[Colt .45]

"And I've got a free speech right to tell him that the Civil War was about slavery, pure and simple. The so-called "state's rights" is code for the right to own slaves."

I believe it is you who needs to go back and study up on what the Founders' actually intended in regards to "self-determination". But for your further edification: "It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a NATIONAL, but a FEDERAL act." --James Madison, Federalist No. 39

"[T]he States can best govern our home concerns and the general government our foreign ones. I wish, therefore...never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they may more secretly be bought and sold at market." --Thomas Jefferson

"The State governments possess inherent advantages, which will ever give them an influence and ascendancy over the National Government, and will for ever preclude the possibility of federal encroachments. That their liberties, indeed, can be subverted by the federal head, is repugnant to every rule of political calculation." --Alexander Hamilton

If the "People" of the South believed that the Federal Government was overstepping its Constitutional bounds in their internal (i.e. State) affairs and had done so for decades, then they had every right to form their own form of Government.

"If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state." --Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 28

The War was about what every war is normally about - economics and power! You definitely need to dig deeper than just buying the Yankee teachings.

[lentulusgracchus]

"It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution, will not be a NATIONAL, but a FEDERAL act." --James Madison, Federalist No. 39

Good-quote bump.

This quote needs to be the core of every American History and high-school civics course in the nation, instead of the Hamiltonian shibboleths about "We the People" (how about "We the States"?) and "One Nation under God". Monism is statism is totalitarianism. Liberals talk about diversity -- until the subject gets to diversity of opinion, the only diversity that counts!

[CobaltBlue]

I could argue with someone whose tagline says "Cold War, Vietnam Era, Desert Storm Veteran - Pride in my Southern Ancestry!", but why bother?

Anybody who thinks the South won the Cold War and Desert Storm appears to be beyond reason to me.

So I'll just give you a more-or-less snappy comeback -- with respect to your argument in favor of secession -- you lost that argument already. Remember?