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So obviously, Sherman never read Lost Causer theses that slavery was really just the excuse, not the real cause for Secession.
As for Sherman's opinions on constitutionality of secession, Unionists have always said Confederates had no unilateral "right to secede" or to start & declare war against the USA.

Slavery was indeed the major cause of secession (though there were others. The upper Southern states seceded because Lincoln tried to force them to send troops to invade the seceded states). But secession is not war, and the reasons for each are different. The South fought because it was militarily invaded. The union made war on the South, not the other way around. Ten thousand-plus battles, from minor skirmishes to days long heavy combat, and virtually all of them fought on Southern soil.

For the union, the purpose of the war was not ending slavery, preserving the union or nullifying the concept of secession ... it was to grind the South underfoot, to lay it waste, to dehumanize Southerners and make them the nation's trash people as far into the future as the eye could see.

Secession was not a right, it was a power; a power reserved to the states and the people:

The powers prohibited to the states are identified in Article I, Section 10, of the U.S. Constitution. Secession is not among them, so it is not prohibited.

The power to prohibit secession is not listed among the powers delegated to the United States.

The 10th Amendment states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited to by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people."

Don't confuse Confederates with the colonial patriots, who were indeed traitors. The difference was the type of government each sought to separate from. The crown legitimately owned the colonies and declaring independence was open treason and rebellion. The feds did not own the states (they do now); states had voluntarily entered into a voluntary union and reserved the power to voluntarily leave it.

Secession is a power reserved to the states and the people. Only in the Victor Fables does it become "unconstitutional."

Sherman's hatred for secessionists was psychotic.

Nellie Wilkerson: "...secession is not war, and the reasons for each are different.
The South fought because it was militarily invaded."

Well... actually Confederates began seizing Union properties (forts, ships, arsenals, mints), threatening Union officials, firing on Union ships, etc., immediately after first declaring secession on December 20, 1860.
Democrat President Buchanan offered no serious response, but did refuse to surrender Fort Sumter without a fight.
When President Lincoln then tried to resupply Sumter, Jefferson Davis ordered it assaulted, "reduced" and forced to surrender.
Thus, war was on.

There was no Union "invasion" of Confederate states until long after Confederates formally declared war against the United States, May 6, 1861.

Nellie Wilkerson: "The union made war on the South, not the other way around.
Ten thousand-plus battles, from minor skirmishes to days long heavy combat, and virtually all of them fought on Southern soil."

Well... actually, in 1861 there were far more battles fought in Union states than Confederate states, and more Confederate soldiers died in Union states that year.
By mid-1862 the numbers of battles & deaths were roughly equal, Union & Confederacy, and from that point on, the war was fought mostly in Confederate states.

However, as late as the fall of 1864 there were still Confederates fighting in Union states from Missouri to Maryland.

Nellie Wilkerson: "For the union, the purpose of the war was not ending slavery, preserving the union or nullifying the concept of secession ... it was to grind the South underfoot, to lay it waste, to dehumanize Southerners and make them the nation's trash people as far into the future as the eye could see."

Complete nonsense.
If Southern slaveholders felt like "trash people" in 1865, they soon enough got over it, using leverage from the election of 1876 to get Union troops withdrawn from the South, end Republican Reconstruction and impose the Democrats' Black Laws, Jim Crow and KKK terrorists -- effectively nullifying the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments for the next 100 years.

Nellie Wilkerson: "Secession was not a right, it was a power; a power reserved to the states and the people: "

No state in 1788 asserted an unlimited "right of secession".
A few states did tie potential disunion to necessity, injustice or oppression.
None of those conditions existed in November 1860 when Deep South Fire Eaters began organizing to declare secession.

Nellie Wilkerson: "The feds did not own the states (they do now); states had voluntarily entered into a voluntary union and reserved the power to voluntarily leave it."

Both Democrat President Buchanan and Republican President Lincoln recognized that secession alone was not cause for Civil War, and neither moved to impose military control over seceding states, until...
Until Jefferson Davis ordered war to begin at Fort Sumter and the Confederacy formally declared war against the United States, on May 6, 1861.
Then war was on and all the other issues came into play.

Nellie Wilkerson: "Sherman's hatred for secessionists was psychotic."

Sherman was criticized by radical Republicans for granting surrender terms they considered too lenient.
Confederate soldiers & civilians deserve our understanding & sympathy, Confederate leaders, not so much.