[hobbes1]

However, Could two separate Nations have staved off the Depredations of the European continent.....?

Louisiana might have started looking good to France....Texas to Mexico...etc...

The South lacking a real industrial base, would have been appetizing looking prey...

[JohnGalt]

More likely, the Deep South would have been begging to be let back into the Union within a couple decades. Virginia, would likely have stayed in the Union if the federalis had handled the situation a little more delicately.

But once established that secession would be the ultimate check on the federal government, its doubtable the collapse of federalism would ever have followed.

That includes the imposition of an income tax, a federal war on some drugs, Wilsonian internationalism, World War One, the Bolshevik revolution, the Treaty of Versailles, the League of Nations, the rise of German nationalism, the resumption of war, the splitting of the atom, the Cold War...