Now we see you don’t understand the Constitution and the history of secession movements any more than you do the many factors that led to the war. The only “rebellion” was the Lincoln administration’s rebellion against the Constitution.
Odd..if slavery was the only issue and secession illegal, why were the Northern papers editorializing on behalf of letting the South go and, in many cases, pointing to despotism on the part of the Lincoln administration. Since you are such a scholar of these matters I’m sure you’ve read Howard Cecil Perkins’ analysis of 495 editorials that appeared in Northern papers from late 1860 to early, which found the large majority opposed to forcing states back into the Union. Here’s an example from the New York Tribune from February 5, 1861: [Lincoln’s latest speech] “contained the arguments of a tyrant - force, compulsion, and power...Nine out of ten people of the North” [are opposed to forcing South Carolina to remain in the Union]. “The great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration...that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed.” [Therefore, if the southern states want to secede] “they have a clear right to do so”.
Or, how about the Albany Atlas and Argus of November 1, 1860? : “We sympathize and justify the South because their rights have been invaded to the extreme.” [If they wish to secede] “we would wish them God-Speed.”
You also seem to have an obsession with Pollard’s book. Somewhere I have a copy of Benson Lossing’s history of the “Civil War”. That, in fact, was a seminal source of the post-war propaganda effort to whitewash the federal government’s unlawful aggression. Your repeated sneers about the “Lost Cause” is just a reflection of the influence liberal historians have had. You seem to want a cartoonish view of history. Events are almost always far more complicated than that, even though complexity isn’t emotionally satisfying.
Do you always make such a habit of assuming?