While slavery has long been cited as the reason for the necessity of the so-called "Civil War," it only sanctifies the Union's "moral right" to use force against the rebellious Southern States. It does not provide an accurate account of the real reasons for the devastating struggle, but serves to deflect discussion away from that cause which has still not been resolved today.
       Oran Milo Roberts addresses the key element of the cause of the war by focusing upon constitutional issues. Roberts, a former Governor of Texas and law professor at the University of San Augustine, notes that the very wording of the Constitution (the wording that has survived up to this day) is vague upon the legitimacy of a strong central government, and in that sense it is an imperfect document:

       The very great and good men who were in the Convention that framed the Constitution, were not agreed among themselves as to the shape and powers of a government which would be best suited to the American States. A portion of them were in favor of the erection of a strong central government; while others were in favor of interfering as little as possible with the rights of the States. The Constitution was a compromise of these conflicting views. It was a compromise, under a pressure, by the use of general terms, that harmonized their action for the time, without changing or remoulding their respective opinions. As an entirety, it was not responsive to the judgment of either party. The same difference of opinion existed among the people of the States for whom it was made, and has continued to exist to the present time. The Constitution, from its brevity and generality, is necessarily the subject of construction; and each party has been inclined to construe it so as to make this government, in existence under it, conform to their own views of what it should be (page 5).

       In this sense, the Constitution offered no "exit strategy," and to this day, while amendments define the right of the individual under law, it fails to define the rights of individual States. However, Roberts suggests this "right," while not explicit, is inherent in any constitutional union: "It must be admitted that a state has reserved rights; among which, are her domestic institutions. What use is such a reservation unless she has the right of protecting them? There can be no such a thing as an exclusively reserved right, without the incidental right of protecting it" (page 29). This notion that States had the right to secede from the Union in order to protect its own interests was not new in the 1860s. Secession had likwise been threatened by several New England States during the War of 1812 when it became apparent that their economies would suffer from interrupted trade with Great Britain.
       In this sense, slavery, that "peculiar institution," was what the South went to war to defend, but this does not necessarily mean it was their intention to maintain slavery. Southern politicians knew that in order to maintain trade with Europe, especially Great Britain, which had abolished slavery in 1834, the South would eventually have to overhaul its slave-based economy. What was needed was sufficient time to do so — a timetable the North was not willing to tolerate.
       Roberts expands his argument by comparing a federal union to the incorporation of a company, whereby the incorporators retain distinct duties and obligations to maintain the company, but who may, by vote, withdraw at any time in order to expand their business interests elsewhere. He stops short of suggesting that the South took that path, although there are modern examples, such as the dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech and Slovak republics, which occurred in that very manner in 1992. Norway similarly had became a nation independent of Sweden by vote in 1901.
       History has shown, however, that the Southern States — at least their legislative bodies, if not their citizens — took that vote and exercised the "reserved" right to separate from the central government that was overreaching its constitutional powers:

       The expression in the 10th amendment to the Constitution of the United States, that, "the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people," in its necessary implication, that the powers, that had been granted to the government of the United States by the States, were only delegated powers, and was nothing new, then brought to view, in giving shape to the government created by the Constitution. It, in substance, was as old as the first colonial charter that was granted, and gave shape and character to every agency and government, that had acted for the American people in their public affairs (pages 55-56).

       Such arguments are re-stated throughout Roberts' book. While the modern reader may find himself at times bogged down in the minutiae of legal verbiage and detail presented by Roberts, his book is nevertheless recommended reading, since many of the problems he addresses persist to this day. Indeed, the shortfalls of the Constitution seem to perpetually find a general lack of a champion to step forward and suggest changes, especially when the issue of threats from abroad are presented to unite all Americans against a common enemy outside their borders.

— reviewed by Jay Underwood