Validity of the Reasoning behind the Civil War

Wars of independence should not be fought on shallow sectarian grounds, but upon fundamental principles of freedom. What entitled the Union to force millions of people against their will to swear fealty to a political system which the Southerners abhorred?

"Maintaining the Union" was political oppression under the pretext of principle. One cannot distinguish the efforts of the American Union of 1860 with the actions of the Soviet Union of 1960. Rigid control of land and people, contrary to their wishes, does not promote freedom. Contrary to the opinion of some, the American Constitution is not irrevocable; nor is any political system. The people have the inalienable right to choose their own future. They are not bound by a dusty piece of paper that their ancestors wrote.

Civil War Southerners grasped the idea that governments should serve the people, and that people should not exist simply to serve the government. They paid dearly for that belief for decades after the Civil War. You can probably be dismissive of such concerns, but as William Faulkner observed: "The past is never dead. It is not even past".