this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2025
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The "secession was illegal" argument is hard to defend in a country that had illegally seceded from Britain less than a hundred years earlier. There were certainly reasons to oppose that particular succession but "illegal secession is, as a matter of principle, wrong" seems like a silly one to me.
The thing is that Lost Causers still try to argue the 'legality' of secession; that, by law, the Union should have just let them go.
I'm not familiar with the specifics of their argument (frankly I don't really want to know) but the Constitution conspicuously lacks an exit clause.
Edit: If I had to argue for legal secession, I would say that people have a natural right to self-government, and therefore to secession if they feel that their interests are not represented adequately in the national government. A natural right cannot be abrogated even willingly and any agreement that purports to do so is invalid, in the same way that a person's right to self-determination prevents him from rightfully being made a slave in any circumstances, even if he were to willingly sign a contract to that effect. But that's probably not what they're going for...