[Bubba Ho-Tep]

For that analogy to work, you'd have to equate illegal drug trafficking with what was at the time legal slavery or legal secession. I don't see the similarity.

Of course you don't. But I don't have to equate it with legal secession or legal slavery, I have to equate it with illegal rebellion. As the EP says, it is "a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion."

[phi11yguy19]

States aren't parties to "rebellions". When States exercise their right to leave a union pact, it's called "secession". Since the right of secession was reserved to the states, yes, you will have to somehow equate that with illegal drug trafficking.

The whole "rebellion" angle was Lincoln's false narrative to his willing sheeple.