Constitution 101: Secession and Civil War
The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast
Hillsdale College
4.6 • 621 Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of The Hillsdale College Online Courses Podcast, Jeremiah and Juan discuss executive authority and secession before introducing Kevin Portteus.
The United States Constitution was designed to secure the natural rights proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence. Signed by Constitutional Convention delegates on September 17, 1787—Constitution Day—it was ratified by the American people and remains the most enduring and successful constitution in history.
In this twelve-lecture course, students will examine the political theory of the American Founding and subsequent challenges to that theory throughout American history. Topics covered in this course include: the natural rights theory of the Founding, the meaning of the Declaration and the Constitution, the crisis of the Civil War, the Progressive rejection of the Founding, and the nature and form of modern liberalism.
The South’s justification for secession was based on an erroneous reading of the Constitution. Whereas the South claimed a legal right to secede, Lincoln opposed what he called an illegal insurrection and sought to secure a “new birth of freedom” in America.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Hillsdale College online courses podcast. |
| 0:11.8 | I'm Jeremiah Regan. |
| 0:13.0 | And I'm Juan Davalos. |
| 0:13.9 | We're back with Constitution 101, The Meaning and History of the Constitution. |
| 0:17.9 | On to lecture number seven today, secession and civil war. And this allows Dr. |
| 0:22.0 | Porteus to conclude his thoughts about slavery, secession, and the civil war. He talked in the previous |
| 0:28.1 | lecture about the injustice of slavery, the knowledge that the founders had about the injustice |
| 0:32.1 | of slavery, and now we get to the conclusion of that debate, which unfortunately cost the lives |
| 0:37.2 | of about |
| 0:37.5 | three quarters of a million American men. |
| 0:39.9 | It's the costliest war in American history. |
| 0:42.3 | And Jeremiah, before we started the podcast, you mentioned something interesting about what |
| 0:47.1 | the war was actually about. |
| 0:49.4 | Yeah. |
| 0:49.7 | When you look at the cost of the war, people were serious about this. |
| 0:53.1 | What were they so serious about? And there's a question whether the executive could enforce the cost of the war, people were serious about this. What were they so serious about? |
| 0:54.3 | And there's a question whether the executive could enforce the laws of the union. The South had |
| 0:59.6 | grievances. Americans are allowed to have grievances. They're allowed to petition their government |
| 1:03.0 | for the redress of grievances. What they're not allowed to do is unilaterally break a contract. |
| 1:07.7 | What they're not allowed to do is take the lands that belong to the American people |
| 1:11.7 | or lands that were paid for with the blood and treasure of the American people, such as Florida, |
| 1:16.9 | and decide they're going to abscond with those with no consequences. It's the job of the executive |
... |
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