Why didn't the North let the South secede?

[struggle4progress]

10. Go reread the Gettysburg Address: that stuff mattered to people

The Declaration of Independence was written less than a century before Lincoln's presidency

It hadn't been that long before: plenty of people in 1860 either remembered people who had been involved in the Revolution or knew people who remembered people who had been involved in the Revolution

American Independence and the American Experiment were still fresh ideas to many people, and a bunch of them weren't ready to watch the whole thing capsize and sink

Somebody who was 15 or 20 at the time of Lexington and Concord could easily have lived until 1840. Somebody born in 1825 could easily remember a revolutionary war hero who lived until 1840 and would have been old enough to be an influential solid citizen in 1860