Did the secessionists want “government of the people, by the people, and for the people?” Do you know what percentage of the adult population of South Carolina were free, what percentage were allowed to vote?
Do you have any idea how blacks were treated in the North in those days? What percentage were allowed to vote and so on?
And why stop there? Why not indict the South for not allowing women to vote?
Back in those days only land owners and men could vote.
That was a state by state policy, accepted on a state by state basis, nationwide.
We should then assume that all of the Southern voters were free. They were capable of making the decisions required of statehood, and or secession if the federal government no longer honored the 10th Amendment of the Constitution.
The federal government intruded on the rights of the citizens of the south by imposing tariffs on their goods, imposing taxes on the population, and then used the human rights argument against slavery to invoke the “feelings” of the population at large to support military infringement when certain states balked.
Certainly that same human rights argument is being used against Americans today with bulked up civil rights laws, slavery reparations and entitlements. How could a person NOT “feel” badly for the oppressed minority without otherwise being called a racist or hate monger.
I find the parallels between 1860 and today are very close.
The government wants to rule the people. But the people have other ideas that coincidentally include freedom and liberty.