Your position is utterly false. When Virginia entered into the rebellion, a significant portion of western Virginia remained loyal to the Union. They set up a separate, loyalist state government and legislature which was recognized by Congress as the sole, legitimate Virginia government. It was this body which voted to partition the state and Congress approved of their actions. The constitutionality of this process was later recognized by the Supreme Court when they agreed to hear the case of Virginia v. West Virginia.
But Lincoln was quite willing to encourage and reward that secession, which was illegal, in order to fight a legal secession.
You have that backwards.
Again, show me wehre in the Constitution it prohibits secession. The states created the Union; they are free to leave the Union if they choose. And when your rights are being violated, that is the ultimate mechanism. (”Fine, if you won’t abide by the rules, then we’ll sever our partnership and eforce those rules within our own borders.”)
Secession is not forbidden by the Constitution. Secession without the consent of the states is.
The New England states considered secession earlier in teh century. Many questioned the wisdom of it; no one questioned their right to do so. Somehow, when it was the South, it was different.
Completely false. Many questioned it. Here's an example of the Southern response:
"The Union is in danger. Turn to the convention in Hartford, and learn to tremble at the madness of its authors. How far will those madmen advance? Though they may conceal from you the project of disunion, though a few of them may have even concealed if from themselves, yet who will pretend to set the bounds to the rage of disaffection? Once false step after another may lead them to resistance to the laws, to a treasonable neutrality, to a war against the Government of the United States. In truth, the first act of resistance to the law is treason to the United States. Are you ready for this state of things? Will you support the men who would plunge you into this ruin?
No man, no association of men, no state or set of states has a right to withdraw itself from this Union, of its own accord. The same power which knit us together, can only unknit. The same formality, which forged the links of the Union, is necessary to dissolve it. The majority of States which form the Union must consent to the withdrawal of any one branch of it. Until that consent has been obtained, any attempt to dissolve the Union, or obstruct the efficacy of its constitutional laws, is Treason--Treason to all intents and purposes.
Any other doctrine, such as that which has been lately held forth by the ‘Federal Republican’ that any one State may withdraw itself from the Union, is abominable heresy – which strips its author of every possible pretension to the name or character of Federalist.
We call, therefore, upon the government of the Union to exert its energies, when the season shall demand it – and seize the first traitor who shall spring out of the hotbed of the convention of Harford. This illustrious Union, which has been cemented by the blood of our forefathers, the pride of America and the wonder of the world must not be tamely sacrificed to the heated brains or the aspiring hearts of a few malcontents. The Union must be saved, when any one shall dare to assail it.
Countrymen of the East! We call upon you to keep a vigilant eye upon those wretched men who would plunge us into civil war and irretrievable disgrace. Whatever be the temporary calamities which may assail us, let us swear, upon the altar of our country, to SAVE THE UNION." - Richmond Enquirer November 1814
The south perceived that its rights and the Constitution were being violated by Lincoln’s internal improvement schemes and by the impostion of fess designed to exploit Southern labor for the bnenefit of the Northern states (at least that’s how the southerners saw it.)
Except that none of that was unconstitutional, and none of it was in place when the Southern states rebelled. The South chose their actions because of what they perceived as the threat to the expansion of slavery posed by Lincoln's election.
Maryland’s state song still references it.
Whoop-de-do. The Battle Hymn of the Republic still refers to confederates as 'traitors'.
Massachusetts would disagree...
‘Because, it was said, the Constitution was “a treaty of alliance and confederation” and the government an association of states, then it followed “that whenever its provisions are violated, or its original principles departed from by a majority of the states or of their people, it is no longer an effective instrument, but that any state is at liberty by the spirit of that contract to withdraw itself from the union.” (To the Hartford Convention, p. 301)
‘Whoop-de-do. The Battle Hymn of the Republic still refers to confederates as ‘traitors’.’
Mr.Lysander Spooner still thought y'all had a murderous,barn burning complex!!
‘The question of treason is distinct from that of slavery; and is the same that it would have been, if free States , instead of slave States, had seceded. . . .
The principle, on which the war was waged by the North, was simply this: That men may rightfully be compelled to submit to, and support, a government that they do not want; and that resistance, on their part, makes them traitors and criminals.
No principle, that is possible to be named, can be more self-evidently false than this; or more self-evidently fatal to all political freedom. Yet it triumphed in the field, and is now assumed to be established. If it really be established, the number of slaves, instead of having been diminished by the war, has been greatly increased; for a man, thus subjected to a government that he does not want, is a slave. And there is no difference, in principle—but only in degree—between political and chattel slavery. . . .
The North has thus virtually said to the world: It was all very well to prate of consent, so long as the objects to be accomplished were to liberate ourselves from our connection with England, and also to coax a scattered and jealous people into a great national union; but now that those purposes have been accomplished, and the power of the North has become consolidated, it is sufficient for us -— as for all governments—simply to say: Our power is our right.
In proportion to her wealth and population, the North has probably expended more money and blood to maintain her power over an unwilling people, than any other government ever did. And in her estimation, it is apparently the chief glory of her success, and an adequate compensation for all her own losses, and an ample justification for all her devastation and carnage of the South, that all pretence of any necessity for consent to the perpetuity or power of government, is (as she thinks) forever expunged from the minds of the people. In short, the North exults beyond measure in the proof she has given, that a government, professedly resting on consent, will expend more life and treasure in crushing dissent, than any government, openly founded on force, has ever done.
And she claims that she has done all this in behalf of liberty! In behalf of free government! In behalf of the principle that government should rest on consent!’
Where in the Constitution is this?