Replies

PDParrish: "Did you mean that the Lost Causer is identified solely by his saying that secession was the only cause?
I never heard that before."

I think pretty much any Lost Causer will tell you Lincoln started war at Fort Sumter to stop secession, and will then go on to argue 1861 secessions were constitutional and legal, therefore Lincoln was in the wrong morally, constitutionally and legally.

My responses are:

Lincoln did not start war at Fort Sumter, Davis did, so the appropriate question should be: why?
Secession as practiced in 1861 was neither constitutional, legal nor moral, and was not the reason for Civil War's start.

BDParrish: "As far as secession being settled in your mind, what about West Virginia?"

West Virginia was formed according to Constitutional requirements, with mutual consent of all parties.

PDParrish: "do you believe that rural counties in California could separate from the liberal metropolises without the effusion of blood? "

Certainly, given mutual consent of all parties, including Congress.
Absent mutual consent of voters and legislatures it becomes a law enforcement issue and whether local authorities are overcome, in Lincoln's words:

"...by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the Marshals by law... "

Peaceful constitutionally approved secession is one thing, acts of rebellion are something else entirely.

PDParrish: " Do you believe that the federal government could break up a state like California without the approval of the stinking rascals that infest the government in Sacramento?"

Normally no, but as with West Virginia, conditions of a civil war may make the impossible possible.
What happened at the end of the Civil War was former Confederates temporarily lost their franchise to vote while former slaves gained theirs.
The results included legislatures throughout the South which ratified the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments and, in Virginia, approved the separation of West Virginia.
Congress and West Virginians also approved, hence: mutual consent.

Mutual consent is required for lawful separations.
Necessity must be a last resort and must be real, not just some snowflakes' hurt feeeeeeeeeeelings.

I have seriously never heard anyone say that Lincoln started the war at Fort Sumter to prevent secession. I started my study of the civil war in 1967 when I began and eventually finished reading the entire York Co., SC, library section on the war. I have a lifelong fascination with the war but especially reconstruction. Yours is the typical Yankee position with no surprises really except that I have not followed these silly debates on Free Republic and I had no idea that any Lost Causers thought Lincoln started the war at Sumter. It was widely thought that we had been at war for a long time when Ruffin was granted the privilege of firing the “first shot” of the war. But everyone agreed that this would be the official start of the war otherwise it makes no sense to have Ruffin fire the cannon.