To me, as a student of the War between the States, I find a number of very disturbing parallels in the US today compared to the decade before the war. Then the underlying issue was states rights with slavery as the trigger and motivator to action. Today it is government intrusion with immigration as the major trigger, though that is currently being obscured by the budget battles. In both cases the real issue was are we a federation or a centralized government? Lincoln started today’s overgrowth of the central government by chosing to use force to maintain the Union. Over the next ten years we could arrive at the same place again, where the red states choose to succeed and the blue states think they can force the reds to remain in the Union. This time it wouldn’t work, as most of the military ability (or any other ability for that matter) in this country resides in the red states. I can’t imagine the parasites of the blue states becoming an effective anything, much less an army.

While I would tend to agree with you on the relative current military efficacy of red and blue - remember that people once thought the same of south and north.

You are mistaken about the inevitability of the North winning the Civil War. All the south had to do was hold out until the people in the northern states got sick and tired of the war and allowed the South to win by default. If the northerners were no longer willling to shed blood for the Union the south could have won by default. It would have been catastrophic for both sides, though.

On the other hand, the Union had to win decisively in order to achieve their war aims.