Who decides whether or not a people have a right to secede? Them? The Government? Some neutral observer? If you believe that the right to self-government is conditional upon the opinion of anyone other than the governed, then it is not a right at all.
Who decides whether or not a people have a right to secede?
Maybe this should act as a guide:
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
So did any of those conditions exist in 1860?
Was there a long train of abuses by the federal government prior to 1860?
Walt