> > "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who
> >inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government,
> >they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their
> >revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it."
> > --A. Lincoln, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
>
> Then he led a war against the South for trying to dismember it,
> suspended habeas corpus, etc. etc. Doug
The gap between theoria and praxis has been often remarked upon. But I wonder if we have here a simple contradiction. I think Lincoln saw those positions as reconcilable. The question is one of representation of "the people who inhabit it." I admit it's difficult to contend that John Hancock was rightly representative when one says (as I do) that Jeff Davis wasn't. --CGE