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If you were going to do that, you wouldn't have replied. No, what you are trying to do is get your version of events out, and ignore the factual information that I have put before you.

There is a constitutional clause REQUIRING slaves to be returned to the people to whom their labor is due according to the laws of the state that holds them.

No lesser act of congress can override that. It simply does not matter what congress says on the subject, because the Constitution itself says they have to be returned.

If you want a fig leaf, Lincoln could have ordered his army to force the states to abolish their laws, but what he can't do is free them when state laws hold them, and the constitution requires those state laws to be enforced.

If you were going to do that, you wouldn't have replied.

I didn't. I replied to ontop and you put your two cents worth in and I had to reply to you. I believe you began posting your idiotic opinion on the Constitutionality of Lincoln's actions in post 258. I made sure to ignore you then, and continued to do so until you forced it back into the conversation.

DiogenesLamp: "There is a constitutional clause REQUIRING slaves to be returned to the people to whom their labor is due according to the laws of the state that holds them.
No lesser act of congress can override that.
It simply does not matter what congress says on the subject, because the Constitution itself says they have to be returned."

That is such blatant nonsense I can't believe DiogenesLamp continues to post it with even a smidgen of sincerity.
And DoodleDawg fully answered in post #307, saying Lincoln:

"...was acting under the authority granted the government by the Confiscation Acts, the constitutionality of which were upheld by the Supreme Court in The Prize Cases (67 US 635) in 1862;"

By now DiogenesLamp should well know the 1787 US Constitution fully recognizes possibilities for rebellion, insurrection, domestic violence, invasion and treason.
It even allows normal protections to be set aside during such periods, i.e., habeas corpus.
And the Constitution grants ultimate authority in Article 1 Section 8, to:

"To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;"

Further, in 1807 President Jefferson and his Democrats in Congress passed the Insurrection Act granting

authority to President

So President Jefferson's Insurrection Act of 1807 is what President Lincoln used to declare the beginning of Civil War in 1861.
It was also the basis for the August 1861 Confiscation Act, which made runaway slaves, aka "contraband" property of the Federal government, to be treated as hired hands.

Lincoln's 1862 Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order to all Federal units under Lincoln's command, declaring Confederate slaves free when they reached Union lines.
Like the previous Confiscation Acts, Emancipation was an act of war under authority of Article 1, section 8 and the 1807 Insurrection Act.

All of which DiogenesLamp well knows but refuses to acknowledge because it shoots down his favorite historical fantasies.

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Note on this map those states & territories colored as "disputed".
By any definition, Confederate efforts to seize those through military force amounted to constitutionally recognized invasion or rebellion, and as such an existential threat to the United States: