State Sovereignty and Secession

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.  --The Declaration of Independence

The "Civil War" was Fought to Impose Political Slavery

Lysander Spooner, a lawyer and entrepreneur from Athol, Massachusetts, was an ardent Abolitionist who believed that slavery was unconstitutional, supported John Brown, and influenced Frederick Douglass.  He also advocated violence against slaveholders:

We specialty advise the flogging of individual Slave-holders. This is a case where the medical principle, that like cures like, will certainly succeed. Give the Slave-holders, then, a taste of their own whips. Spare their lives, but not their backs.  (A Plan for the Abolition of Slavery)

Those who have been indoctrinated to believe that the War Between the States was a moral war, prosecuted by patriotic and benevolent Abraham Lincoln to end slavery, would be surprised at the summation of the Northern principle behind the War that was penned by this vigorous Abolitionist during Reconstruction.  In 1867, in his introduction to No Treason, No. 1, Spooner wrote: