mark,
I was taught in school that a white man in the south could send one or two slaves to represent him in the case he was drafted in to the army.
Were you also taught that a white amn could buy his way out of the Yankee draft? The Yankee war was plain and simple, an act of agression and suppression.
While black men were serving in the Confederate Army, black men in the North were segregated and served primarily as menials, “Glory” notwithstanding.
The legality of Secession, may have been decided by SCOTUS. Morally, the compulsion of a forced Union, is abhorent to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. For if secession is wrong, and the Constitution forces a central government of unlimited powers, how can we be deemed free?
Forbidding the states to secede deprives ALL states of ANY rights. The states are now subject to the cental government, in direct violation of the Constitution. This is not what the Founders intended, else why a 9th and 10th Amendments?
Conversely, secession and the threat of it makes us a freer nation. How else could we limit the powers of an encroaching government? Look around - the federal government is suing a state because the feds don’t like a state law, a federal agency is telling a state who and how the state may grant licenses, the federal government imposes a DeathCare on all of us, and tells the states to pay for it - the list goes on and on.
The war was truly wrong, for while it freed one segment of the population, it enslaved ALL of us.