Lincoln's speech is widely available. In fact, I posted a link to it in my post number 1 on that thread. The newspaper excerpts are not widely available, and that is why I posted them. People are free to make their own comparisons.
What you read as "poking the South in the eye with a stick", I read as a reasonable prescription to avoid war.
Then you agree with the Republican papers whose excerpts I posted. Fair enough. I don't. I've characterized Lincoln's speech as being like a demand that he wants to sleep with your wife, and if you acquiesce to this, there won't be any trouble. And if there is trouble about it, you will be the aggressor.
Southern newspapers did not see it your way. They believed they had the right to secede under the Constitution and that Lincoln had no right after they seceded to collect tariffs on imports coming into Southern ports or to turn the South into an occupied territory with Federal troops occupying forts throughout the South.
The Southern newspapers and the Democrat newspapers of the North were correct that Lincoln's speech meant war. Lincoln's actions afterward confirm that. Republican newspapers interpreting the speech as meaning peace were seeing the speech through rose colored glasses.
Secession was not prohibited in the Constitution. The power to prohibit secession was not delegated to the federal government or to other states that might oppose the secession of a given state. Secession remained in the powers reserved to the states or the people. Had it been otherwise and states couldn't secede, the Constitution wouldn't have been ratified, IMO. Here is what Madison had to say about reserved powers at his ratification convention:
That resolution declares that the powers granted by the proposed Constitution are the gift of the people, and may be resumed by them when perverted to their oppression, and every power not granted thereby remains with the people, and at their will. It adds, likewise, that no right, of any denomination, can be cancelled, abridged, restrained, or modified, by the general government, or any of its officers, except in those instances in which power is given by the Constitution for these purposes. There cannot be a more positive and unequivocal declaration of the principle of the adoption — that every thing not granted is reserved. This is obviously and self-evidently the case, without the declaration.
Here is what one state had to say about it [my bold below]:
Ratification of the Constitution by the State of New York; July 26, 1788.
WE the Delegates of the People of the State of New York, duly elected and Met in Convention, having maturely considered the Constitution for the United States of America, agreed to on the seventeenth day of September, in the year One thousand Seven hundred and Eighty seven, by the Convention then assembled at Philadelphia in the Common-wealth of Pennsylvania (a Copy whereof precedes these presents) and having also seriously and deliberately considered the present situation of the United States, Do declare and make known. ...
That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness; ...
... Under these impressions and declaring that the rights aforesaid cannot be abridged or violated, and that the Explanations aforesaid are consistent with the said Constitution ... We the said Delegates, in the Name and in the behalf of the People of the State of New York Do by these presents Assent to and Ratify the said Constitution.
Were Hamilton and Jay (coauthors of the Federalist Papers with Madison) wrong? They voted for this ratification document which passed 30 to 27 with about 8 Anti-Federalists abstaining.
Yeah, that explains why some southern state legislatures had to ramrod secession through with little or no public input the way ObaMao, Pelosi and Reid ramrodded ObaMao Care. Then there were the good folks in east Tennessee, West Virginia and other areas of the Appalachians who were conscripted into supporting the new government at gunpoint . . .