But later, when it was pointed out that Lincoln was certainly equally harsh in his treatment of the former states which had succeeded and had formed their own country, you dismissed his behavior saying,
So what? War is hell. They shouldn't have started something and set the pace for something they couldn't finish.
Which is it?
You make much of saying that there is no "enumerated "right" of succession" but of course that neglects the very existence of the Declaration of Independence which Lincoln explicitly sought to incorporate into and make a fundamental document of the American Republic by his speech at Gettysburg. So while the Constitution does not enumerate a right of secession the Declaration of Independence certainly articulates such a right.
Equally, the Constitution does not enumerate a prohibition against secession but it does explicitly reserve rights not otherwise enumerated to the states. Why is the right of secession not one of those rights?
The experience of West Virginia can hardly be said to be apposite because there was a succession from Virginia, that is a state of one nation, the Confederacy, to become a state of a different nation, the United States. Evidently, there is a right to secede in one direction only.
Incidentally, the south did secede in an orderly fashion by plebiscite in many cases. Once done, by their lights, federal troops invaded a sovereign nation which any nation has the right to resist and supplies a fully "defensible reason other than their own belligerence" for resort to arms.
I think a justification of Lincoln's war against the Confederacy must be made on a moral level, inherent in the moral wrong of slavery, just as Lincoln was forced to do against his inclination when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. As Lincoln said to Harriet Stowe, author of, Uncle Tom's Cabin, "so you are the little lady who started the Civil War."
The idea that the sovereign states who formed a union of "United States" whose Constitution contains no "enumerated" prohibition against secession are somehow constitutionally prohibited from doing so, depends not on logic but on Appomattox Courthouse. The constitutional principle was established there and not in the Supreme Court (except post bellum) and not in the halls of Congress.
