Operative phrase, "in this Union". Lincoln wasn't responsible for the status of States no longer in the Union, none of which had proposed to reconstitute themselves as monarchies etc., and so his argument about needing to kill 600,000 people in order to drag the Southern States back into the Union to save them from the horror of non-Republican government (which he provided anyway, in the form of military governments) is revealed as utterly specious pol-speak. Eyewash, in other words.
In the Union, Walt.
No state has ever been out of the Union once it came in.
You can wail and cry about it all you like, but there it is.
Walt
You can't be missing the import of what Lincoln said.
The Constitution --guarantees-- that each state will have a republican government. IF a state could go out of the Union, it -might- establish a monarchy, a fascist state, or whatever. That would violate the constitutional guarantee against such.
All you -could- say is that the federal government retained the right to intervene against states that had left the Union -if- they adopted some non-republican government.
In fact, you could argue that this is what happened, any way.
Walt