[jlogajan]

The North's legal case is astonishingly thin being based on the then novel legal theory of a pre-existing Union creating sovereign states.

If the states actually seceded they had no legal rights, as they abandoned the basis of legality, the Union Constituion. The secessionists can claim no legal basis to complain about anything the north did.

If the states didn't legally secede, then the Union had a right to supress the unconstitutional governments.

Either way you look at it, the secessionists lose the argument.

[ggekko]

"If the states actually seceded they had no legal rights, as they abandoned the basis of legality, the Union Constituion..."

If a sovereign seceded, as the Confederate States did, then the Union had absolutely no legal basis to invade them. Lincoln did not even pretend to make such an argument.

Lincoln's entire legal position was based upon the idea that a sovereign state could not secede under any circumstances and that, in essence, the Union was conducting a police action in a subordinate political unit.

This legal doctrine represented a complete break with all previous leagl scholarship on this subject and is completely incompatible with a Federal government of "limited and enumerated powers". The Federal government envisoned under Licoln's theory has unlimited power over purportedly sovereign states.