It's been 235 years, and the British still aren't over the Declaration of Independence. A bunch of American and British lawyers had a debate in Philadelphia recently over whether the declaration was "legal." The British viewpoint:
The Declaration of Independence was not only illegal, but actually treasonable. There is no legal principle then or now to allow a group of citizens to establish their own laws because they want to. What if Texas decided today it wanted to secede from the Union?
Lincoln made the case against secession and he was right. The Declaration of Independence itself, in the absence of any recognised legal basis, had to appeal to "natural law", an undefined concept, and to "self-evident truths", that is to say truths for which no evidence could be provided.
The grievances listed in the Declaration were too trivial to justify secession. The main one - no taxation without representation - was no more than a wish on the part of the colonists, to avoid paying for the expense of protecting them against the French during seven years of arduous war and conflict.
Well, fine. Dig up Thomas Jefferson and try him for treason. It is an interesting tactic, though, to use Lincoln's view of secession to argue against Jefferson's. The simple fact is that we won, so our rebellion was treason, and our rebels lost, so they were "wrong."
