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Ideally, according to my secession is good model, the resistant areas of the Confederacy should be able to secede from the Confederacy

I have to give you a tip of my hat for the consistency of your position. I find it more agreeable than the typical pro Confederate view that the God-given right to self determination is only God-given in the form of state governments.

One thing that I would say about the comment on the mountain South's affinity for Yankees. I don't see the big gap between any Southerners and most people in the Union. The Confederate soldier-farmer and the Union soldier-farmer were natural allies. The people of my area just didn't have the slave issue to obscure the fact of our common nationhood. I think there is a lot of truth in the old saying that the Civil War was a rich man's war and a poor man's fight.

Well, on a subject where there is often more heat than light, thanks for being cordial.

I have heard the argument from some Confederates that secession stops at the States. I don't agree, but I see the argument. The argument being that the States were the organic political entity that created the Union. That secession has to stop somewhere, or else you get to the point where you are talking about individuals seceding. Curiously, I have been criticized on this forum by some for exactly that reason. That my view of secession would allow cities and counties to secede. To which I respond, the more the merrier.

The problem I have with what you wrote is this. Our first loyalty and affection should be to our family then kin then friends then neighbors/church members/organization members/coworkers etc. then city then county then State then region, then nation. Our closest affection should be to the most local. Our least affection should be to the distant and far off such as the nation. I know that kind of talk drives the "Patriotic" Nationalist nuts, but so what. They have it backwards. I am a patriotic Phillips first, then Georgian, then Southerner, then American, not the other way around. And that is the most natural state.

In fact, that is what is at work with the highland South issue. Their concern was greater for their fellow highlanders than it was for the South in general, and that is the way it should be. That is why local government is almost always better than centralized. It is more likely to represent a uniformity of opinion and interests.

But it is also why they had more affinity for the rest of the South than they did the North, even though their interests were not entirely coincident. The mountain South had in common with the lowland South a preponderance of Celts vs. Anglos. In fact, the mountain South was almost entirely Celtic. Which explains the extreme similarity in many of the folkways of the highland Southerners and the Highland Scots, for example. The highlands were similarly orthodox in its Christian beliefs. It was fiercely traditional and resistant to change and the new. For these and other reasons, I believe they were more similar to their fellow Southerners than they were to their Yankee farmer counterparts in say Pennsylvania. Few owned slaves because the land was not suitable for plantation style agriculture. So you are correct that they didn't have a dog in that hunt.