The southern supporters here would have us believe that the southern acts of unilateral secession were legal acts. Lincoln is obviously talking about rebellion, rising up and throwing off the existing government. Such actions are not legal and by definition the government would be right in opposing such an act.
I don't see where unilateral secession is illegal...it is not a power prohibited to the states under the Constitution...and, while I would acknowledge that the Constitution gives the federal government the power to call out the militia to suppress rebellions...I'm not sure that the secession of a group of states would qualify as the a rebellion against the US government...at least as the Founders understood it
The Confederate states were not trying to overthrow, supplant or replace the existing US federal government...only to withdraw from it and establish a new federal government. As you know, the Founders drew heavily on John Locke...and a fundamental principle of Locke was that any power granted could be reclaimed. This language was included in several states' ratification documents. In 1789, the sovereign states delegated some of their powers to a new federal government to act as their agent on some matters that are better suited to be exercised by a federal government...but they always retain the right to reclaim those powers granted
Interestingly, at the Constitutional Convention, a proposal was made to give the federal government the powers necessary to preserve harmony among the States to negative all State laws contravening in the opinion of the Nat. Leg. the articles of union, down to the last clause, (the words "or any treaties subsisting under the authority of the Union," being added after the words "contravening &c. the articles of the Union," on motion of Dr. FRANKLIN) were agreed to witht. debate or dissent. The last clause of Resolution 6.11 authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole agst. a delinquent State came next into consideration.
But that proposal was rejected and tabled when James Madison objected:
Mr. MADISON observed that the more he reflected on the use of force, the more he doubted the practicability, the justice and the efficacy of it when applied to people collectively and not individually. -A union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force agst. a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound. He hoped that such a system would be framed as might render this recourse12 unnecessary, and moved that the clause be postponed. This motion was agreed to nem. con.
--Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 by James Madison, Thursday May 31
Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 by James Madison, Thursday May 31
Hamilton, as well...probably the leading advocate of a powerful federal government, argued for the federal power to tax citizens directly rather than collect taxes from the states because he did not want the situation to arise where one or more states would refuse to pay taxes over to the federal government.
So, in the NY state ratifying convention Hamilton stated:
It has been observed, to coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to a single state. This being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war?
Suppose Massachusetts, or any large state, should refuse, and Congress should attempt to compel them, would they not have influence to procure assistance, especially from those states which are in the same situation as themselves? What picture does this idea present to our view? A complying state at war with a non-complying state; Congress marching the troops of one state into the bosom of another; this state collecting auxiliaries, and forming, perhaps, a majority against the federal head.
Here is a nation at war with itself. Can any reasonable man be well disposed towards a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself -- a government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. This single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against such a government. But can we believe that one state will ever suffer itself to be used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream; it is impossible.
Indeed...how can, in Hamilton's words, any "reasonable man be well disposed towards a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself"?