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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.

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.

Hilarious passage, and very appropriate! Sometime around the end of 1860 a southern newspaper reported that Wigfall had discovered the yankees in the post office were opening his mail in Washington in hopes of political information. Wigfall was bombastic and unrelenting in his speeches, but much of it was for good reason and in response to the fraud and incivility afforded to him and other southerners by the yankees for no other reason than that they were southerners. Unlike Senator Sumner, who despised the south out of a bitter hatred, Wigfall was able to converse with his northern colleagues even after the most bombastic of speeches. At one point in early 1861 he and Stephen Douglas bitterly opposed each other on the senate floor. Douglas came up to Wigfall after the argument and asked the latter if a hatred had grown between them. Wigfall responded by essentially saying "not at all."

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.

A bit more Wigfall:

"In simple words rarely heard in the United States Senate, Wigfall of Texas had said: "I am a plain, blunt-spoken man. We say that man has a right to property in man. We say that slaves are our property. We say that it is the duty of every government to protect its property everywhere. If you wish to settle this matter, declare that slaves are property, and like all other property entitled to be protected in every quarter of the globe, on land and sea, Say that to us, and then the difficulty is settled."

--Sandburg's Lincoln

Walt