With apologies for the drift off-topic:  

The question that I've never seen a good answer for is why the North cared
so very much about maintaining the Union.  Why not simply rid itself of a
troublesome South in the same way the South was attempting to rid itself of
a troublesome North?  The spirit of the U.S. Constitution was federalist, to
be sure, but nothing in the Constitution specifically forbade secession.
Nations like to stay big in order to stave off foreign threats, but it
doesn't seem likely that this factor played much of a role in prompting the
Civil War.  Anyhow, the North and the South might have collaborated in
fighting off, for example, a European foe.  "A house divided itself" is a
nice metaphor but little more.  The land mass or the North American
continent certainly could have provided room for four nations instead of
only three.  The Union might have had concerns that issues relating to
western expansion and settlement would grow more and more unfriendly and
contentious once the North and the South became two independent nations.
But those conflicts might have been addressed as they arose and resolved
with compromises or tradeoffs that did not require war.  The Union seems to
have felt that the wholeness of the nation, comprising both South and North,
was some sort of sacred promise or bond.  But I've never seen much
discussion of how this belief was constructed or its history-of-ideas
origins.  Slavery and abolition were of course hot issues, but abolition
didn't become a war objective for the North until well into the war with the
Emancipation Proclamation.  It just seems so much easier, at the outset, for
the North to have bid the South ado and leave it at that.  Yet, and of
course, the North fought with such passion and determination that the idea
of union must have had a much stronger grasp on its soul than I've managed
to understand.

Efforts by Listmates to educate me a little on this point would be more than
welcome.

Ron Roizen
Wallace, Idaho

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