You've been studying the Civil war for a very long time. I've been studying the meanings and origins of the term "Natural born citizen" since 2008. I have been pursuing the philosophical underpinnings of the Declaration of Independence because it is the document which Created the United States, and therefore Created US Citizenship.
The Declaration did not come about out of thin air. It came about as a result of a great deal of thinking on the part of the colonies and others. Philosophers of Natural Law such as Wolf, Grotius, Locke, Puffendorf and Vattel were widely read and their ideas debated and pondered by the learned men of that day.
James Otis, John and Samuel Adams belonged to a debate club in Boston, and they would discuss these ideas regarding the relationship between the Monarchical government of England and the extant circumstances of the Colonies.
The motivation to separate from England came out of these discussions on natural law and the rights of man. It was not just a "throw down" as you seemed to think. In those days, people were very concerned that their actions were right with God before they concerned themselves with the desires of man.
Those natural law arguments convinced them that Rebelling from what was then considered "Divine Rule" was morally just. It was no small thing to challenge the Authority of the King as a representative of God in those days. They wanted to be sure of their beliefs and understanding before they could feel motivated to contest the established rule that allegiance to the King was perpetual and required by God.
You say "I've seen no writings that indicated that the DOL was anything other than a throwing down of the gauntlet to Great Britain." Well here is an example of some writings that does indeed indicate that it was not just a throwing down of the gauntlet.
Finally, several sovereign and independent states may unite themselves together by a perpetual confederacy, without ceasing to be, each individually, a perfect state. They will together constitute a federal republic: their joint deliberations will not impair the sovereignty of each member, though they may, in certain respects, put some restraint on the exercise of it, in virtue of voluntary engagements. A person does not cease to be free and independent, when he is obliged to fulfil engagements which he has voluntarily contracted.Emmerich de Vattel, 1758.
And *THAT* is the idea which got put into James Otis' Head in the early 1760s, and caused him to write his "The Rights of the British Colonies asserted and Proved", which is how the political will to separate from England became popularized in the colonies.
And where could Vattel have gotten such ideas that inspired the colonists? From his own Nation, the Swiss Republic. It was the only Republic in the World at the time, having overthrown their King 467 years earlier.
You’re so taken with the sound of your own voice that you don’t even recognize when others make the same point.
Of course it didn’t come about “out of thin air”, of course it came about “as a result of a great deal of thinking”. What you post is a validation of my post.
Where you go astray is when you attempt to conflate the Colonialist’s Revolutionary war with the WBTS. There more points of divergence than there are convergence or similarity.
So what are the magic words that transform an insurrection, of which the Constitution explicitly allows suppression, and a secession, which, according to you, invokes natural law and can’t be put down?