Governor John W. Ellis of North Carolina: “[I will be] no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. […] You can get no troops from North Carolina.”
A review of Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (University Press of Kansas, 2014) by William C. Harris.
William C. Harris has set before him the admirable task of examining whether the border states indeed “unequivocally cast their lot with the Union” in 1861 (page 8). Unfortunately, his political views send him into the issue with one hand tied behind his back.
The trouble begins even before opening the book. Why “Preserving the Union”? What unquestioned law of nature dictated that this was forever and unequivocally a good thing? On this first premise apparently Harris would join Eric Foner, who in 1990 claimed that Lincoln was an excellent precedent for Gorbachev to suppress the secession of Lithuania from the Soviet Union. Foner said:
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