150 Years Ago Today

As Edward Ball said in his editorial in yesterday's New York Times:

"The authors of these papers flattered themselves that they’d conjured up a second American Revolution. Instead, the Secession Convention was the beginning of the Civil War, which killed some 620,000 Americans; an equivalent war today would send home more than six million body bags."

Think about that the next time you hear politicians casually throw around words like "secession" and "states' rights."