Well yes he did...that's a fact. From your fellow worshippers over at the Cato Institute
On another point, it looks like Lincoln's belief in the union went against the Declaration's view about when people have the right to dissolve their government, a view he himself seems to have held at one time in his political career. In January 1848 he said: "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better."
So, what then is so sacred about the American union? Why can't a substantial segment of the citizenry separate from the country and go its own way? These are important questions when we consider that Lincoln supported secession on flimsier grounds than does the Declaration of Independence. It requires "a long train of abuses and usurpations," which reduce a government to "absolute despotism," before secession is justified.
Lincoln, Secession and Slavery by Tibor R. Machan
I'm just suprised they let him right an article of non-praise and allowed him to apparently keep his job...
By the same token, the 13 colonies had a natural right to revolt against England, but they had no legal right to do so. The difference is that they were able to win a war of independence.
I think Lincoln was very clear about what he said in 1848. One would have a tough time interpreting it differently.
You're being disingenuous here as you know darn well Lincoln was referring to the natural right of revolution and not secession.
The Ordinance (of Nullification) is founded... on the strange position that any one state may not only declare an act of Congress void, but prohibit its execution; that they may do this consistently with the Constitution; that the true construction of [the Constitution] permits a state to retain its place in the Union and yet be bound by no other of its laws than those it may choose to consider as constitutional.... Look for a moment to the consequence. If South Carolina considers the revenue laws unconstitutional and has a right to prevent their execution in the port of Charleston, there would be a clear constitutional objection to their collection in every other port; and no revenue shall be collected anywhere.... If this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the Union would have been dissolved in its infancy....
I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one state, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted explicitly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.
In vain these sages [the framers of the Constitution] declared that Congress should have the power to lay and collect taxes, duties, etc.; in vain they have provided that they shall have the power to pass laws which shall be necessary and proper to carry those powers into execution, that those laws and the Constitution should be the Îsupreme law of the land, and that judges in every state shall be bound thereby...Ì Vain provisions! ineffectual restrictions! vile profanation of oaths! miserable mockery of legislation! if a bare majority of voters in any one state may, on real or supposed knowledge of the intent with which a law has been passed, declare themselves free from its operation....
The right to secede is deduced from the nature of the Constitution, which they say, is a compact between sovereign states who have preserved their whole sovereignty and are subject to no superior: that because they make the compact they can break it when their opinion has been departed from by other states....
The Constitution forms a government, not a league.... Each state having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute jointly with other nations, a single nation, cannot from that period, posses any right to secede, because such succession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation.... To say that any state may at pleasure secede from the union is to say that the United States is not a nation.... Because the union was formed by a compact, it is said that the parties to that compact may, when they feel themselves aggrieved, depart from it; but it is precisely because it is a compact that they may not. A compact is a binding obligation....