In this American Political Thought class I'm taking, we're scheduled to have four debates in five weeks - two of them are this week, though. I had to take part in two of them, and I thought I'd post my initial arguments here with the caveat that a lot got added to these when they actually got presented.
My first assignment (last Monday) was to argue on a team and with a team for the preservation of the Union against Northern abolitionists who wanted to secede in an act of protest. For some reason, the opposition (who lost to us by unanimous vote) thought that we would show up and argue from the perspective of the Southern states. They thought we would defend slavery, not only Biblically, but as a viable economic institution. They were caught a little flat-footed, and we degenerated into some yelling relatively quickly. Here's how we opened:
"Much has been made of how terrible is the institution of slavery here today. We are agreed. Slavery is terrible, and represents a blight on the human condition. We have the utmost respect for Mssrs. Douglass and Garrison, and above all, the Bible of the Lord our God, twisted as it has been to justify this deplorable practice. It has been said that the tragedy of slavery in the Southern states – the ongoing exploitation of the people we choose to call 'slaves,' which is a mockery of tradition and which is often unfairly justified by those with property for economic reasons (which is to say, reasons that support their economics) – is reason enough for the Northern, non-slave holding states to secede from these United States, creating at least one nation with true freedom.
Which would also serve to create another nation where slaves will continue to be owned and held by their masters, and there would be no checks on their behavior. This nation would be next door, and we would have no authority over them.
If this action, this secession of Northern states, is being suggested as a form of protest against this terrible form of human misery then let me contend that it would constitute an abject failure. Protest's primary goal is meant as a bulwark against injustice. This act would be the polar opposite of standing up for justice – it would be the North running away. Simply put, this secession would constitute running away from an injustice, a disassociation with slavery, a condition that which we can no longer stomach. The act itself – secession – embodies selfishness and cowardice, and is not appropriate for a civilized nation of people. Indeed, it dooms the victims of this practice, the slaves themselves, to eternal forced servitude and outright ownership of their persons by others.
But if the secession's primary objective is to end the practice of slavery in the South? Surely we have more influence over our sister states as they stand right now; just past the Mason-Dixon line, than we would over a sovereign nation – a Confederacy of slaveholding states, if you will – which lies beyond that same border? For example, in whose opinion of your garden do you place more stock – your neighbor's, or a foreigner from another land? Should we not bring the collective resources and influence of a United States to bear upon this problem rather than step away from it and simply hope by that act it will cease?
Additionally, since we cannot physically separate from the South – this secession has no geographic consequences – we will surely also create a buffer area unfit for people, a region fraught with tension, if not outright violence. My colleague who shares my first name is going to expand on that for you. This would potentially add to the human misery in total, rather than reducing that condition; if that is your intention in secession – the increase of misery – then go ahead and secede.
Finally, if we cannot solve this problem within our borders without secession, we risk two other potentialities; one is the continued fracturing of the Union; once the North leaves the South, what stops the North from breaking up even further over internal strife? Or the South doing likewise? While this would create a number of diverse nation states true to the identities of those communities, it would erode our national character entirely. If that should occur, what kind of message to we send to the world, and into history, when the globe's only functional democracy by consent breaks in two rather than solve a problem that belongs not only to us, but to humanity? Do we not have a responsibility to solve this problem together and create a beacon by our example, like the kind imagined by our Puritan forebears, for the world to follow?"
As I said, they tried, but they came armed with a quiverful of arrows to shoot at smoke. But wait, in my next debate, I suffer justifiable defeat! Stay tuned.