Despite rhetoric, secession isn’t easy — or worth it

Secession has always held a strangely prominent place in the American imagination, and it probably always will. Restive New Englanders contemplated a break over the War of 1812 during the Hartford Convention. South Carolina champed at the bit for decades, eventually cutting ties along with a Deep South wave opposed to Lincoln’s election and an Upper South unwilling to haul the restive states back in. Before the Civil War, President James Buchanan sent in the Army to prevent a rebellion in