“That’s why the UK could leave but the southern states couldn’t leave the US.”
In seventh grade history class, back in the ‘60’s, I asked on what grounds Lincoln went to war with the South. It made no sense to me that they couldn’t leave the union. (Setting aside slavery, which the history book pointed out was not the cause.) I was thoroughly raked over the coals by the teacher. (He was from the WWII generation.) I finally reasoned that the war must have been a response to the attack on Ft. Sumpter. But that was very unsatisfying and I have never read a good explanation of the legal reasoning.
The short explanation is: words came to taps, taps came to pushes, pushes came to shoves, shoves came to blows, blows came to shots and war was on.
The longer explanation is, the Union was willing to tolerate secession & Confederacy, but not the seizure of many Federal properties, most notably, Fort Sumter.
When Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to retake seized forts, etc., Confederates declared war and the rest, as they say, is history.
Nothing happening in the European Union these days seems likely to repeat our tragic history.
Lincoln never had any sound legal reasoning either. The real reason of course is that the Southern states were the cash cow that had long financed the federal government with its lavish subsidies and infrastructure projects for the Northern states and it also served as a lucrative captive market for inferior Northern manufactured goods. With all its exports, the Southern states stood to be far better off financially by simply leaving and keeping the money their trade generated for themselves.
Yep. Ft Sumter = Gulf of Tonkin