Virginia's Black Confederates

Denying the role, and thereby cheapening the memory, of the Confederacy's slaves and freemen who fought in a failed war of independence is part of the agenda to cover up Abraham Lincoln's unconstitutional acts to prevent Southern secession. Did states have a right to secede? At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, James Madison rejected a proposal that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. He said, "A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."

The Rebellion of 1861 was suppressed, the independence of the individual states was denied and the Constitutional right to secession was overturned by force. The Union was "preserved" but States' Rights were lost and have not been recovered. The Tenth Amendment was the first, but not the last, casualty of the Bill of Rights.