Je was already a thief. As I pointed out, it was impossible to recognize him without giving a felony the onus of being a legal act. Doesn't take much of a lawyer to figure that one out.
At that same time the state of South Carolina authorized a negotiating team and sent their Attorney General to Washington for the purpose of negotiating a settlement with the north. The yankees refused to meet with him.
Even later for them. Same issue. The time to negotiate was before the illegal seizure of property belonging to all of the states.
A few weeks later the newly organized CSA government sent a three man team including a US Congressman, a former Governor of Louisiana, and the mayor of Mobile Alabama to Washington for the purpose of negotiating a settlement and delivering payment according to any settled terms. The yankees refused to meet with them.
Of course. They had no right to steal the property in the first place. At a minimum, it was their obligation to return it before attempting to open any discussion on the matter. Since they did not, there was no alternative but to regard them as felons.
After the CSA team had arrived in Washington and found the new Lincoln administration unwilling to negotiate, two sitting US Senators who had not yet seceded (Louis T. Wigfall of Texas and Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia) offered to serve as intermediaries between the CSA negotiators and the Lincoln administration. Lincoln refused to meet with even the sitting senators.
If the men had asked Hunter and Wigfall to represent them at trial for their crimes, that would have been a different matter, but they didn't.
After Lincoln refused even the senator's offer, a sitting justice of the US Supreme Court offered to act as an intermediary between the CSA negotiators and the Lincoln administration on a strictly informal basis. Lincoln refused to meet and, by way of Seward, conveyed false indications of his policy towards Fort Sumter to both the justice and the CSA negotiators.
Our government still has a standing policy not to negotiate with criminals with the purpose of facilitating their criminal activity.
Finding the new administration completely unwilling to engage in any form of diplomatic settlement to the secession crisis whatsoever, the CSA negotiators then returned to Montgomery. Upon return John Forsyth, one of the negotiators and mayor of Mobile, informed the confederate government of the situation he faced:
"There is little that I can add to letters and telegrams previously dispatched. We never had a chance to make Lincoln an offer of any kind. You can't negotiate with a man who says you don't exist"
While individual states had an implicit right to secede, the formation of a combination was another matter, as was the aborgation of the responsibility of the Federal government to assure a Republican form of government in states that had not legitimately voted to secede.
Besides, any such negotiations would only have been a sham, as the south could never afford to pay back it's debts to the Union. Still can't today. How were they ever to do it then?
Whether or not you contend that any of the southern states left legitimately by popular consent, even one state in the CSA by any other means invalidated it's existence, even if the Constitution did not forbid combinationd formed by secessionary states. Lincoln had no choice.
And you are evidently neither a lawyer nor have you figured much of anything out. The first southern negotiators, a team appointed by South Carolina, reached Washington on December 26, 1860 before a single fort had been taken. They were scheduled to meet with President Buchanan the next day but that was thrown into turmoil thanks to Robert Anderson in Charleston. Anderson had command of the city's forts and was stationed in Fort Moultrie. The other forts, including Sumter, were virtually unoccupied and in a sort of "mothball" state. The War Department and South Carolina were of mutual understanding that neither would act so long as Anderson stayed put in Moultrie and the other forts be left unoccupied. On December 26 that all changed when Anderson, acting unilaterally and without orders, quietly snuck his men over into Fort Sumter. The move was a practical one for him as Sumter was more defensible, but it was also a diplomatic disaster because it came without orders and voided the War Department's part of the bargain in what had been until then a stalemate with neither side acting. In Washington the commander of the army, Gen. Winfield Scott, informed Buchanan that Anderson had recieved "no order, intimation, suggestion, or communication" since his arrival in Moultrie and the War Secretary informed the President that Anderson had acted "in the face of orders." Buchanan met informally with the SC negotiators the day after Anderson's move but only agreed to convey their message to Congress. Also responding to Anderson's move, the South Carolina militia moved in behind him and occupied the forts he had pulled out of starting with the virtually abandoned Fort Johnson, which had been in near ruins for decades.
So in other words, the initiating act of the dispute was NOT the seizure of the forts by the south but rather the occupation of Fort Sumter by the north under a commander who acted without orders and thus unsettled a shaky but nevertheless present peace.
Even later for them.
Actually no it wasn't. The South Carolina negotiators arrived in Washington before any fort had been taken and were met there with the shock that Anderson, acting without order, militarized the mothballed Fort Sumter thereby initiating the events that led to seizure.
Oh, and one more thing. There is also the issue of how the federals came into ownership of the forts in Charleston to begin with. The South Carolina legislature had, over the previous decades, granted them permission by statute to occupy, maintain, and build upon the Charleston forts so long as they were kept in working condition and used for coastal defenses against foreign enemies. Virtually every of the fort in Charleston save Sumter predated the revolution itself and thus was property of South Carolina to begin with. Those authorizations are key because when South Carolina seceded it also repealed all of those previous laws in which it granted the forts to the US army. Thus, by statute, they technically resumed ownership of what was theirs to begin with on December 20, 1860. When SC occupied the abandoned Fort Johnson (built in 1708) a day or two after Anderson moved to Sumter they simply took control of a fort that had been theirs when it was built and had been resumed in ownership when the laws granting it to the army were repealed. Moultrie and Pinckney were taken over the next few days and both were pre-revolutionary properties as well.
Sumter, where Anderson removed to until April 1861, was built by the government in the 1810's and 20's on an artificial island after the South Carolina legislature authorized it. Though that act was also repealed by the secession ordinance, the feds did have a greater claim to Sumter than any of the others since, unlike the others, they built it. But since the SC troops did not take Fort Sumter at the time of the negotiations, they cannot be said to have assumed control over anything other than what South Carolina had constructed itself back in revolutionary days and before. So in that sense they didn't "steal" anything. They reassumed control over what they themselves had constructed by repealing the statutes that had given control to the feds and by moving on them only after they had been abandoned and in direct response to an aggressive act by the commander who abandoned them.
12 out of the 13 states officially recognized by the confederacy seceded by one of the following options:
(a) their popularly elected state legislatures
(b) a popularly elected state secession convention
(c) a popular referendum among the state's voters
Only Kentucky, which officially declared its neutrality in the conflict but was claimed in part by both sides, did not secede by one of these means. As for ensuring a republican form of government, by far the greatest violation of that requirement was at federal hands in Missouri. In June 1861 Lincoln marched his army on the state government in Jefferson City and literally chased them out of town even though they had not voted to secede. Only two state officers remained behind, assuming that their staunch unionist political views would ensure their safety. One resigned in protest of Lincoln's attempted hijacking of the state government. The other was imprisoned and deposed from office by military force. The remainder fled for their lives. This included both a secessionist minority and the very same legislature that had resisted calls to secession for months. Shortly before the capitol was invaded they passed an act calling up the state militia and even placed it under the command of former Gov. Sterling Price - a unionist who had been president of the convention a few months earlier that had decided AGAINST secession. Price and the militia were tasked with defending the government from the federal attackers and went to work holding off the larger union army as best they could. This bought the state government enough time to flee to the southwest, where they reconvened under the defense of the state militia. Acting in direct response to Lincoln's aggression, they finally voted to secede. Lincoln meanwhile proceeded to install his own illegitimate and unelected military government in their place back in Jefferson City, thus denying Missouri its constitutional right to a republican form of government.