The South chose a path of violent secession and lost. THEY LOST! Get over it.
America itself was founded on a path of violent secession. We got lucky, we won.
I view both entities as of similar moral equivalence -- on the issue of the right to secede, only.
You have been brainwashed by revisionist history. The only loser under the Lincoln Administration was our Free Republic.
The South tried to leave peacefully, which they lawfully and naturally had a right to do; but Lincoln would have none of it. Lincoln, the dictator, made that point crystal clear in his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861 – which was a declaration of war, -- as well as through his surrogates, like William Seward, who explained that Lincoln was going to take back the forts within the borders of the Confederate nation:
"[March 26, 1861] I dined at Mr. [Henry Sheldon] Sanford's, where I was introduced to Mr. Seward, Secretary of State; Mr. Truman Smith, an ex-senator, much respected among the Republican party; Mr. Anthony, a senator of the United States, a journalist, a very intelligent-looking man, with an Israelitish cast of face; Colonel Foster of the Illinois railway, of reputation in the States as a geologist; and one or two more gentlemen... After dinner... In reference to an assertion in a New York paper, that orders had been given to evacuate Sumter, "That," [Seward] said, "is a plain lie — no such orders have been given. We will give up nothing we have—abandon nothing that has been intrusted to us. If people would only read these statements by the light of the President's inaugural, they would not be deceived." He wanted no extra session of Congress. "History tells us that kings who call extra parliaments lose their heads," and he informed the company he had impressed the President with his historical parallels."
"All through this conversation his tone was that of a man very sanguine, and with a supreme contempt for those who thought there was anything serious in secession." Why," said he, "I myself, my brothers, and sisters, have been all secessionists — we seceded from home when we were young, but we all went back to it sooner or later. These States will all come back in the same way." I doubt if he was ever in the South; but he affirmed that the state of living and of society there was something like that in the State of New York sixty or seventy years ago. In the North all was life, enterprise, industry, mechanical skill. In the South there was dependence on black labor, and an idle extravagance which was mistaken for elegant luxury — tumble-down old hackney-coaches, such as had not been seen north of the Potomac for half a century, harness never cleaned, ungroomed horses, worked at the mill one day and sent to town the next, badly furnished houses, bad cookery, imperfect education. No parallel could be drawn between them and the Northern States at all. "You are all very angry," he said, "about the Morrill tariff. You must, however, let us be best judges of our own affairs. If we judge rightly, you have no right to complain; if we judge wrongly, we shall soon be taught by the results, and shall correct our error. It is evident that if the Morrill tariff fulfils expectations, and raises a revenue, British manufacturers suffer nothing, and we suffer nothing, for the revenue is raised here, and trade is not injured. If the tariff fails to create a revenue, we shall be driven to modify or repeal it." [Russell, William Howard, "My Diary, North and South, Vol I." Bradbury and Evans, 1863, pp.49-51]
Lincoln was a very corrupt and ambitious politician, who was not about to allow HIS tariff-generating shipping to be diverted to free-trading Confederacy ports. He and his cronies were in the position to get filthy rich on federally-funded "internal improvements," such as the Transcontinental Railroad, and no one was going to stop him without bloodshed. As long as Lincoln was president, war was inevitable.
Mr. Kalamata
Lincoln started the violence. Actually Anderson did, but Lincoln greatly escalated it.