Higher law, eh? Better check that one with your ally Non-Sequitur, who has been lecturing us about the Supremacy Clause.
But since when did "higher law" give it into anyone's hand, since Cain struck Abel, to turn on his neighbor and kill him and lay his land waste, and possess it in selfrighteousness?
The Civil War had more in common with the coming of William the Conqueror, than with the uprising of Boadicea.
Those who desire to break the existing, agreed upon, law discover what they, at their sole discretion, interpret to be some "higher law" which authorizes them to break the law and assert it to be a "moral imperative."
They do not find a law above the Constitution, they place themselves above the law.