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It's a damn good thing we were able to reunite this country and put the Civil War behind us (at least most of us). Otherwise, we wouldn't have been in position to stop Hitler and Imperial Japan in WW2. The world would be a totally different place today - for the worse.

President Lincoln and the loyal people throughout the country saw the folly of separating.

President Lincoln once even referred to the example of Europe as something to be avoided.

What these "self determination" fanatics fail to see is exactly what you point out. We are stronger together than we could ever be apart. This is so obvious it makes me think that what the neo-rebs -really- want, is what really was lost in the ACW -- white supremacy. President had a part in ending white supremacy. That is what galls them about Lincoln, and that is why he is a tyrant to them.

It would be nice to have the freedom of a 19th century "mountain man" like Jeremiah Johnson, but it is just not doable.

Walt

Another thing the neo-Rebs don't seem to understand is that the South is very important to this country. They have the attitude that the North sees them as second-class citizens. This is not so. Otherwise, the North would have just let them go. The South was worth fighting for and that is why the Union was willing to expend hundreds of thousands of lives in an all-out effort to retain it. Since the Civil War, the South has made very valuable contributions to the success of this great nation. I don't think we would have been able to do it without them.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, "We either hang together or hang separately." I strongly believe that had we allowed this country to split apart in 1860, we would have continued to fragment to the point where we would become a bunch of squabbling nations, constantly warring among each other, much like Europe over the past few centuries. Our strength is dependent upon our unity. There is no way we could have become the premier superpower on Earth and the greatest beacon of hope for freedom in the history of civilization, had we allowed the South to tear away from us.