In my opinion, the last Civil War settled this one question without equivocation: It only takes 4 months for a group of states to completely replace the Federal Govt. with a new one, put together huge standing army and a reasonable navy, elect nation legislature. 4 months!!!! Think about that, they did that in the age of the telegraph. Today, it would probably take one month. The long collective nightmare could be over in one month!!!!
Good point about the time it took to create a brand new gov’t before. However, recall it took two weeks to complete the Empire State Building drawings (based on an earlier design) and it took only 16 months from start of excavation to ribbon cutting. Today we are still debating designs for the replacement for the WTC destroyed almost 10 years ago. Everything is mired in much and molasses today. Would a new gov’t sweep away all the crud and get us back to the old “can-do” attitude?
The Civil War settled another matter without equivocation. The Federal Government will suspend the Constitution, go to war against and defeat any state that secedes.