They speak of justice as the basis of political organization: in the Declaration of Independence states that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the Consent of the Governed” (paragraph 2), and the Preamble lists, among the reasons for “ordain[ing] and establish[ing] this Constitution for the United States of America,” “to ... establish Justice.” The U.S. government would thus be held accountable not in just a practical way—via elections, whereby officials who did not serve their constituents could be replaced in a peaceable manner—but in terms of a value, an ideal. The Declaration, in justifying the break with Britain, gives many concrete examples of the unjust governing by “the present King of Great-Britain,” such as “He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.” For the purposes of our evaluation of the inevitability of the Civil War, however, we need to focus on the most fundamental element of the standard of justice laid down by the Declaration: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty,…
