Mikhail Gorbachev Quotes
To exercise self-determination through secession is to blow apart the union, to pit peoples against one another and to sow discord, bloodshed and death. This is precisely the goal of secessionists in all republics.
Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian President, Speech, Congress of People's Deputies, Moscow, December 23, 1989
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Fortunately he was wrong, but the threat of a breakup of the American Union intimidated most members of Congress to avoid anything that would offend a state or group of states. Thus slavery became more and more entrenched till it exploded into the Civil War. At the time the issues of contention included the fact that Louisiana was primarily Roman Catholic and ALL other states were majority Protestant. The territory functioned under French Law—the Napoleonic Code, while all the other states operated under the English Common Law (even today this is so), and there was concern with the French and Creole language and whether the Creoles would fit into American Culture.
It would be almost 30 years until Jackson would have been proved correct and the Civil War had begun.
Urging use of force against the South:
He was a Southerner who was opposed to Slavery. He understood both North and South and feared the Civil War 20 years before the event. See also his letter {615642}.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a Russian and former Soviet politician. The eighth and last leader of the Soviet Union, he was the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991. He was also the country's head of state from 1988 until 1991, serving as the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990, and president of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991. Ideologically, Gorbachev initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism, although he had moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s.
