The Republic is dead and Lincoln started the ball rolling towards FedGov™ domination.
During this time of great destruction and Lincoln's hatred for states rights, the the Copperheads were the only decent people North of the Mason-Dixon, God bless the Copperheads.
I will see this movie....
God bless racist democrats?
Really?
Your southron ancestors unfortunately rather stupidly conflated the States' Rights Issue with the Slavery Issue, thereby dooming constitutional States' Rights to a slow, inexorable death.
Thanks a great big Yankee Bunch. Now that the Slavery Issue was handled to our Abolitionary satisfaction, we now have to somehow go back and extricate States' Rights from the enduring mess left behind by the Civil War.
The only smart southrons were those very few who saw that Slavery was a dead issue; that the SOUTH should be first to free the slaves (and draft them into their military), and to fight the war exclusively for States' Rights, particularly the right to secede.
I disagree that most people held their loyalty to their state first. Breckinridge accepted a general commission from the pretended Confederacy, though his home state of Ky was not a member. Pemberton also took a commission though being from Pa. Thomas was a general in the US Army, despite being from Va, as was Winfield Scott. Major Anderson was from the south, yet was loyal to the US.
People were loyal to the slave power, against the constitution, or were loyal to the US government established by the constitution. And then there were the people who hoped to avoid a distasteful duty, either because they hoped thereby to profit, or to avoid loss.
If called to jury duty, do you decline, because you are against theft, but are opposed to locking criminals up? That is the rationale that we are expected to accept from the protagonist of Copperhead.
Rather, the republic is not dead.
Among the few useful things that the federal government used to do was enforce the fugitive slave law, and we are doubtless all glad that that power has been withdrawn.