>
> As odious as the Confederacy was, they had every right to
> secession. But there was simply no way that the expanding
> federal government would allow that, especially with
> thoughts of further imperial conquest. Losing the southern
> states would've been a huge blow to that plan. And even
> if the south broke away, I'm sure war or wars with the
> north would've happened sooner or later.
>
> Dennis
^^^^^^ CB: In this period, the slave states dominated the federal government , and were the main impetus to any federal plan for imperial expansion. The economic nature of slavery was such that it had to keep acquiring more territory or die. See Karl Marx's explanation of this in one of his articles on the US Civil War; basically slavery can't increase its rate of exploitation of slaves , because it can't trust slaves with improvements in technology; they will destroy them like Luddites. Thus, the main reason they tried to secede was that Lincoln's position was not to abolish slavery where it was ,but not allow it to expand into any new territories.
Legally speaking , from whence do you derive this "every right" to secession ? What about the Supremacy Clause ?