(to be answered in English)

(This question tests your ability to express yourself in a manner that is clear, precise, and relevant. Your answer should fill up approximately 15 to 20 lines in the space provided.)

Allowing a person or entity that has freely entered a partnership or association to leave that partnership or association can be controversial. For example, although it is often a simple matter to quit a job, “quitting” the Armed Forces in time of war, even if you are a volunteer, is a crime. And one need only remember that some decades ago divorce was illegal in Brazil.

The United States came into being when 13 separate English colonies decided to leave the British Empire and form a federal union. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the introduction to the Declaration of Independence, in 1776:

“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, and the pursuit of happiness;

that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed;

that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

By 1860, however, the Southern states, believing that what they considered the tyranny of the Northern states and the Federal Government was threatening their way of life, a way of life supported by the institution of legalized slavery (which the South wanted not only to preserve but also to extend into new territories in the West), decided they had the right to secede and to form their own country, the Confederate States of America. President Abraham Lincoln declared they did not have such a right, and a bloody civil war ensued, at first to preserve the union but eventually to abolish slavery forever in the United States. At the war’s end, the South was all but destroyed.

You should keep in mind that the Southerners wanted to preserve their independence and the inviolability of their culture – to “take back control,” so to speak. Moreover, at the beginning of the war, owning slaves, while controversial, was certainly not illegal, at least not in the South. You should keep in mind as well that had the Confede

rate States of America succeeded, it would have been the first country in history founded upon the idea of eternal slave labor and that, even before the war, Lincoln had said publicly, “If the Negro is a man, why then my ancient faith teaches me that ‘all men are created equal’; and that there can be no moral right in connection with one man’s making a slave of another.”

In your opinion, therefore, did the South, which had voluntarily become part of the United States, have the right to secede? What about the rights of those human beings the South kept in bondage [escravidão]? If the South had not permitted slavery, would it then have had the right to leave the United States – or would the existence or non-existence of slavery have been irrelevant in this question?

Furthermore, is it possible that Brexit – which is also causing serious personal, economic, and diplomatic problems for Britain and Europe, but has not led to war – could be right, but the South’s attempted secession wrong? How are the two situations similar or different? In short, when may a geopolitical entity be justified in separating itself from a union with other geopolitical entities? What should be the guiding principle: law, morality, common sense?

In answering, you should present clear, well-balanced, and specific reasons for your point of view.