The Greatest Lie in American History

You can take all of the lies of Bill Clinton, all of the lies of George W. Bush, and all of the lies of Barack Obama, put them together, and it still wouldn't add up to the one monumental lie that Abraham Lincoln (it was actually Daniel Webster's lie and Lincoln ran with it) told just prior to the Civil War; namely, that the Union preceded the States and that any State which attempted to secede from it was committing treason...........................................................................................I mean, I know that Mr. Lincoln was a powerful persuader and all but on this particular issue he was either rewriting history to suit his own political purposes (lying through his teeth, in other words) or he was a total ignoramus when it came to the Constitution and/or American history. a) Literally every founding father (including the statist, Alexander Hamilton) had acknowledged the right of a state or states to secede. b) The New England states had threatened secession several times early in the 19th Century and on none of these occasions did the central government threaten invasion. c) James Madison, the father of the Constitution, stated that, "not in the opinions or intentions of the body which planned and proposed it, but in those of the state conventions where it (the Constitution) received ALL THE AUTHORITY WHICH IT POSSESSES...". d) Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island all ultimately ratified the Constitution but only after they were given reassurances that they could exit it if they desired. e) The reason that the founding fathers approved of the right of secession was because they saw it as the ONLY check on a potentially tyrannical central government. f) Jefferson and Madison authored the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, a treatise which unambiguously declared the supremacy of the individual states in the federal system (an act to which they received virtually zero criticism). g) The Declaration of Independence referred to the 13 colonies as "Free and Independent States". And h) the colonists had just fought a war to shed the repression of a powerful central government and so it is extremely unlikely that they would have willingly consented to yet another one.............................................................................................Look, I get it. All Presidents lie (and, yes, the last three in particular have told some dandies). But when you get a lie that ultimately resulted in the killing or maiming of 5% of the population, a destruction of half the country's wealth, and a post-war occupation that thoroughly destroyed the possibility of healing between the races, you really gotta call the thing for what it is, and that I've tried to do.