From the vantage point of the 20th century - and in the textbooks through which most people have learned their American history - Secession seems to have been a pretty simple affair. The eleven Southern States, wishing to continue their practice of slavery so as not to lose their economic base of tobacco farming - withdrew from the United States during the years 1860-61 to form the Confederate States of America. The act of secession was formally accomplished in the individual states through a convention either called by the state legislature or, as in the case of Texas, self-assembled and it prompted the Civil War, a war fought by American patriots not only to defeat the terrible institution of slavery but also to rescue the beloved Union from a terrible and permanent dissolution.
In fact the process of Secession was certainly not this simple a process. Nor was it so pure a one morally from the point of the Union nor so patriotic a one. The unanimity of both the North and the South has tended to be emphasized over the years until both sides have come to be seen as politically and culturally nearly monolithic, which was never the case. Secession was a complex issue and historical actuality - complicated legally, morally, and politically. It was certainly not supported by all those living in the South, and one can only assume that some of those people living in the North did see it as the right of states to withdraw if they chose (in fact, long before even the whispers of Civil War, murmurs of secession had swept through New England over opposition to the Louisiana Purchase).
As Heidler notes, "Breaking up the United States of America was no little task and was not taken lightly" . The sense of unity that had been forged at Lexington - and so recently reaffirmed during the War of 1812 - was a strong one. It took enormously strong forces to pull apart a country that had risked so much in its founding and had believed so much in the...