Why I am not a secessionist, continued

Practically
Think about the world 1800-1860 and ask yourself, "was it a safe place for republics, for representative governments, for constitutions, and the like?" The answer is most definitely no, and you need only look at the events in 1830 and 1848 across Europe to see why. Republics were the exception to the rule, fragile things that most people did not think could survive, even in America. In fact, the American Civil War was proof to many Europeans that the "experiment" (so annoying to monarchist intellectuals who had to constantly address the American exception) was finally and blessedly over.

Secession, aka the dismemberment of constitutional governments by their own citizens, was the ultimate fulfillment of Ben Franklin's haunting warning at Philadelphia, "we must all hang together, or we shall surely all hang separately." Division and rebellion invited foreign intervention and the possible end to the 1789 Constitution. The counter-factuals are many and fascinating. Who is to say that Britain (on poor diplomatic terms with the US prior to 1860) would not have taken a more active and aggressive role in North America if there were two American republics, themselves on poor diplomatic terms? How did Britain act with the weakening Ottomans?

Once the rebellion ended, what kind of Constitution would we have? If the South left successfully, would the North keep the 1789 document? If secession had occurred once, would that document lose its power (becoming another Articles of Confederation), knowing that at any time, any state could leave if it was annoyed enough? If the South was successfully defeated (hardly a certainty after July 1861), what would a post-war Constitution look like? Would the states rights and limited government that did exist pre-1860 be swamped in a new empowered federal government, rightfully suspicious of state power after a four year civil war with 600,000+ casualities? These questions obsessed Northern Democrats like Franklin Pierce and Stephen Douglas, who professed to be federalists and states rights men but denied the theory and efficacy of secession and opposed war. They understood what secession would mean to the limited government/Jacksonian creed.

For those conservatives who say Southern secession was a reasonable act with better justification than Northern nationalism, I say secession gave you the world you hate. Secession did not defeat big government, it made it inevitable; secession did not defend federalism and states rights, it brought them under a permanent cloud.