[FLT-bird]

Pro-Confederate opinions notwithstanding, our Founders all believed such "resuming" could only be for material cause, not "at pleasure". Just as Virginia's 1788 ratifying statement said: "...powers granted under the Constitution... may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression,"

Yes and it was up to each state to determine if there was sufficient cause. The Southern states did determine there was sufficient clause and exercised their right to unilaterally secede.

FLT-bird: "The CSA did what it could to build a navy but it had had no time to build one up prior to the war" The Union navy at war's end had roughly twice the number of vessels as served the Confederate cause -- 671 Union vs. circa 380 Confederate ships & boats. Union ships were arguably bigger and more purpose-built, so the count of numbers doesn't tell the whole story.

OK. No argument. As I said, the Union inherited the US Navy as well as the region where the shipbuilding industry - built up via generations of subsidies and protectionism - was located. Its no surprise their navy was far larger than the CSA's given that the CSA had to start from scratch while fighting a major land war and given the fact that the North's total White population was about 4 times that of the CSA.

No need for a treaty, since there was an 1836 legal document transferring ownership of Fort Sumter to the Federal government. "In the [SC] House of Representatives, December 31st, 1836​ "The Committee on Federal relations, to which was referred the Governor's message, relating to the site of Fort Sumter, in the harbour of Charleston, and the report of the Committee on Federal Relations from the Senate on the same subject, beg leave to Report by Resolution: "Resolved, That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory, Provided, That all processes, civil and criminal issued... " So, as of at least 1836, Fort Sumter was Federal, not SC state property. Nor did South Carolina ever attempt to lawfully repossess Fort Sumter, by eminent domain or any other legal sham. Now we have the matter of the US Constitution:

Ah but there you are wrong. South Carolina did lay claim to Fort Sumter under eminent domain once it resumed the powers of government it had delegated to the federal government.

"Article I Section 8: "Congress shall have the power . . . To exercise the exclusive Legislation in all cases whatsoever, . . . and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the legislature of the state in which same shall be, for the erection of Forts, Magazines, arsenals, dock-yards and other needed buildings; . . ." "Congress shall have the power . . . to suppress insurrections . . ." These were powers, given under the U.S. Constitution to Congress and not states.

So long as the state was in and was a part of the US. South Carolina no longer was and had resumed such powers as sovereign.

But that never happened, and Davis knew it and didn't care. You also know it, but chose to lie about it, and why?

but it did happen and you've even cited instances. Why are you lying about it now? Do you really think anybody is going to believe your lies?

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "Yes and it was up to each state to determine if there was sufficient cause.
The Southern states did determine there was sufficient clause and exercised their right to unilaterally secede."

But in reality, secessionists had no material legal cause in December 1860 -- nothing which remotely resembled conditions of the 1776 Declaration of Independence -- a fact which Virginians themselves fully understood, which is why Virginians refused to declare secession until after Jefferson Davis started civil war at Fort Sumter.
So, in 1860 Democrats began seceding at pleasure -- in anger at losing the election and in fear of what incoming Republican Pres. Lincoln might do someday.

There was nothing our Founders would recognize as legitimate in it.

Indeed, in 1798, none other than the notorious secessionists, Thomas Jefferson himself, warned against precisely what happened in December 1860 -- Jefferson's word for secession is "scission":

"...in every free & deliberating society, there must from the nature of man be opposite parties, & violent dissensions & discords; and one of these for the most part must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time.
perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch & debate to the people the proceedings of the other.
but if on a temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the union, no federal government can ever exist.
if to rid ourselves of the present rule of Massachusetts & Connecticut, we break the union, will the evil stop there?
suppose the N. England states alone cut off, will our natures be changed?
are we not men still to the South of that, & with all the passions of men?
immediately we shall see a Pennsylvania & a Virginia party arise in the residuary confederacy, and the public mind will be distracted with the same party spirit.
what a game too will the one party have in their hands by eternally threatening the other that unless they do so & so, they will join their Northern neighbors."

Jefferson continues later with:

"...it is true that in the mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war, & long oppressions of enormous public debt.
but who can say what would be the evils of a scission and when & where they would end?
better keep together as we are, hawl off from Europe as soon as we can & from all attachments to any portions of it, and if we feel their power just sufficiently to hoop us together, it will be the happiest situation in which we can exist.
if the game runs sometimes against us at home, we must have patience, till luck turns, & then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost."

This was in 1798, and Jefferson himself then well understood what might happen in 1860, and warned against it.

FLT-bird: "As I said, the Union inherited the US Navy as well as the region where the shipbuilding industry - built up via generations of subsidies and protectionism - was located."

CSS Stonewall, served until 1889 in the Japanese navy.

What all this proves is that if Southerners had wanted their own merchant marine ships, they were fully capable of building & operating them.
The reason they didn't so much by 1860 was simply that shipping was a very risky enterprise and investment, paying much poorer returns than buying land, slaves and cotton seeds.

So, Southerners put their money where it paid the most.
Northerners didn't have high-paying options like cotton, sugar, rice and tobacco.

FLT-bird: "Ah but there you are wrong.
South Carolina did lay claim to Fort Sumter under eminent domain once it resumed the powers of government it had delegated to the federal government."

Oh, really?
And you have documents which can prove that?

In all these years, I've only seen your claim here once before, and never any documents to prove it, so I've assumed it just more Lost Cause Lawyerly Lies...

Show us what you have.

FLT-bird: "So long as the state was in and was a part of the US.
South Carolina no longer was and had resumed such powers as sovereign."

South Carolina unconstitutionally declared secession and then war against the United States, all your lawyerly-lies notwithstanding.
They suffered accordingly.