, this is a more difficult series of questions than its association
> with the Confederacy, and thus with slavery, makes it seem.  Suppose one
> part of a country is perpetually in the minority, as was Scotland in the
> 18th century.  Although it had representation, that region of the U.K. found
> its M.P.s routinely ignored in formulating British law and policy, and
> American colonists took that fact into account in rejecting the idea of
> American representation in Parliament.  Was Scotland bound to remain forever
> an exploited minority section of the U.K.?  If so, why?  Certainly not on
> the basis of the reasoning of the second sentence of the Declaration of
> Independence, which assumes that the people have a right to a government of
> their choice.  (Jefferson, who wanted to void every law and constitution
> every 19 years, is not good authority for the idea that "once in, you stay
> in."  That is not conclusive evidence that the perpetual union idea is
> mistaken, but I think it needs more elaboration than it usually receives.)
> Does the fact that one country is represented in a legislature impose a
> moral obligation upon it to stay within the union?  Is it forever incumbent
> upon the Serbian population in Bosnia, for example, to remain under a
> federal union whose policies will never be those the Serbian region of the
> country prefers?  Did Ukrainians have no claim on independence 15 years ago?
> It seems that the only justification of Ukrainian independence was that
> Ukrainians wanted independence, even though Ukraine had always been part of
> (indeed, had been the historic heart of) Russia.  Soviet President
> Gorbachev, of course, pointed to Lincoln's example in arguing that the
> Soviet Union had to be kept whole, especially since he had been elected to
> preside over the whole nation; his use of violence against Lithuanian free
> media has not kept him from being the darling of Yoko Ono, Ted Turner, and
> the world "peace" movement, nor from being the keynote speaker at Thomas
> Jefferson's 250th birthday celebration at U.Va.
>
> For reflections on this idea from a prominent southern politician of yore,
> see "Preserving the Patrimony: William Branch Giles and Virginia versus the
> Federal Tariff," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 104 (1996),
> 341-372, by Yours Truly,
> Constantine Gutzman
> Prof. K.R. Constantine Gutzman
> Department of History
> Western Connecticut State University
>
>
>
>


--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, Oklahoma  74104-2499

918-631-3706 (office)
918-631-2194 (fax)

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