Indeed.
Most people don't seem to realize exactly how hotheaded and ill-considered secession was.
The reaction to Lincoln's election among Democrats in 1860 was as hysterical and stupid as the reaction to Bush's election among Democrats in 2000.
Sometimes, in a republic, your favorite candidate does not win. That's one of the risks of living in a free society.
Lincoln's position was simple: he was not in favor of creating new slave states - he believed the existing roster of slave states was sufficient.
Not a particularly extreme position at all. And he was not really in a position to do a lot about that policy goal, since he would have been a Republican president with a Democrat majority in the House and Senate.
Yet the original Confederacy seceded before Lincoln was ever sworn in.
No honest analysis of the situation in 1860 would say that the architects of the Confederacy really believed that Lincoln would be an effective President capable of enacting even his own stated agenda, let alone any laws that would have injured slavery in the Southern section.
The reason why they acted without even having the specious justification that was later claimed was because the writing was on the wall: slavery was not catching on in the territories, the free state population was much larger and growing rapidly - close to 90% of all immigrants came to free states.
Informed Southerners knew that by 1870 there would be several new free states and that the 1870 and 1880 censuses would, at the then-current pace, reduce the South's Congressional delegation to a size where it could no longer automatically derail legislation perceived detrimental to its sectional interests.
Calhoun knew this in 1850 - hence his "concurrent majority" plan to give the South a legally-enshrined veto.
There was no legal way the South could stop the inexorable movement of demography. So they decided to act illegally before their self-created numerical and financial disadvantage grew any greater.
I've never been able to come up with a tabulation of what the party composition of Lincoln's first Congress would have been if secession had not intervened. Do you have a link to it?
Don't freak out, but I'm gonna post a link. South Carolina Secession Declaration
Your characterizations of Southerners as 'hot-headed' is standard yankee talk that continues to this day. Compare the hot-headed cowboy, George Bush, with the intellectual, nuanced and haughty, John Kerry.
I submit to you that the SC Declaration is thoughtful and well written.
So they decided to act illegally
Show where secession was illegal in 1860.
before their self-created numerical and financial disadvantage grew any greater.
That's just a flat lie.
Didn't the north act in it's own self interest without any consideration for their 'fellow countrymen' in the South?
Question: If you join a club and they start making rules that will impoverish you, are you going to continue your membership or will you cut your losses and get out while you can?