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BDParrish: "...we might better maintain that the issue of secession has not been settled and a philosophy of state rights might be resurrected in people's minds and hearts if it ever came to blows."

The issue of secession is totally settled in my mind.
Our Founders proposed and practiced what we might call "secession" under two, but only two, conditions:

Necessity, as they experienced in 1776 forcing them to declare independence from the Brits.
Their Declaration makes clear it was necessity which drove them to declare unilateral unapproved Independence, not what James Madison later called "at pleasure".
Mutual Consent: but our Founders also proposed & practiced at pleasure "secession" in 1788, leaving the old Articles of Confederation to adopt their new Constitution -- by mutual consent.

Necessity and mutual consent were the two conditions which our Founders left to us for declaring "secession".
But no Founder ever proposed or consented to unilateral unapproved declaration of secession at pleasure, and yet that is what happened in late 1860 and early 1861.
It's simply fact that nothing in any 1861 "Reasons for Secession" document remotely resembled conditions spelled out in the 1776 Declaration of Independence, nor was there anyting remotely resembling the mutual consent of 1788.

Further, the key point that every Lost Causer tries to obscure (and in so doing identifies themselves as Lost Causers) is that secession alone did not cause Civil War.
Indeed, Lincoln promised in his March 4, 1861 Inaugural that secessionists could not have civil war unless they themselves started it.
And Jefferson Davis acknowledged (to Braxton Bragg) that it would be better to let the Union start war, but when Confederates were ready to attack Fort Sumter, that "better" would be outweighed by other considerations.

In short: it was more important to Davis to have a war, seizing Forts Sumter & Pickens, than to worry about maneuvering to make the Union start it.

And so the war came...

In short: it was more important to Davis to have a war, seizing Forts Sumter & Pickens, than to worry about maneuvering to make the Union start it.

And most important of all to win it! And if he had, then we would not be having this discussion. I appreciate your writing BroJoeK, but I did not understand your point about the Declaration of Independence since we had already been killing the redcoats for a year when that document was signed.

Thanks!

Further, the key point that every Lost Causer tries to obscure (and in so doing identifies themselves as Lost Causers) is that secession alone did not cause Civil War.

Did not understand. Did you mean that the Lost Causer is identified solely by his saying that secession was the only cause? I never heard that before. It is sure that the south made possible the abolition of slavery by leaving the union. Lincoln believed that slavery could not be touched where it existed as it would require a constitutional amendment. On this he was certainly correct.

As far as secession being settled in your mind, what about West Virginia? Or more to the point, do you believe that rural counties in California could separate from the liberal metropolises without the effusion of blood? Do you believe that the federal government could break up a state like California without the approval of the stinking rascals that infest the government in Sacramento?