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“...Doesn’t change my view that the Civil War started because South tried to take land which North owned by creation, not simply possession...” [ctdonath2, post 103]

Wrong again - both in detail and in concept. Let’s make it a trifecta and concede you are engaging in presentism.

Maj Anderson moved his command from Ft Moultrie to Ft Sumter, judging the latter more defensible. Only after did the leaders of South Carolina announce their state was leaving the Union.

After President Lincoln was officially inaugurated, he called for 75,000 volunteers in a bid to beef up the standing armed forces, with a view to intimidating the Confederate states into returning to the Union. Other War Dept and Navy Dept facilities in the South had already been seized by the states where they were located - or were being sized up for takeover.

The Federal government did not “own” such facilities, infrastructure, and real property - not in the same sense as is commonly understood today. South Carolinians and numerous other Southerners saw it as a provocation when the Union Navy was ordered to break the CSA blockade and resupply Ft Sumter.

The legal climate was quite different before 1865: States were sovereign national entities capable and justified in doing what the Confederacy attempted. Just because the Union subdued the CSA by force of arms doesn’t render the legal arguments about sovereignty less valid: it’s intellectually less than honest to insist we must all bow to the omnipotent Feds, just as it’s less than honest to assert that the CSA was equally wrong in 1861 for refusing to cave in.

Times change. Legal and moral theories change, despite the distress evinced by so many forum members. Pretending it’s all been perfectly understood, therefore the CSA was morally culpable for attempting to break away, is presentism.