It was never intended that the citizens in a majority of states could employ the federal government as an instrument of violence to force the citizens in a minority of states to keep their states in the Union against their will. BTW -The Unconstitutional invasion of Sovereign States was a breech of contract.
“The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”
Simultaneously they began to commit many acts of increasing rebellion or war against the United States, culminating in the attack on and seizure of Fort Sumter in April 1861.
First of all, the federal seizure of Fort Sumter was done in violation of the status quo agreement between President Buchanan and South Carolina :
You say that the fort was garrisoned for our protection, and is held for the same purposes for which it has ever been held since its construction. Are you not aware, that to hold, in the territory of a foreign power, a fortress against her will, avowedly for the purpose of protecting her citizens, is perhaps the highest insult which one government can offer to another? But Fort Sumter was never garrisoned at all until South Carolina had dissolved her connection with your government. This garrison entered it in the night, with every circumstance of secrecy, after spiking the guns and burning the gun-carriages and cutting down the flag-staff of an adjacent fort, which was then abandoned. South Carolina had not taken Fort Sumter into her own possession, only because of her misplaced confidence in a government which deceived her.
So the historical fact is that Lincoln responded to the Confederate War of Aggression against the United States. Such necessary actions as he took to win the war cannot be blamed on Lincoln, but on those Deep-South slave-holders who chose to start the war.
Dear BroJoeK,
“That the people of the North shall consider themselves as more blessed than we, more civilized, and happier, is not a matter at which we would complain at all, if they would only content themselves with believing that to be the fact; but when they come and attempt to propagandize, and insist that we shall be as perfect as they imagine themselves to be, then it is that their good opinion of themselves becomes offensive to us.
Let my neighbor believe that his wife is an angel and his children cherubs, I care not, though I may know he is mistaken; but when he comes impertinently poking his nose into my door every morning, and telling me that my wife is a shrew and my children brats, then the neighborhood becomes uncomfortable, and if I cannot remove him, I will remove myself; and if he says to me, “you shall not move, but you shall stay here, and you shall, day after day, hear the demerits of your wife and children discussed,” then I begin to feel a little restive, and possibly might assert that great original right of pursuing whatever may conduce to my happiness, though it might be kicking him out of my door.
If New England would only be content with the blessings which she imagines she has, we would not disturb her in her happiness.”---- Texas Senator Louis Wigfall:
Idabilly, you know you are nothing but a propagandist when you refuse to acknowledge the basic facts of the case: that not only did Deep-South slave-holders unconstitutionally secede, but they simultaneously committed many acts of increasing rebellion and war against the United States before formally declaring war, on May 6, 1861.
No Federal troops were used to kill any Confederate soldiers before that declaration of war.
And once the Confederacy declared war, all such arguments as you make here are utter and complete rubbish -- fit only for dedicated propagandists.
Idabilly: "South Carolina had not taken Fort Sumter into her own possession, only because of her misplaced confidence in a government which deceived her."
Fort Sumter was Federal property, period.
Any Confederate action to restrict Federal access to Federal property was an act of rebellion or war against the United States.
The Confederacy had no more legal right to seize Fort Sumter than it did to seize a federal fort in, say, Massachusetts.
Idabilly quoting Wigfall: "If New England would only be content with the blessings which she imagines she has, we would not disturb her in her happiness.”---- Texas Senator Louis Wigfall:"
Wigfall resigned from the Senate on March 23, 1861, before Fort Sumter, but he advocated the Confederacy should seize both Sumter and Pickens.
Which means that his words here amount to nonsense and lies.
Wigfall arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, in time to cheer on Confederates seizing Fort Sumter.
He was later appointed a Texas infantry brigade commander, before serving in the Confederate Congress.
After the war Wigfall escaped to live in London, England, where he fomented trouble between the United States and Britain.
He died in 1874 in Galveston, Texas, where he is buried.