“It’s when you move from holding conventions, voting on secession, and petitioning Congress for recognition of said secession, and begin shelling Federal troops and installations.
If the Confederacy had wanted a peaceful secession, they could have had one. They preferred war.”
You really need to brush up on your history, all the confederate states held specialized conventions to leave the union the same way they entered.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinance_of_Secession
They then attempted to establish formal relations with the United States. The Lincoln Administration refused.
The way most of them entered was with the consent of the other states as expressed through a vote in both houses of Congress. Are you suggesting that they tried to leave the same way?