“Lincoln...”
Yes, you could make a case for Lincoln. I am very conflicted about him because I think he was fundamentally a good and brilliant man trying to do what he thought was right.
That being said, you could argue that his prosecution of the war killed the country that our Founding Fathers envisioned and set us on the course to Empire and where we are today.
As brilliant as the Founders were, it seems they made a huge mistake not including a session clause for the political entities that entered into the Constitutional Compact.
This is the version we were all taught growing up, but I assure you it gets far uglier the deeper you dig into his life. As for what he thought was right, I will show you this.
Lincoln's 1848 speech to Congress supporting Texas right to Independence from Mexico.
" Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable,—a most sacred right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the teritory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority, was precisely the case, of the tories of our own revolution."
And:
Lincoln's 1852 resolutions in support of Independence for Hungary.
"Resolved, 1. That it is the right of any people, sufficiently numerous for national independence, to throw off, to revolutionize, their existing form of government, and to establish such other in its stead as they may choose."
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As brilliant as the Founders were, it seems they made a huge mistake not including a session clause for the political entities that entered into the Constitutional Compact.
They did. It's the "Declaration of Independence." It specifically says:
" That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."
This statement was approved and signed by the representatives of all 13 states.
The US Constitution was written only 11 years later, and nobody had forgotten the right to Independence articulated in the Declaration.
I will also mention that three states included a secession clause in their ratification statements of the US Constitution. Those states were New York, Virginia (the two biggest and most significant states at the time) and Rhode Island.