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Naturally, negotiations with Congress over such matters as national debt, jointly owned property and foreign treaties could be time consuming, but our Founders were long accustomed to spending years, even decades, negotiating such important matters.

Which side was it that refused to negotiate? As I remember, South Carolina sent commissioners to negotiate with the US over the separation, and, in a second separate approach, offered to pay for the forts. Buchanan ignored them or turned them down. A delegation from the Confederacy went to DC in March to negotiate a fair separation, debts, etc. Lincoln totally ignored them, and through a intermediary, Seward subtly misled them about Fort Sumter.

A fair distribution of the territories meant that the South would have gotten a share of them. Certainly, Southern blood and money had gone into obtaining those territories. I don't think the North wanted to let them go -- too useful for Northern politicians to make land available to their constituents. Remember the Free Soil Party, many of whose members were later absorbed into the Republican Party?

I have seen it said, that if all the transfers of wealth from the South to the North over the years via tariffs were considered, the North would owe the South money. It is perhaps for these reasons that the North ignored Southern offers to negotiate.

rustbucket: "Which side was it that refused to negotiate?
As I remember, South Carolina sent commissioners to negotiate with the US over the separation, and, in a second separate approach, offered to pay for the forts.
Buchanan ignored them or turned them down. "

The US Constitution requires that Congress has authority over all such matters, but no secessionist commissioner -- none, zero, nada -- ever attempted to negotiate with Congress.
Both Buchanan and Lincoln properly refused to see those commissioners.

rustbucket: "A fair distribution of the territories meant that the South would have gotten a share of them."

Perhaps, if Congress had agreed, but Congress was never asked.

rustbucket: "I have seen it said, that if all the transfers of wealth from the South to the North over the years via tariffs were considered, the North would owe the South money.
It is perhaps for these reasons that the North ignored Southern offers to negotiate."

I'd suggest that if you subtracted from that figure, whatever it might have been, the value of national defense over the period from 1776 through 1860, you'd find the South paid a bargain price for 80+ years of peace, or victory in wars.