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Your justification rings just as hollow .... It wasn't a justification. It was a statement of fact. Secession was treason against the Constitution and many Southerners refused to go along with it. It was revolution, and in the absence of intolerable oppression, it is treason pure and simple.

The legislatures of the Western Virginia counties had every right, and even a duty, to resist that treason and to assure that their constituents retained the representation through a restored legislature. Sorry if that offends your precious southern heritage, but it is a fact and many if not most southerners understood that at the time. A lot of them simply thought they could get away with it. Arbitrary secession was nonsense then and it is even more insane to defend it now.

"Secession is nothing but revolution. The framers of our constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for "perpetual union" so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession. Anarchy would have been established, and not a government, by Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, and the other patriots of the Revolution." --- Robert E. Lee, Jan. 23, 1861

“I hold that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms are in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to James Madison, 1787)

“The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better to do so than not to be exercised at all.”
-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Abigail Adams, 1787)

“What country can preserve it’s liberties if it’s rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?”
-- Thomas Jefferson (letter to Wm. S. Smith, 1787)

Regards

J.R.

Your response is silly....it is not ok to pull out of a union you voluntarily joined...but it is ok for a part of you to voluntarily pull out of existing boundaries and join up! Convoluted, to say the least.

Where in the Constitution did the Founders indicate that pulling out of the Union constituted Treason.....?