The point is that there were options - constitutional ones. That there were votes, constitutional ones at the time, that were held in the South, showing they no longer wished to be governed. It is not fair to gage the South by the rules of today - when black people could not vote in the north either. The same exact process that elected Lincoln, was the same process by which the south said they wished not to be governed by him.
The difference is that in the south - support was overwhelming to leave - whereas Lincoln had just 38 percent support of America. Less, if you count South Carolina.
Constitutional? No. There was nothing in the Constitution about secession.
And those were very irregular elections. Look up the history. Some states held conventions. In others the state legislature made the decision. The way delegates were chosen to the conventions may also have varied.
Some conventions voted down secession before voting it up. Any number of rejections apparently didn't count, but one acceptance changed everything.
One state announced it would hold a convention and didn't, the state legislature doing the seceding. Some states held referendums to ratify the secession. Others didn't.
Georgia historians concluded that there were so many irregularities in the election of delegates that they couldn't conclude who had won.
There were enough charges of fraud and intimidation that unionists were within their rights to criticize the results. And the questions at stake were important enough that they had to do so.
The difference is that in the south - support was overwhelming to leave - whereas Lincoln had just 38 percent support of America. Less, if you count South Carolina.
South Carolina? Do you understand that it wasn't just the African-American majority of the state that wasn't allowed to vote in that election? Even free white property owners didn't vote. The state legislature made the choice.
If you don't show your citizens the courtesy of actually asking what they think about the political choices you make for them, you can't claim that they somehow, without being allowed to vote, implicitly "voted" for the choices you made. We've discussed all that, and any sane, thoughtful person would at least acknowledge and consider the point.
38% of the vote for Lincoln? According to the figures I've seen it was closer to 40%. But the Republicans won a majority in the electoral college fair and square. You are willing to split up the country because of some questionable actions in various states, but you reject the results of a national election?
Also, you only count the elections which go your own way. In a two candidate run-off, Lincoln might very well have won a majority. All he needed to get to 50% was a little over a third of Douglas voters (some Bell voters might also have gone his way).
Or say Lincoln didn't. Say you had 60% of the country on your side, implacably opposed to the Republicans. Was a 40% minority president really that threatening? If the country really backed you with well over a majority what was the problem and why was secession necessary?