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I can't use any smaller words to explain it to you. The United States went to war to suppress a rebellion. During the war to suppress the rebellion they used the common war tactic of taking enemy contraband. Congress followed up on this by passing the confiscation act of 1861. (so you can't just blame Lincoln on this). Then Congress later drafted and passed (with the Presidents support) the 13th Amendment. All of this was constitutional. What was not constitutional was secession. As far as not caring why the States rebelled, as you claim to not care, I do. Why? Because knowing why someone does something let's us determine if it is morally right. So here is George C. Smoot's proposed resolutions at the Arkansas secession convention, why don't you read it and tell me why he is saying Arkansas should secede.

On March 9, George P. Smoote of Columbia County introduced these resolutions:

“1st. Resolved, That the platform of the party known as the black republican party, contains unconstitutional dogmas, dangerous in their tendency and highly derogatory to the rights of slave states, and among them the insulting, injurious and untruthful enunciation of the right of the African race in this country to social and political equality with the whites.

“2nd. Resolved, That it is the sense of this convention, from the past history of the party, known as the black republican party–from the past action of its leaders, and their course in the present crisis, and from the acts, utterances and conduct of its newly elected president, that said party intends to abide by and carry out, if possible, its insulting and unconstitutional platform.

“3rd. Resolved. That the seceded states have ample justification for having dissolved the ties which bound them to the old Federal Union, in the constant and unconstitutional political warfare made by the party, known as the black republican party, upon the institutions of the slave states, which warfare has culminated in the election of a president by that party, by a purely sectional vote–upon an unconstitutional platform, the principles of which, if carried out, would utterly ruin the South.

“4th. Resolved, That this convention cannot shut its eyes upon the fact that the government of the United States is now under the control of said black republican party, and that said party has power to use every arm of the same, except, perhaps, the judicial.

“5th. Resolved. That in the opinion of this convention it is a conclusion clearly resulting from the foregoing that every feeling of honor, interest and sympathy demand that the State of Arkansas should discontinue her present political relations with the United States of America, and unite herself with the Confederate States of America.”