It’s Lincoln or secession, but not both

There’s a petition online asking for Texas to be allowed to secede from the Union. This is as idiotic as an idea can possibly be, because it flies in the face of American history. To wit:

Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860. The slaveholding South decided they were not willing to abide this electoral result, so they withdrew from the Union before Lincoln even took the oath of office. It was the equivalent of taking your ball and going home because you were losing in a game. Nobody likes the person who will do that.

Lincoln came to office and never allowed the idea of secession to take hold as a legitimate course of action. He acted as if the Confederate states were still in the Union, like they had always been. And a terrible war was fought to decide whether states could just walk away from the Union when they wanted to. The answer, written in blood thousands of times over, was a resounding “no.”

Republicans–who presumably wouldn’t be so keen on secession if the Republican presidential candidate had won the election–love to call themselves the “Party of Lincoln,” and nominally that’s true. But if they breathe a word of secession–especially because they don’t like the way an election turned out–they must give up any right to use Lincoln’s name on their behalf. Lincoln saved the Union, and paid for it with his life, because he would not allow states to walk away from the Union.

Consider this a free history lesson, for all of the pro-secession Republicans that may be out there.