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On great occasions, people tend to say what they are thinking because they want to create a clear record for posterity. That was so for the Confederate Articles of Secession, which were modeled on the Declaration of Independence. And those documents and the speeches and opinion articles by secession advocates make abundantly clear that preserving slavery was the reason for secession.

As for the claimed "right" to secede, it fails basic law and logic in that it supposed the Constitution was a contract subject to an unwritten right to secede based on the election of Lincoln because he was against slavery. Yet the contract analogy fails because Lincoln had not acted against slavery, so there was no breach of contract that justified secession as a remedy. Of course, to the degree that the Constitution was a contract, entry into it was a one time thing, not a gate that could be opened or closed as circumstances dictated.

No serious historian buys into the Lost Cause myth that secession was prompted by tariffs and other economic issues. The historical record is plainly to the contrary, with Confederate secession based on the determination of the South's slave owning elite to maintain slavery.

By the way, Paul Craig Roberts is an economist, not a historian. Accepting his opinion on the subject of slavery and secession is like relying on an airplane mechanic for guidance on cancer diagnosis and treatment.

As for the claimed "right" to secede, it fails basic law and logic in that it supposed the Constitution was a contract subject to an unwritten right to secede...

You are mistaken. It is very much written. It is written in the foundational document of the nation; The Declaration of Independence.

It is quite explicit that states have a right to secede. It is in fact the very bedrock of how we justified our own separation from the English Union.

On great occasions, people tend to say what they are thinking because they want to create a clear record for posterity. That was so for the Confederate Articles of Secession, which were modeled on the Declaration of Independence. And those documents and the speeches and opinion articles by secession advocates make abundantly clear that preserving slavery was the reason for secession.Those documents make clear that the North's violation of the fugitive slave clause of the US Constitution was the legal basis for saying the Northern states had violated the compact.

As for the claimed "right" to secede, it fails basic law and logic in that it supposed the Constitution was a contract subject to an unwritten right to secede based on the election of Lincoln because he was against slavery. Yet the contract analogy fails because Lincoln had not acted against slavery, so there was no breach of contract that justified secession as a remedy. Of course, to the degree that the Constitution was a contract, entry into it was a one time thing, not a gate that could be opened or closed as circumstances dictated.

The Constitution is a contract between states and the right to secede is covered by the 9th and 10th amendments. It is a power not expressly delegated by the sovereign states to the federal government and is therefore reserved by the states. The Northern states' violation of the fugitive slave clause was not about the election of Lincoln. They had violated it by the passage of state laws prohibiting the enforcement of that part of the Constitution.

No serious historian buys into the Lost Cause myth that secession was prompted by tariffs and other economic issues.

No PC Revisionist "historian" you mean. Of course, no serious historian buys into any of the Revisionist Politically Correct Leftist interpretation of history put forth starting in the 1980s which includes such things as the "all about slavery" myth.

The historical record is plainly to the contrary, with Confederate secession based on the determination of the South's slave owning elite to maintain slavery.

The historical record shows the Southern states' legal justification was that the Northern states had violated the Constitution via their refusal to enforce parts of the constitution and in some cases, their overtly hostile acts toward the Southern states - such as refusing to prosecute the sponsors of terrorism.