[LS]

LOL. I'm with you on the "two-party" thing. The only purpose for Democrats is to show where you can end up if you aren't a Republican.

And with due respect, we did not fight a Civil War over federalism. It was about slavery, pure and simple. In any scenario, once you take slavery out of the question, all other issues (the tarrif, whatever) just disappear as "reasons" to fight. Slavery as CAPITAL accounted for more than all the RRs and textile mills in the north combined; slavery as capital constituted the single biggest "product" (not counting labor) in the nation in 1860. The five "richest" states, counting slaves as capital, were all slave; and 11 of the top 14 were slaves. That is the most basic pocketbook issue of all time.

[Little Bill]

With due respect in return. The slavery arguement can be restated as; Does a state within the Federal system, as envisioned by the founders, have the right to order itself as it pleases and pass laws and create intuitions to maintain that order?

The only limitation imposed by the Constitution is that all States shall have a Republican form of government. The Federalist papers state that the States will be the laboratories of FReedom. (My Family were rabid abolitionists by the way) I never bought the fact that the Civil War was an entirely economic conflict. too Marxist for my Yankee soul.