Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 20, 1990                   TAG: 9004200705
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

IF IT WERE VIRGINIA RATHER THAN LITHUANIA

Eleven Southern states, including the commonwealth of Virginia, attempted to break away from the United States and form an independent nation. History is replete with evaluations of the justice or lack thereof of the Southern cause. Suffice it to say that the Southern states were convinced of the legal and moral sufficiency of their cause.

Not so President Lincoln. He viewed it as a case of insurrection, pure and simple, that had to be put down at any cost including, if necessary, force. The resulting Civil War lasted four long years, leaving 617,000 Americans dead and 375,000 wounded.

One can only speculate what might happen today if the people of Virginia decided that back in 1865 they had been illegally and forcibly coerced into remaining in the Union; that they have suffered enough under the yoke of the Washington bureaucracy; that their tax monies were being squandered on expensive federal boondoggles; and that for these and other good and sufficient reasons, they prefer independence.

Would the president of the United States and his administration say: "Goodbye, it's been good to know you, go your own way and God bless you"? Or would the troops move in, ostensibly to preserve order but in reality to suppress rebellion?

As Americans, we need seriously to ponder that question before we sanctimoniously ascend the high moral ground and proceed to pontificate, yes lecture, Gorbachev on how he should resolve the Lithuanian dilemma. NATHANIEL BACK ROANOKE