why was preserving the union so Important to Abraham Lincoln?

by Brickmaniafan99

In 1783, Great Britain made peace with 13 separate nations, the 13 American Colonies. They went on to union and formed one country, the United States of America in a Confederation of States, where all of the states were bound together in a Congress, they formed a Federal gov. with representatives from all states in Congress. The Constitution said nothing about secession of a state, and the president prior to Lincoln, Buchanan, stated he had no right to send troops to force South Carolina back into the union of States. Since this is the case, why was reforming all the seceded states back into the union such a big deal for Lincoln?

western_divide

The word Constitution itself, unlike the words "confederation; compact; treaty; league" is a unilateral agreement. Akhil Reeed Amar (legal historian) argues that the Constitution, unlike the Articles of Confederation, specifically created an irreversible union between the States.

  • "Amar specifically cites the example of New York's ratification as suggestive that the Constitution did not countenance secession. Anti-federalists dominated the Poughkeepsie Convention that would ratify the Constitution. Concerned that the new compact might not sufficiently safeguard states' rights, the anti-federalists sought to insert into the New York ratification message language to the effect that "there should be reserved to the state of New York a right to withdraw herself from the union after a certain number of years."[29] The Madison federalists opposed this, with Hamilton, a delegate at the Convention, reading aloud in response a letter from James Madison stating: "the Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever" [emphasis added]. Hamilton and John Jay then told the Convention that in their view, reserving "a right to withdraw [was] inconsistent with the Constitution, and was no ratification."[29] The New York convention ultimately ratified the Constitution without including the "right to withdraw" language proposed by the anti-federalists."
paged44

Geographically, the most important port of the US was and still is the city of New Orleans in Louisiana, mainly thanks the the Mississippi river and its estuaries across North America all the way up to the modern-day Rust Belt, at that point the industrial heartland of the US.