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Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve, 1814 ending all hostilities.

You might want to read Article 11 of the treaty.By its own terms, it didn't come into force until ratified by both sides. That happened in February. It's fun, though, that your position has gone from arguing that the Convention issued its report years after the war ended, to months after, and now to less than two weeks after it was signed, when no one in the United States knew about it.

Slave prices - again, a critical constitutional issue pivotal to this discussion.

Just another exposition of your ignorance.

Don't prices usually rise per the economics of supply and demand? Were they not low when slave trade (supply) was booming internationally in the early 19th century, only to rise steeply when international trade was banned, only to drop again in the 1840s and rise sharply again in the 1850s per trends in cotton and the explosion of Southern railroads (demand)?

Wait, are you now admitting that the cotton trade drove a boom in slave prices? What happened to "the cotton gin was also rapidly DECREASING the value of slaves to slave-owners" like you said earlier?

Ok, so if I rephrase that around 200,000 Northern soldiers deserted (many because of the Proclamation as confirmed by Hooker, Burnside, Grant and other officers), or didn't re-enlist when their terms were up, and enlistments similarly dropped sharply after the Proclamation, despite more financial incentives to join - at which point Lincoln turned to conscription to continue forcing his war on South - does that work for you?

Yes, that is a fair statement. It's also a far cry from where you started.

So again, which judicial proceedings or marshal efforts proved futile to warrant invoking this? I'm sure you know the act was to allow the raisin

Are you actually going to say that a judicial proceeding would have had any effect? That South Carolina, after seceding before Lincoln even took office, would have listened to a court ruling? Read the law. There's no requirement that a certain level of judicial proceedings fail before the president can invoke his powers under the act. And Lincoln's use of the 1795 act was upheld by the Supreme Court in the Prize Cases. From that decision:

Whether the President in fulfilling his duties, as Commander- in-chief, in suppressing an insurrection, has met with such armed hostile resistance, and a civil war of such alarming proportions as will compel him to accord to them the character of belligerents, is a question to be decided by him, and this Court must be governed by the decisions and acts of the political department of the Government to which this power was entrusted

You can't even admit to yourself the possibility "your" version of history is as open-and-shut as you think it is.

I'd say the exact same of you. Except I'd use the word "isn't" instead of "is."

Pure arrogance, which again makes me think you must be a teacher.

Wrong again.

Bubba, Bubba, you're only fooling yourself.

Here's common knowledge (aka wiki):

Massachusetts actually sent three commissioners to Washington, D.C. to negotiate these terms. When they arrived in February, 1815, news of Andrew Jackson's stunning victory at the Battle of New Orleans, and the signing of the Treaty of Ghent, preceded them and, consequently, their presence in the capital seemed both ludicrous and subversive. They quickly returned. Thereafter, both Hartford Convention and Federalist Party became synonymous with disunion, secession, and treason, especially in the South. The party was ruined, and survived only in a few localities for several more years before vanishing entirely.

I guess wiki is a Lost Causer too?

It's a beautiful thing when you keep going back to the Militia Act. Try as you will, its legality was only against combinations (of individuals) in a state obstructing the law, and was intended to help the States, not attack them. Lincoln referred to the Act verbiage himself in his April 15th proclamation:

Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past and now are opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South Carolina, George, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law:

So the laws are being obstructed by "combinations" in SC, MS, et al...So the representative, republican governments of the States THEMSELVES are now actually "combinations" of rebellious individuals within the states obstructing their laws? That's the foundation of your case, that "combinations in a state" actually means the GOVERNMENT in that state????

Note that Buchanan had already looked at the Act when SC seceded, and determined as "it applied to insurrections within and against the government of a State in the Union, it was utterly inapplicable to a State that had withdrawn from the Union — even if that withdrawal could be proven to be unconstitutional."

So there's your precedent. What transpired over the next couple months that gave Lincoln his power to trump that? Was a government of a State attacked?

Funny enough, the Act also raised militia by (drumroll...) conscription of 6 months (3 per the 1795 act, extended to 6 several years later), so there goes that argument too. (You thought I was going to go back on that, didn't you?)

Another inconvenient fact:

it shall be lawful for the President, if the legislature of the United States be not in session, to call forth and employ such numbers of the militia of any other state or states most convenient thereto, as may be necessary, and the use of militia, so to be called forth, may be continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the ensuing session.

Of course, while exhausting all options, he called Congress into session immediately on April 15, thus limiting his powers to 30 days...oh wait, no he didn't. Oh well, who's needs restraints anyway?

And you continue to justify illegal actions with packed-court decisions passed AFTER they occurred, as if somehow they somehow traverse space and time. Prize Cases, Texas v White, quite a few acts of Congress, etc. may have all "justified" his behavior after the fact, but they sure didn't legally warrant it at the time he acted.