Even under the circumstances of this possibility, no guarantee existed that Abe Lincoln would honor the ruling. He willfully ignored other court rulings in the same time frame on the grounds that he did not like their outcome, most notably the U.S. Circuit Court ruling in Ex Parte Merryman.
It is also a matter of history that the confederates thoroughly made their case for constitutional secession within the framework of the 1860 government. They did so at length before the Congress.
Instead, the confederates fired on the US Flag and suffered the consequences.
As I have noted previously to you, your reasoning in this statement suffers from severe moral and logical flaws. You chose not to respond previously and this case may be no different, but the issue still remains. By asserting that the south "suffered the consequences" of the actions at Fort Sumter, you imply that what happened over the next four years was a necessary result of that act. It is akin to rationalizing all conscious act, and with it guilt, on the part of the north by asserting little more than "the south made us do it" to justify the brutalities of the war they waged. Much to the contrary, the sins of war committed against the south were not a consequence of Sumter but of the conscious choices of the north to sin in the way they waged that war. As I noted previously, just as is true of the south, The Lincoln had untold many courses of action he could have taken in 1861. The decision of the northern government's reaction to secession was not in southern hands though. That decision, upon which the decision of war and the manner in which that war was to be waged and rested, belonged to The Lincoln. Out of untold many paths ranging from varied scales of war to peace and diplomacy, he chose to pursue the bloodiest one.
Good point. There are some interesting arguments in Congressional testimony.
You've reminded me of something I found in the Congressional records. While it does not address secession, it does comment about the moral-scold and holier-than-thou attitude of New Englanders that Southerners had to face. These comments were made to the Senate by Texas Senator Wigfall on the day Texas officially withdrew from the Union (March 2, 1861):
"...then Cromwell had to run them [the Puritans] out of England; and then they went over to Holland, and the Dutch let them alone, but would not let them persecute anybody else; and then they got on that ill-fated ship called the Mayflower and landed on Plymouth Rock. And from that time to this, they have been kicking up a dust generally, and making a mess whenever they could put their fingers in the pie. They confederated with the other states to save themselves from the power of old King George III; and no sooner than they had gotten rid of him than they turned to persecuting their neighbors. Having got rid of the Indians, and witches, and Baptists, and Quakers in their country; after selling us our negroes for the love of gold, they began stealing them back for the love of God. That is the history as well as I understand it.
you-Even under the circumstances of this possibility, no guarantee existed that Abe Lincoln would honor the ruling.
Yes, but consider the circumstances. A confederate state obtains a favorable ruling on the right of secession under the US constitution. The seven states then legally secede from the Union.
Would a newly elected Lincoln be willing to ignore the highest court in the nation in his first act as president? Would European powers be more inclined to recognize a confederacy that had obtained legitimacy through the court system?
Certainly, history would have looked more kindly on the confederates if they had first sought redress under the law. If Amendment X detrermines the right of states to secede, than Article III informs the state(s) where to take their grievance under the law.