The things I'm talking about started before Lincoln even took office. Whether what he did was right or wrong, he didn't start it.
I’m curious. What fraudulent elections were you talking about in the South? I'm aware of election problems in Delaware, New York, and Kentucky during the war, and the overthrow of elected government in Maryland. Missouri too maybe, but I don't know the history of that state very well.
We still don't know whether Georgians voted secession up or down at the polls or whether a majority wanted secession. I don't know if the main reason was confusion, coercion, and corruption at the polls, but the results of the election are quite uncertain. Wasn't there one state that was obligated to put the secession question before the voters in a referendum, and didn't? Notice that this happened well before the things you complain about.
Seizing property and bad behavior? I suspect that you are not talking about looting by Federal troops at Fredericksburg or what occurred in Georgia and South Carolina along Sherman's path.
That has as little to do with my point as the re-enslavement of free blacks when Lee invaded the North. Once again, I'm talking about things that occurred before any of these things happened. If I recall correctly, Virginia's governor seized federal arms before the state voted for secession, maybe even after the state convention voted secession down. The saying about South Carolina in 1865 was Hosea 8:1-14 - "They Sow the Wind, and Reap the Whirlwind." Not a very Christian sentiment, perhaps, but perfectly understandable.
There were all sorts of provocations going on:
True, but Davis had an opportunity to define himself as a reasonable alternative to the hotheadedness of Pickens and the South Carolinians and he didn't take it. Maybe it was already too late, since he'd determined to become head of his own country, but Davis wasn't exactly a peacemaker.
Anderson occupying Sumter in apparent violation of the informal truce between South Carolinians and Buchanan.
Aside from the obvious nonsense of a "truce" between the federal government and one of the states, you'll have to explain what you're talking about. What "truce" was there when South Carolina was already seizing federal installations? How "informal" was it? Maybe Non-Sequitur could help with the details.
William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis's biographer, writes in his essay "Myths and Realities of the Confederacy" (The Cause Lost : Myths and Realities of the Confederacy, 1996), that a state of civil insurrection existed well before the attack on Sumter: " Jefferson Davis did not need to open fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 to begin the war. Armed insurrection began on December 27, 1860, when the South Carolina forces seized Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie and the U.S. revenue cutter William Aitken." (p. 188). The rest of the essay and book are well worth a look.
I’m sorry. You lost me. What was unconstitutional or illegitimate? Please cite the law or part of the Constitution being violated.
I assume that Article 1, Section 10 also applies to a league or alliance or confederacy of states:
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay. Emphasis added.
I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it. There is a discussion of it in Maury Klein's well documented book Days of Defiance. Five Carolina congressmen put together a letter in December 1860 prior to secession in response from a request by Buchanan that their proposal previously presented to him be in writing. They had proposed that the status quo be maintained with regard to the forts and that the matter be resolved through negotiation.
The South Carolinians verbally explained that any shift of troops by Anderson from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter would violate their proposal. Buchanan said that his policy was to maintain the status quo but that he couldn't pledge anything. He said that it was a "matter of honor among gentlemen."
From Klein: "All parties went away believing a bargain had been struck, without knowing exactly what the bargain was, who the parties to it were, and what its precise terms were."
Buchanan's reaction to Anderson occupying Sumter was interesting. From Klein again:
...The next morning when Trescot was readying their credentials [the credentials of the South Carolina commissioners who had come to talk with Buchanan], Louis Wigfall burst in with a telegram that Anderson had spiked Moultrie's guns and moved to Sumter. The commissioners and Trescot were stunned. "True or not," said Trescot amid an animated discussion, "I will pledge my life that if it has been done it has been without orders from Washington.
Just then Floyd arrived. He blanched at the news and confirmed what Trescot had said, that such a move "would be not only against orders but in the face of orders." ....
Trescot informed Senators Jefferson Davis and Robert Hunter and went with them to the White House to demand an explanation. Buchanan had not heard of Anderson's action.
Buchanan slumped into a chair. "My God!" he cried wearily. "Are calamities ... never to come singly! I call God to witness -- you gentlemen better than anybody else know that this is not only without but against my orders. It is against my policy." ...
The article would apply to states remaining in the Union. There was nothing in the Constitution prohibiting states from seceding, and the understandings of Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island at the time of ratification confirm that. Once a state seceded, constitutional restrictions no longer applied to them.
The rules of Great Britain no longer apply to us -- we seceded from them. Mexican rules no longer apply to Texas (yet) -- Texas seceded, and the US accepted that secession.
Armed force actually began on December 26, 1860 when Federal troops overpowered a ship's captain (he fought back at this piracy) and had him take them to Sumter, and when they arrived at Sumter Federal troops charged the civilian laborers there with bayonets.
The ship incident is described in E. Milby Burton's excellent book, The Siege of Charleston, 1861-1865."