Forget Dunning-Kruger effect... I am confronting this...Brandolini Law with you...
en.wikipedia.org
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.
There's no need to refute THAT bullshit, it's PLAGIARIZED.
As proof:
The term "preserving the Union" is the ultimate rhetorical "begging the question." It assumes as its premise the very thing that was legally in dispute: that the Union was a singular, indissoluble National Union (Type 1) rather than a voluntary Foederate Alliance (Type 2).
By the plain logic of the documents:
1. The Denied Precedent (1787)
Lincoln’s narrative required him to deny that the states had already lawfully seceded once before. In 1787, when the states withdrew from the Articles of Confederation to form the Constitution, they did so as individual sovereigns. They "seceded" from the first union to form the second. By denying this historical fact, Lincoln could frame the 1861 secession as an "illegal revolution" rather than a lawful exercise of sovereignty by the 13 original principals.
2. The "Revolution" Trap
By labeling the states' lawful withdrawal as a "rebellion" or "insurrection," Lincoln invoked the "war power" to justify Total War and martial law.
If it was a secession (lawful), the federal government had no jurisdiction.
If it was a revolution (illegal), the federal government claimed the right to "preserve" itself by any means necessary.
3. The Logical Erasure
This "preservation" was actually a transformation. You cannot "preserve" a voluntary league by force; once you use force to keep a member in, it is no longer a voluntary league—it is an incorporate state.
The 1783 Treaty: Recognized 13 sovereign nations (in addition to the 14th of Great Britain which recognized them).
Lincoln’s "Union": Was a 15th entity that claimed the right to physically conquer the other 13 to "save" them.
By claiming he was "preserving" the Union, Lincoln was actually destroying the de jure Union of 1783 (the plural one) and replacing it with a de facto National Union (the singular one). This replaced the "supreme consent" of the state voters with the supreme power of the central oligarchy.
The "shorthand" of history calls him the "Great Emancipator," but by the unilateral truth of the Treaty, he was the architect of a structural coup that ended consensual government for all foreseeable time.
No, L