That is pretty horrifying.

The Red States of the South have been riding a rage wagon for over 150 years because at the root of it all they felt their rightful property was stolen from them. And by property I mean slaves. The origin of all the anger for the federal government meddling in their affairs to this day.

If they wanna secede again I am all for kicking the shit out of them, since they didn't learn their lesson the last time.

Please let people like me and my loved ones leave the South first (it's hard to get the money together to move away from this hellhole, so be prepared for immigrants flooding blue states' borders).

The remarkable thing is how little thought the South gave to what they were doing. Had they been recognized as a distinct nation, sooner or later the North would have outlawed slavery outright, meaning that slaves would only have to reach the North (rather than Canada) to be free. In effect, the South was pushing for the complete repeal of the Fugitive Slave Act.

There is nothing good to say about the Southern cause: not its principles, not its logic, not its execution. And certainly not the ripples we're still dealing with today.

Confederates would argue that the North had slaves too. I agree that political correctness has invented a new history that shows the North in a more progressive light, and that the reasons for the Civil War were not fundamentally about slavery, they were more about an industrial center working against and taxing a rural, agricultural center that was on the verge of collapse. What angers me is that these Southerners' patriotic pride is based on selective fact finding and spurious claims about their own history and that trumps the selective, more pluralistic historical framework that kids get taught in elementary school, because the end result is exclusive. The solution would be to allow expression of the Confederate veteran experience separate from the shackles of what they were fighting for. After all, if you didn't fight, you were executed. It's not their ancestors' fault that they suffered so severely in the Civil War. This class-based definition of the war would probably anger the moneyed names that still rule the South, so that will never happen.

A lot of the problem is conflating Secession and the Civil War: two different things with different causes.

It's entirely possible -- and accurate -- to note Northern support for slavery and other hypocrisies, but they aren't causes of either Secession or the Civil War. The South seceded because they felt it was necessary in order to preserve slavery, and the Civil War started when the southern rebellion turned violent at Fort Sumter and the Union decided it had to quell the uprising. We can turn to the Southern states' own words about what prompted secession, in their assorted Declarations of Secession; it was always about slavery.

Georgia's very first sentence of explanation: "For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery."

Missouri's very first sentence of explanation: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world."

South Carolina takes a while to start naming their grievances, but when they finally get around to it, they begin: "The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: 'No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.'" Eventually they clarify their grievance, that the Northern states aren't supportive of their obligations regarding slavery.

Texas is kind of long-winded too, but when they finally start naming grievances, they start with (you guessed it) slavery: "The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States." By the way, at the Alamo, those brave men and women fighting for independence were fighting in part for the right to keep slaves. Wasn't their primary beef with Mexico, but it was part of it.

I could keep going, or I could trot out the Confederate Constitution, which is a near clone of the US Constitution except they say in a half dozen places "by the way, we're never going to do anything to compromise your right to keep slaves". Slavery was the defining issue of the Confederacy, whatever other complaints the South may have had.

You black?

How those carpet-bagging rebel dick fucks could possibly scare a Free-stater is beyond me.

Personally, I hope they try to secede again so I can be part of the March to the Sea.

But it lets you know how pretty, young, and white she is!

I kind of wish the South would secede. I just hope the North would offer me asylum.

And a rabid dog isn't trying to conquer Maple Avenue either. Nonetheless you do everyone a service by putting a bullet between its eyes.