He could claim that he was standing up for the country and the constitution against an illegal and unconstitutional rebellion.
We can see that it was wrong now, and it was wrong then. Lincoln may have won a war, but he inflamed passions that run deep even until today.
You are kidding, right? Passions were inflamed before he came on the scene, and more inflamed in the South than in the North.
This whole "Blame Abe" thing has gotten pretty tiresome.
You're kidding, right?
Lincoln was standing up for the country so he killed and maimed hundreds of thousands. You'll have to do better than that.
Just what part of the Constitution says that secession is illegal? If you're going to use that clause in Article 8 about "suppressing insurrections"....don't. Secession isn't an insurrection.
But, what the Framers did intend was written into the Declaration of Independence. That part that goes: "...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, begun at a distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to subject them to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security...
The states of the Confederacy did what the Framers of the Constitution intended for them to do. That Lincoln chose to make war on the Confederacy shows how much contempt he had for the intentions of the Framers of our Constitution.