One of the reason we read books is to discover things we had never noticed before--even if we have seen it multiple times. With that being said, I have read the Consitution of the United States several times and I never noticed what Mr. Morris (quoted by Mr. DaMar) points out in the following passage. Since I never particularly noticed it, I of course did not grasp the significance of it either.

Therefore, without further ado...quoting from God and Government, Vol. 1 by Gary DeMar:
   
 ' "The Constitution itself affirms its Christian character and purpose. The seventh article declares it to be framed and adopted 'by the unanimous consent of the States, the seventeenth day of September in the year of our LORD 1787, and of the Independence of the United States of America the twelfth.' The date of the Constitution is twofold: first it is dated from the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then from the birth of our independence. Any argument which might be supposed to prove that the authority of Christianity is not recognized by the people of the United States, in the first mode, would equally prove that the independence of the United States is not recognized by them in the second mode. The fact is, that the advent of Christ and the independence of the country are the two events in which, of all others, we are most interested,--the former in common with all mankind, the latter as the birth of our nation. This two-fold mode, therefore, of dating so solemn an instrument was singularly appropriate and becoming" (p. 262).' (129-130)

I don't know about you, but I find that down-right interesting and encouraging. Our Constitution still declares us to be a nation under God. (Not that any amount of denial can change the solid truth that all men and nations are under God.)

                                                        IN CONGRESS
                                                            July 4, 1776  
    The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America
 
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
 
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly  firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose  obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering  fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine,
Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart,  Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr.,  Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Prompted by a question received last night as I was heading to bed, I wrote this "think-piece" on why I think the South was right in seceding from the Union in 1861....There is, of course, a lot I do not know; so I'll try not to parade my ignorance too much. 

The short, trite answer is: States Rights.

Now, to understand that, one really has to understand something America's First War for Independence and the governmental form our Founding Fathers set up. (Stonewall Jackson called the War Between the States [hereafter referred to as the WBtS], "Our Second War for Independence".) 
 
I'll try to be brief in my set up: If I recall correctly (it's been several years since I studied this), during the 1770-80's, the US was bound together with the Articles of Confederacy (which I don't have a copy of at my finger tips). In 1789, with the ratification of the Constitution and the first 10 Amendments, the Federal government assumed more power (necessary to hold the 13 Colonies together as a unified nation), yet the States were still considered sovereign. This is where it really gets important. 
 
I have in the past read some of the original and revised state constitutions--but it's been so long ago that I can't remember anything much about them. However, I do know that post-WBtS, many of the constitutions were changed to reduce the power/sovereignty of the State. 

It was perfectly legitimate for the Confederate States to secede from the Union as it (the Union) had ceased being beneficial to the Southern States. They were in essence doing the exact same thing that their forefathers had done roughly 90 years before. The following lines could be applied to the CSA: "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that
Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." (Declaration of Independence)

The WBtS was long in coming. It didn't just happen overnight. I remember reading
something that James Madison said back in the 1780's or 90's that basically predicted the split between North and South. The problem was political, as well as religious. I am clearer on the politics of the issue than I am the religious differences, but I still want to bring them up. The South was more of a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stripe (that does not mean everyone was Presbyterian of course! Lee was Episcopal, my own g-g-g-gandfather was a Methodist...) and the North had become more Unitarian/Transcendental (which 'theology' is still rather vague in my mind). 

What about slavery? This is where the politics come into play. We always hear and the coloration of so many books and movies portray that slavery was the ultimate issue. Well, it wasn't. It certainly was a factor, but at the start is wasn't so much about "Let's free the slaves!" as it was "Let's keep any more territories from coming into the Union as 'Slave States'." Later, (about 1862 or '63 if I remember correctly), Lincoln did use it as a
so-called 'moral edge'--but I really think he could have cared less about the slaves. (The Emancipation Proclamation only 'freed' slaves in the areas of the south under Confederate jurisdiction.)

To go back to the Free State/Slave State issue...it wasn't about the morality or immorality of slavery so much as it was about the balance of political power. The  Southern "Slave States" wanted Missouri and Kansas to come in as 'Slave States' because then there would have been (more likely), like minded men in the political realm. You
see, the Yankee states (including the Mid-West in there) had a greater number of people; therefore, they had more districts and thereby, more representatives in Congress--who naturally wanted to please their constituents. The North was more industrial and the
South more agrarian. Right there, you have a conflict in business (and therefore political) interests.

To bring a practical example of that--the South was required by a Yankee controlled Congress to ship all their cotton through northern ports. They were not allowed to send
it direct to Europe. When the raw cotton (or whatever) passed north over the Mason-Dixon line, the Southron's had to pay a tax. If any of it came back in a finished form (there were very few mills in the South), they had to pay yet another tax. I think, if my
memory serves me right, that that could total up to 75% of the profit that they made from the cotton--leaving them with a measly 25% profit on their hard work.

 So, the causes of the war were political, business related, as well as moral. The South was going to leave peaceably (and in my opinion, had Lincoln and his Congress let them, the two factions would eventually have come back together). Some states (such as Virginia) might never had seceded, but when Lincoln called for troops to squelch "the Rebellion"--thus violating the rights of the seceding states--they took their stand for the rights of those states to determine their own destiny. Likewise, he obstructed the rights of other states (Kentucky for one) to make a decision one way or the other, by moving troops in and taking over the legislature before they could vote and setting up a pro-union state government. (I believe that this was also done as an executive order--in other words, without the sanction of the Congress.) 

One note I'd like to mention about the so-called "Abolitionists"...these people who are held up as heroes of the highest moral character in opposition to those 'evil slave-holders' (like Stonewall Jackson!)...in many cases were actually Marxist revolutionaries.

Also, some of those 'evil slave-holders', really weren't the keenest on slavery and were
glad that it was actually diminishing. It is my opinion that many men would have freed their slaves, but it would simply have been an economic disaster because when a man freed a slave he had to provide him with "40 acres and a mule"--in other words,  subsistence. The slaveholders could not afford to free their slaves--leastwise, not very fast--without completely destroying the South's (as a whole) economy.

So...why do I think the South was right? "We are a band of brothers, native to the soil, fighting for our liberty, with treasure, blood, and toil..." (Bonnie Blue Flag--italics mine.) 
 
With all that said--I live in 2013. When you get down to the nitty-gritty of everyday life, I am an American. A very proud American, who is passionately proud of her ancestry and heritage in the Confederate States of America. I know that the memory of that glorious cause is not a reason to start a second War Between the States--there are honestly more
important things to go at someone's throat for in these days.