I’m a little confused about what states in US are. Are they more like their own countries united in alliance, or are they districts of one country?

  • kartonrealista@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    11 hours ago

    The American Civil war began with a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter. At the same time it was never established that you can opt out of the US, that’s generally not how countries work.

    The Confederacy would not have happened if it wasn’t for fears of abolishing slavery.

    Lincoln’s election provoked South Carolina’s legislature to call a state convention to consider secession. South Carolina had done more than any other state to advance the notion that a state had the right to nullify federal laws and even secede. On December 20, 1860, the convention unanimously voted to secede and adopted a secession declaration. It argued for states’ rights for slave owners but complained about states’ rights in the North in the form of resistance to the federal Fugitive Slave Act, claiming that Northern states were not fulfilling their obligations to assist in the return of fugitive slaves.

    -Wikipedia

    It was “states rights for me but not for thee”.

    • False@lemmy.world
      2·
      11 hours ago

      The constitution doesn’t cover if states can leave the union. Until the civil war this was an unresolved question. We now know definitively that you de facto can’t, at least not without permission of the federal government.

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
        1·
        48 minutes ago

        If you believe it’s the force of law that resolved the question: it wasn’t, it was the force of violence. The resolution of that question was through the use of force and it’s the use of force that keeps that resolution in place, not the force of law.