The threats of secession over tariffs Constitutionally enacted by Congress violated the agreement signed by all States to live under the Constitution. To threaten to secede in rejection to a tariff enacted Constitutionally, constituted a rejection of the Constitutional form of government agreed upon by all States.
The will of the people was represented by the actions of their elected representatives in Congress, and it was Congress that enacted the tariff of abominations that Calhoun objected to, and that led to Carolina's threat to secede from the Union.
So, there again, the States rejected the Constitution they had agreed to govern under.
"Who couldn't care less about the Constitution? Southern states representatives? If so, that's not accurate - they chose to uphold the Constitution."
False.
Abraham Lincoln was Constitutionally elected...they did not defend his election, they secede over his election. Defending the Constitution meant defending a Constitutional election.
The South insisted on the imposition of the Gag Rule, a clear violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution by negating the citizens the right to petition the government. They threatened secession if discussions on slavery were not tabled without consideration. The actions of Congress, reached as an agreement to end the threatened secession, was a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution, and it was supported by the same States who later claimed that their secession was in actuality a defense of the Constitution.
The threat of secession in 1850, led by the Fire eaters, and fueled by the expansion westward and California's ban on slavery once again pitted the diminishing support for slavery in Congress against the growing abolitionist majority, a compromised was reached in order to stop the threatened secession of the minority...once again, a violation of the will of the majority of the people, as represented by the Constitutionally elected members of Congress, by the minority pro-slavery factions.
In supporting the Fugitive Slave Law, the slave holding States violated their own idea of State sovereignty by demanding that States that abolished slavery be subjected to the will of States who supported slavery via use of Federal force and acts of Congress...these are the very same States that supported Calhoun's idea of the right of a state to nullify laws which went against its interests.
The denied the Northern States the ability to nullify laws which went against their OWN interests, and indeed used Congress in a manner that they themselves had rejected, and threatened secession over.
Let's end this.
The hypocrisy of the South was beyond belief.
They rejected the Constitutional process when it went against their interest, and demanded that other States accept laws enacted Constitutionally even if it went against the interests of those States.
Claimed that they were in favor of upholding the Constitution, and seceded in protest of the outcome of a Constitutional election.
They created crisis after crisis over slavery, ultimately leading to secession and claimed that slavery was not the issue.
There may have been other issues, the most glaring of which being the South's rejection of Constitutional rule, but the defense of slavery was in and of itself such a heinous offense to human decency, such a vile rejection of the God-given natural rights of man, and such an affront to the principles that this Nation was founded on, that it makes every other argument defending the South worthless, and those who defend the right of the South to secede in order to continue and expand their "peculiar institution" little more than apologists for the idea that one man can buy and sell another man as property.
Vile notion, and no amount of double talk, no coat of paint, and no number of rose colored glasses will ever overcome the evil that the South slaveholders stood for.
Louis, Louis - we've covered this many times. Please point out where the Constitution explicity forbids secession.