Smaller countries and governments are desirable if only because it makes it easier for people to vote with their feet and they have more choices as to where to emigrate. From Hans-Hermann Hoppe at lewrockwell.com:
States, regardless of their constitution, are not economic enterprises. In contrast to the latter, states do not finance themselves by selling products and services to customers who voluntarily pay, but by compulsory levies: taxes collected through the threat and use of violence (and through the paper money they literally create out of thin air). Significantly, economists have therefore referred to governments—i.e., the holders of state power—as stationary bandits. Governments and everyone on their payroll live off the loot stolen from other people. They lead a parasitic existence at the expense of a subdued “host population.”
A number of further insights emerge from this.
Naturally, stationary bandits prefer larger loot to smaller loot. This means that states will always try to increase their tax revenue and further increase their spending by issuing more paper money. The larger the loot, the more favors they can do for themselves, their employees, and their supporters. But there are natural limits to this activity.
On the one hand, the bandits have to be careful not to burden the “hosts” whose work and performance make their parasitic existence possible so much that the latter stop working. On the other hand, they have to fear that their “hosts”—and especially the most productive among them—will migrate from their dominion (territory) and settle elsewhere.
Against this background, a number of historical tendencies and processes become understandable.
There was an attempt at secession once before in America, it resulted in the death of nearly 2 percent of the population of the country and destruction of property that hampered the country for years to come. Lincoln proved that resistance to tyranny would be met with death and destruction, and the people willingly participated in the war.