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You could also be called a traitor. If you'll read (you can read can't you, well of course you can you obviously can type but that doesn't mean you can think) the Declaration of Independence it states that a government that becomes oppressive should be overthrown.

I'll bite. The Declaration of Independence, is that the document whose most repeated line goes something like "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," Is slavery an institution that facilitates Life, Liberty and Happiness?

I've read it a dozen times. An Oppressive government is not enough, it clearly states that the government to be overthrown must be an "absolute Despotism" or "absolute Tyranny". This is a much higher test than oppression imo. The Declaration goes on to list 25 to 30 specific greviences against king George III that are the facts as to why the current colonial governing situation must be eradicated.

I'll wager that you cannot find a mere 3 of these greivances to be applicable to the South's situation before the war. Two would even surprise me.

The South's biggest mistake was not overthrowing the government as you suggest. If congress/president was so oppressing the Confederate States, why in the heck didn't they march straight to Washington after kicking arse at Manassas to open the war?

1. Protection by northern Republicans in public office (i.e. Gov. Kirkwood of Iowa and Gov. Dennison of Ohio) of men (i.e. Owen Brown, Francis Merriam, Barclay Coppoc) wanted for trial in Virginia for their crimes in connection with the Harper's Ferry insurrection. These northern Republican office holders used their offices to shield fugitives from justice from prosecution, because these fugitives were anti-slavery murderers.
2. Federal expenditures, with no constitutional basis, for things like fishing bounties for New England fishermen.
3. State laws passed to deliberately thwart a constitutional provision for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

Or did you mean to imply that the list of greivances on the Declaration of Independence is definitive and exhaustive? Are there no other potential grievances which might authorize a people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another?

The South's biggest mistake was not overthrowing the government as you suggest.

The reason it was NOT a *civil war* or revolution, but a War for Independence, just as the American colonies of 1776 did not intend to overthrow King George and the existing government of Great Britain at the time, and as per the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence of 11 November 1965.