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.”
It did not. Secession was accomplished peacefully and by the democratic process. It was not a "rebellion." Lincoln called it a rebellion because with this language he could unlock military powers to stop secession.
As Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase said, "Secession is not rebellion."
Lincoln deliberately provoked a military response by sending warships with orders to attack the confederates.
Oh, and secession is not covered in the constitution. It was covered completely 11 years prior to the constitution in the "Declaration of Independence" which is the legal foundation for the existence of the USA itself.
Nobody dared to claim that Independence was illegal in the constitution convention of 1787, because it was so soon after they had already said it is a right given by God, and nobody had forgotten it after only 11 years.
It isn't mentioned in the US Constitution because it's completely legal. If they had said in the US Constitution that states could not leave voluntarily, the US Constitution could not have been ratified.
Three states made it quite clear in their ratification statements that they could declare independence and separate themselves from the rest of the Union.
New York, Virginia and Rhode Island all said in their ratification that they could reassume the sovereign powers they were giving up by being a member of the Union.
Nobody said "WAIT! HOLD ON! YOU CAN'T DO THAT!" Everyone accepted their ratifying statements as legitimate, and no one objected to their provisions that they could reassume the powers they were giving up.
Additionally, Massachusetts and Connecticut as well as other states asserted their right to secede in the early part of the 19th century. They did not do so, but they claimed they had the right to do so.
So let's get back to your proof that armies were sent into the South to stop slavery. If you are now claiming that slavery had nothing to do with why the Union sent soldiers into the South to conquer them, then shut the f*** up about slavery. Don't want to hear another word about slavery being the cause of the war.
The very idea that you can start a war, and nearly two years later claim the war was to free slaves, is just bullsh*t. You can't make the war about something else after the fact. If it wasn't to free the slaves when it started, the war was not fought for the purpose of freeing the slaves. It was fought for some other purpose that existed at the beginning of the war, not a made up purpose that came 18 months after the war had already began.