And Lincoln declared them to be in "rebellion", but what they did and were doing was clearly not "rebellion", it was "Independence", which they had a right to have as stipulated in our own founding document, the "Declaration of Independence."
Lincoln accused them of rebellion in the same way modern Democrats accuse Trump of racism. They simply say it is so, and they repeat it over and over until the public accepts this claim.
That would require a constitutional amendment, something he often called for and worked to pass once the election of 1864 gave him the congressional majority that it would require.
You are correct that it would require a constitutional amendment, but such a thing was impossible in the 1860s without an end run around the valid constitutional amendment process.
This end run was accomplished by first illegally disenfranchising voters in their own states, and then threatening the legislature with even further military abuses of their population if they did not give Washington DC what they were ordered to give.
A lot of people want to pretend that the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th amendments were valid amendments to the constitution, but the constitution was never intended to be changed through Washington DC control of puppet governments that would do the bidding of Washington DC.
That is dictatorship with a thin veneer of "process" slapped on it to disguise what was done.
I'm pretty sure that their shelling of a fort flying the United States flag had something to do with public opinion on the matter, too.
A lot of people want to pretend that the 13th, the 14th, and the 15th amendments were valid amendments to the constitution, but the constitution was never intended to be changed through Washington DC control of puppet governments that would do the bidding of Washington DC.
Yes, your opinion that the process through which slaves were freed and blacks given civil rights was highly improper is well known.
Unlike our founding fathers though the confederacy got their asses kicked by the US Army. So they are a footnote in history and should be treated as such. The confederate leaders don't deserve to polish the boots of our great founding fathers. The confederates were also fighting for a horrible cause, the enslavement of other humans. No matter how much you want to believe in your addled brain that it was over money.
"The cause of the great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began it was a trite saying among some politicians that "A state half slave and half free cannot exist." All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down. I took no part myself in any such view of the case at the time, but since the war is over, reviewing the whole question, I have come to the conclusion that the saying is quite true." Ulysses S. Grant