The act of war was sending a fleet of warship with orders to attack.
*THAT* was the act of war, and it was initiated by Lincoln.
But instead I agree that Chase was correct. Legal secession was not rebellion.
And now you are putting words in Justice Chase's mouth that he absolutely did not say, and would have refuted. When Justice Chase spoke of "secession", he was referring specifically to the South, and what the South did.
Stop your prattle about "legal" secession. What the South did was legal secession, as Justice Chase clearly indicated, because it was to them that he was specifically referring.
Orders to resupply and defend against hostile acts on the part of the rebel forces in Charleston you mean.
And now you are putting words in Justice Chase's mouth that he absolutely did not say, and would have refuted.
How could he refute it when that is exactly what he said in the Texas v. White decision a few years later? "The union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States." Chase viewed secession as the South chose to pursue it as rebellion, nothing more or less. Rebellion could be seen as treasonous under the Constitution.
Stop your prattle about "legal" secession. What the South did was legal secession, as Justice Chase clearly indicated, because it was to them that he was specifically referring.
Not so much, no. Again from the Texas v. White decision: "Considered therefore as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State, as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired. It certainly follows that the State did not cease to be a State, nor her citizens to be citizens of the Union."