One can argue that the founders believed there was a right to leave the Union. Madison himself said on several occasions that leaving the Union required the consent of the remaining states. Contrast that with the way the South chose to leave; without negotiation, repudiating responsibility for national obligations like treaties and the debt, and taking every bit of federal property they could get their hands on without compensation. In short, the South chose to leave in a manner guaranteed to provoke acrimony. Surely you can't believe that the Founding Fathers would have sanctioned that?
Second the Confederacy had warned Lincoln not to resupply Fort Sumter. Any nation would consider the occupation of a foreign fort on their territory especially one located in a vital sea port to be an act of aggression.
Except that the fort did not belong to them and the garrison had taken not a single hostile act against Charleston or the rebel forces. On the contrary, the rebel batteries had fired at everything in sight and were actively trying to starve the fort into surrender. So who where the aggressors in this picture? Certainly not Lincoln.
If you believe as did most statesmen of the US up until at least the 1830s that the member states of the union were sovereign states and that those states had the right to secede from the union.
I would disagree with the "most statesmen" and state again that there was no right to secede in the manner the South chose to pursue.
If the Confederate States were a sovereign nation then the attack on Fort Sumter was a defensive act.
Complete nonsense.
Even post-Civil War I still contend that any state can vote to secede from the United States. There is no provision in the Constitution stating otherwise.
Would you agree then that the states also have the right to expel a state from the Union against its will? There is nothing in the Constitution that states that they can't either.
The very occupation of the fort by the army of a foreign power is a provocation.
there was no right to secede in the manner the South chose to pursue.
Being that there is no provision in the Constitution for secession that leaves it in the purview of the tenth amendment as a right reserved to the state. There is no codified procedure for secession so the South was within their rights to separate as they saw fit. The North would have been better to seek redress for their grievances concerning the debt and property after abandoning the forts.
Complete nonsense.
That is not an argument
Would you agree then that the states also have the right to expel a state from the Union against its will? There is nothing in the Constitution that states that they can't either.
I don’t disagree. I would be willing to hear a motion to expel Massachusetts.
;)