From: nicholasiii@gmail.com   
      
   On Sunday, May 10, 2015 at 2:36:17 PM UTC-4, S Viemeister wrote:   
   > On 5/10/2015 5:19 PM, Nicholas Benjamin wrote:   
   >    
   > > Which American experience re: secession are you talking about?   
   > > There has never been an independence referendum of any sort in any US State   
   >  > ever. The Confederates had a completely separate legal procedure    
   > involving   
   > > specially elected conventions. If they'd tried a referendum they would have   
   > > lost because they were seceding to protect slavery from evil Abe Lincoln,   
   > > and roughly 40% of their populations were slaves.   
   >    
   > ???   
   > I don't get your point. The slaves couldn't vote. (Neither did white    
   > women.) Slaves didn't even count as full people for census purposes.   
      
   I'm confused too. Soupdragon seemed to be claiming there's some sort of   
   historic experience in the US with having referendums for breaking up the   
   country. The last time anybody got quite that far preceded the invention of   
   the referendum by a good 50    
   years; and it was a really eventful 50 years that included things like the   
   first banning of race-based voting, and the abolition of slavery. Which means   
   if you are actually implying the South seceded via a referendum, then you are   
   by definition arguing    
   that South Carolina let slaves vote in 1861. Which makes no sense whatsoever,   
   which is why I brought up the discrepancy.   
      
   I suspect he has no idea about any of the facts he's claiming to present, and   
   he's just throwing language at the wall to see what sticks.   
      
   Nick   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)