Editor, Gazette-Journal:

The premise of a letter to the editor in last week’s paper (“Then and now,” March 31 Readers Write) is one of a false equivalency, yet both are, the ‘Then’ and the ‘now,’ anchored on conflict.

On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the United States Constitution, garnering the necessary vote to become law. In the case of Ukraine, its sovereignty came about on Aug. 24, 1991 through an act of the Parliament of Ukraine voting to accept the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine or Akt proholoshennya nezalezhnosti Ukrayiny. As with all 15 constituent republics of the then-defunct Soviet Union, Ukraine came about in its present iteration following the failed coup in the Soviet Union on Aug. 19, 1991.

The question of secession in the United States was an untested one, its legality not being established until a victor emerged in the Civil War and the postwar changes in United States federal law relative to code and constituti...