Which means he interpreted it, then acted upon that 'interpretation'.
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Had the secessionists stayed in the union in 1861 they faced no loss of their rights as citizens under the Constitution.
LOL! The Constitution is a voluntary compact, not a suicide pact, and no one has any different right as a citizen under the Constitution as they do as a 'resident' or 'denizen'.
The Constitution grants nothing, it only outlines the scope of the general governments powers and expresses a few things the States are restricted from doing.
"The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no such duty [to submit his books and papers for an examination] to the State, since he receives nothing therefrom, beyond the protection of his life and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land [Common Law] long antecedent to the organization of the State, and can only be taken from him by due process of law, and in accordance with the Constitution. Among his rights are a refusal to incriminate himself, and the immunity of himself and his property from arrest or seizure except under a warrant of the law. He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights."
Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43 at 47 (1905)
There is no prevision for the President to exceed his constitutional authority based solely on his own judgment that 'rights needed to be extended to all Americans'.
If you should find such a Constitutional clause, please don't hesitate to post it.
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But Lincoln could not support the continuing desire of the Slovenian South to subvert the established right of Congress to control slavery in the territories.
Congress could establish territories, but had no authority to 'control' them outside their authority.
It was a legal impossibility to tell a slave-owner from a slave-holding state that he no longer had a right to his property once he traveled to a territory or another State.
The right to property is a guaranteed right, and slaves were property no matter how morally abhorrent we judge slavery to be today.
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.
James Madison's Essay on Property (1792)
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It's all very simple unless one s trying to justify the unjustifiable selfish power grab of a group of slavery loving southern politicians.
I believe another poster has already pointed out the details of unfair trade practices being passed by the federal government. Nowhere was an authority given to interfere with the rights of the states on the issue of slavery or to financially punish those States that allowed it.
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I've enjoyed the discussion, but, like many people, you don't seem to understand that the Constitution is a LEGAL contract, not a moral one. Like any legal contract, the terms must be expressed in the contract. It's called full disclosure.
There is no Constitutional authority to extent powers outside the enumerated area OR prevent the States from leaving the compact. The States did not rebel, only people can rebel. Rebellion is when a group of people try to overthrow the legitimate authority. The States WERE the legitimate authority.
The States in the South only wished to leave since the federal government was no longer abiding by the Constitution and Lincoln refusal to allow them to go was an unconstitutional act.
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They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please ... Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect.
Thomas Jefferson, Opinion on National Bank, 1791
But that precedent was set by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 which the Southern states agreed to in Congress at the time of the Constitutional convention. Many in the North thought it was the southern states who were the ones trying to unilaterally reverse the mutual compact in their overturning of the NW Ordinance. The Northwest Ordinance was a real agreement. On the other hand, there is nothing in the Constitution that said the slaveowning interests had to have a veto on national decisions despite what John C. Calhoun may have wished it to say.
I too have enjoyed the civil discourse, but I guess we've come to the same impasse in opinions that divided our people in the 1850s.