Secession a Second Time

If the South did leave the Union a second time I wonder if Kentucky & Missouri would be retained by force again? For that matter I wonder if Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico would be forced back under Union control as well.

Then again it might also allow Virginia to reclaim West Virginia.

All that aside, the South has the weapons this time- whereas the North doesn't have the huge military districts and permanent encampments that the South has. And for what it is worth, the military is held in generally higher esteem than it enjoys in the North East or West coast. Look at it this way- if the Confederacy ever attempted to leave agin, it could shut down the petrochemical supplies for most of the North East in minutes. The South now has modern industrial facilities and factories that simply have no equal in the Northeast or Midwest. Plus we have the Marines, Kings Bay, and Norfolk and even the B2 base in Georgia.

In military terms, unless the Union was willing to launch ICBMs from the overflight country and risk a response from the Trident submarines in the Atlantic as well as the air carrier fleet, there is very little potential that the Union could force a Confederacy to return by conventional military forces.

As to why the CSA might not just be Whistling Dixie in a Graveyard? The cultural differences that get aped and laughed at by the Hollywood film industry & the general disdain that people in the Northeast and Midwest have for someone from the South as a stereotype wouldn't be the issue. The grounds for secession would this time be due to the fact that the South is generally more conservative and less amenable to socialism. The impacts on the South due to acts taken by the Federal government still tend to be as considered as the actions taken towards a red headed step child. Meaning aside from military spending- which the rest of the country doesn't want in its own backyard- the South gets perennially shafted in terms of net outcomes of federal programs. We tend to pave our own roads. Build our own factories. And simply find alternate means of making do without depending on often vanishing Federal funds.

The issue of Southern Governors not accepting the Federal loans intended for unemployment insurance is just one of these examples of the difference between the South and the rest of the country. They aren't declining the aid because the cannot use it. Rather they are declining it because in the fine print, after the Federal aid runs out, the states agree to maintain the newly established levels of payments in perpetuity. Southern Governors know how the Monty Shuffle is played and understand that if history is anything to go by, the Fed will live up to its perpetually unfunded mandates to the South.

The stereotype of hick-seed rednecks driving pickup trucks with ten shotguns in a window and two brain cells is laughed at by the rest of the country as being presumably true. Larry the Cable Guy is nationally popular because the rest of the country thinks people in the South really are that way. But like a Joel Chandler Harris story, all is not what it seems. People in the South laugh at the stereotype because they know it isn't true and is indeed a vast underestimate of the abilities and intelligence of people in the South.

There is a limit to how much anyone will put up with before people start voicing opposition to a government. But in an odd twist, despite being underserved by the Federal Government, I suspect that the South would fight tooth and nail if required to keep the Federal Government in existence. I would expect that if there were to be a secession for a second time, places like the Four Corners, California, or even places like Michigan would be those to reach the end of their fuse first in terms of seeing Washington D.C. as a solution provider instead of an obstacle to be removed by force.