Works to what end? You have to keep in mind the original Republican party's platform of higher taxes and government directed expenditure and enterprise (Lincoln's policies in this respect are more akin to FDR than anyone else). As they threatened in the '30's, the South Carolina bolted the Union to avoid Washington DC's thirst for taxes.
It's also possible that a corallary is that a republic is less effective than the democracy they were protecting against in the first place.
Again, less effective at what? Madison's point in Federalist #10 is that factions can easily coalesce to form majorities and impose their will.
I think America's best hope for liberty in the future is the dissolution of the Union, and the maintenance of our free trade. The original charter has been usurped beyond recognition. Washington D.C. was never intended to have the monopoly on political power it garnered itself on the battlefields it made of the South.
Works to the end of, and is effective at it's contiued existence, is what I meant.
The union couldn't exist as a loose coilition of independent states for the exact reason you stated for SC's withdrawal.
"I think America's best hope for liberty in the future is the dissolution of the Union,...
Do you really think think this? Every state it's own country?