"Like" implies subjectivity. They are not seeing things objectively.
No matter how you slice it, New York and Washington who were grabbing the lion's share of 200 million dollars in trade, was not going to give that up over some principle that people should have self determination.
Worse still, they were not going to allow their carefully created protectionist markets in the interior of the nation to be destroyed by a system of commerce verging on free trade.
They might have tolerated giving up their Southern milk cow, but there was no way they would ever tolerate the threat to their hard built industries.
But people don't want to even look at the economic issues here. They want to believe the lofty sounding principles presented ex post facto to justify the war.
People like James Madison, Daniel Webster, and Salmon Chase could hardly be blinded by Lincoln myths. And none of them share your opinions.
I've addressed Madison before. If he had any objection to the idea of secession, he should have voiced it when he was on Virginia's committee which drafted the language to Virginia's ratification of the US Constitution.
He didn't. 40 years later, he says that secession is illegal. Which Madison are we to believe? The one that helped write the statement recognizing the right to "reassume" the powers of the state, or the guy 40 years later who contradicts the Virginia Ratification statement?
As for Daniel Webster and Salmon P Chase, Webster wasn't born when the Declaration was written, and he was only 5 years old when the Constitution was written, so I wouldn't put much stock in his opinion. Salmon P Chase was born years after both the Declaration and the Constitution, and so he too wasn't a contemporary who had first hand knowledge.
The Declaration speaks plainly about the right to independence, and attempts to deny what it says are just obfuscation.
In your opinion.
I've addressed Madison before.
Yes, we've all heard your opinions on Madison, Webster, Chase, and a host of others. Over and over and over again.