...a tragedy is a series of terrible and sorrowful events which are experienced by, and often caused by, a noble figure whose flaws bring about his own downfall and the downfall of others, including the innocent. In this sense, the South can be seen as truly tragic; its noble heart pierced and broken by the ignoble flaw which it bore within itself.
The ignoble flaw is, of course, slavery, which nobody could or should defend. In defending slavery, the South was defending the indefensible. In nailing its colours to this ignominious mast, it was nailing itself to a cross of its own devising. As far as the issue of slavery is concerned, the South was wrong and the North was right to tell it so.
There is, however, another issue, which it is perilous to ignore or forget. This is the principle of subsidiarity, which, in this context, is the right of a people to self-determination, the right to freedom from a government that is seen as distant and unrepresentative of the people’s will. It was the right invoked by the American colonists during the War of Independence. It is the right demanded by Scottish Nationalists when they call for Scotland’s independence from the Government of Westminster. It is the right demanded by the people of the United Kingdom and other countries in Europe when they call for independence from the draconian rule of the European Union. It is the right of one geographical area to secede from the government by another geographical area. The denial of such a right is a defence of imperialism; it is the defence of the right of one geographical area to impose its will on another without the other’s consent. On this issue the South was right.
...The real tragedy, however, is that the South’s tragic flaw—its defence of slavery—led to the defeat of its just demand for states’ rights and the consequent rise of an ever-burgeoning Federal Government which, as the decades passed, increased its power over the individual states so that the original concept of the nation, as envisaged by the Founding Fathers, has been entirely lost....