Look up the history. Who fired first?
In 1860 secessionists were out to establish their own country, their own government, and they wanted it to lay claim to as much territory as they could (with the proviso of course, that states and territories that didn't allow slavery wouldn't be welcome).
Therefore, they weren't averse to subverting other state and territorial governments and beginning a war. And they did just that. Or did you miss that day in history class?
No, the vast majority of the Founders, Framers and Ratifiers (as well as Locke, Cicero, Plato, Augustine and Aristotle) understood the Inalienable Right to self determination and self governance.
So they believed that whenever you were dissatisfied you could simply throw off the rest of your country and declare yourself independent? Somehow I don't think so.
Self-determination and self-government take place in a context of law and responsibility and mutual obligations. Believing that any passing grievance justifies rebellion or secession isn't something wise men would agree with.
So far as I can see neither Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Cicero, nor St. Augustine justified unilateral secession from a representative republic. So far as I've been able to find out, we don't know how they would have reacted to a situation like that in America in the 1860s.
Take a minute if you will and read the Principles of 98 to see what two of them said they intended to do with the Aliens and Sedition Act.
Nothing too shocking or obscene, I hope (though with Jefferson I kind of wonder).
Take a minute to find out how Washington reacted to the Whiskey Rebellion, or Jefferson to Burr's conspiracy or violations of his embargo.
Politicians can talk a pretty "state's rights" game when they are out of power, but they behave very differently when they're actually in office.
So funny how all my points are simply ignored. And, the term the founding generation used was “separation”. It is equivalent in meaning to secession. So, if it makes you feel better we absolutely have the right to separate. Just like joining the union was voluntary so is leaving. Just like a union between a man and a woman can end if only 1 of the parties wishes not to stay. But of course, following your logic the man or woman that doesn’t want to remain in the marriage has every right to beat into submission the one that wants to leave.
I’ll simply restate... you believe in unlimited submission to the federal government. You do not believe in “consent of the governed” which is the ideal of popular sovereignty. You believe the federal government is not the agent of the people and the states, that the federal government is not suppose to act as a fiduciary and public trustee. You believe the federal government is to act like a ruler, to subjugate citizens to whatever arbitrary whims it devises, to reduce them to subjects under despotism. And the citizens are suppose to simply take it... to say “Thank you sir, May I please have another”. Well you might like being bent over and smacked by the cabal in DC... but I do not.
And to those that say you cannot just throw off government... reread the Declaration of Independence. It is precisely that right that the people reserve. To alter or abolish it. Period. End of Story.
Why do so many people object to the idea that the people, the sovereign individuals can determine their own governance? Is that radical? Hardly. It is about the people ruling themselves, not 545 kings in DC. Are you simply afraid to take responsibility. Are you afraid of failing.