Would Secession Work?

I pose this question because I was wondering if it were possible. After all, if the Federal government decided to go after a state for seceding from the Union, then it would require the support of the military. And the military tends to be populated with people from the states most likely to secede. At least that's what I think anyway.

I voted "maybe."
Certainly, any president in office during such an event would be beside himself with the prospect of being the next Abraham Lincoln. There would be civil war at the least.

It could work if our nation was very weak, and if a majority of the people were sick and tired of the national government.

I don't think we're there yet. The military is just too strong right now.

The military isn't a machine, though they attempt to act that way. In this day and age, I believe soldiers might find it unthinkable to attack fellow Americans, especially if they are only guilty of defecting and have no significant moral failings, like slavery.

I'm not so sure. Enough of them might "follow orders" to the point where they would be willing to fire on domestic terrorists.

Certainly any state that seceded would have a serious terrorism problem.

There is always the risk that our soldiers will behave like the soldiers who guarded concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

However, I am not convinced that they will believe that the Federal government has the moral high ground this time around, if a state secedes from the Union.

I like your scenario better than mine.....for sure.
I just don't have a personal conviction that it would wok out that way.

The morality of slavery wasn't the original over-riding concern in the Civil War. It was Union. Lincoln did come to realize that there would be no Union as long as there was slavery -- so that issue did become the moral underpinning to continue with the CW.

If a state were to secede, I can't think of any moral underpinning to forcefully keep it in the Union -- other than Union.

As far as Americans unwilling to kill other Americans . . . I don't believe that for a minute. A culture that kills babies certainly has the will to kill other Americans.

Nor do I believe that cops and the military would obviously not be willing to use force against the secessionists. Cops, by nature, don't like anarchy and lawlessness. How many times have we heard from soldiers going to Afghanistan for the 3rd or 4th time, "I'm doing it because it's my job."

If that is the reason of the going to Afghan and Iraq, it is no small leap to think, at least to me, that there are a number of soldiers who would say the same thing in preventing a secession.

Statism, by definition, wants control. A tyrannical national government isn't just going to let a state go.