No sweat, nothing we aren't all guilty of at one time or another.
This does still not change the fact of why south carolina seceded and why President Lincoln called up troops.
You're right, it doesn't change the facts, but Lincoln was acting in conflict with the Constitution in calling for troops.
Here is Madison on use of force against a soveriegn state:
“Mr. MADISON, observed that the more he reflected on the use of force [by the federal govt against the States], the more he doubted the practicability, the justice and the efficacy of it when applied to people collectively and not individually. — A union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force agst. 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. He hoped that such a system would be framed as might render this recourse unnecessary, and moved that the clause be postponed. This motion was agreed to nem. con.”
Alexander Hamilton (an arch-federalist) on coercion and the use of force against a sovereign state:
"It has been observed, to coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to a single state. This being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war?"
"Suppose Massachusetts, or any large state, should refuse, and Congress should attempt to compel them, would they not have influence to procure assistance, especially from those states which are in the same situation as themselves? What picture does this idea present to our view? A complying state at war with a non-complying state; Congress marching the troops of one state into the bosom of another; this state collecting auxiliaries, and forming, perhaps, a majority against the federal head."
"Here is a nation at war with itself. Can any reasonable man be well disposed towards a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself -- a government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. This single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against such a government. But can we believe that one state will ever suffer itself to be used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream; it is impossible."
The constitution is silent on secession and whether the constitution allowed it or not is moot at this point. The argument I am presenting is that south carolina seceded because of the slavery issue.
Was the average southern soldier fighting for the institution of slavery? No. Was the average northern soldier fighting to free the slaves? No. But this does not change the reason that the civil war was fought. I see many posts by freepers trying to distort this easily proven point. If you look at the history of this country slavery has always been an issue of contention. The argument has been made that it is about taxes or the differences between the people of the north and south.
If you look at our history you will see this is not the case. The missiouri compromise was not about taxes. One congressman did not bludgeon another congressman over the issue of taxes. The bloodshed in Kansas prior to the civil war was not a disagreement over taxes. John Brown did not attack harpers ferry because he wanted the south to pay more taxes. He was trying to forment a slave rebellion.
To say that that slavery was not the cause of the civil war is at best disingenuous and at worse an outright lie. I will let Alexander Stephens, the vice-president of the confederacy, speak as to the cause of the civil war;
"The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell." Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition."