As you say. But that's no reason to allow your claim to go unchallenged.
Was he right there as well?...
It seems you're interested in proving who is "right", or at least in arguing.
Is it "right" to deprive another of his life, liberty or property without his consent, by force or threat of force?
The drafters of the Declaration of Independence thought not, and felt that when governments became threatening of these, that the consent of the governed was forfeit. That, I believe, was one of Spooner's key assertions about the Constitution - that it could never bind one to its provisions who had not agreed to them. Do you believe that governments are always right, and that the governed can never withdraw their consent? Wasn't that the point of secession as put forward by even Abraham Lincoln himself in January, 1848?
"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 may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much territory as they inhabit"
Granted, Lincoln's government subverted his prior opinion and did so with might of arms. So, those who rose up, could not, did not, have the "power" - but does that make them wrong or the ones who imposed union by might... "right"?
Do, after all, the ends justify the means?
Or...
Is there perhaps some absolute...
Transcendent...
Justice...
justly pursued?
Slavery was and is evil.
Putting hundreds of thousands of free men to their deaths in war was also evil and not the way to end either the secession or slavery.
Unless might makes right.
This isnt chat and I dont have all day to play