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The South had done nothing wrong, and they had not violated their Constitutional agreement - it was the North who had breached their agreement. In the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union the reason for secession was given:

"We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof. ... The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them."

Nothing hard to understand about that is there? They then reassert the principle of the Declaration of Independence, that whenever any "form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government." A principle that the 13 states a fought a war to secure. And finally, they stated the obvious, "[w]e maintain that in every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other."

Exercising the right of eminent domain (which the states had exercised in 1776), the South took control of the Federal forts and arsenals within their borders. After the secession of South Carolina President Lincoln voiced his sentiments regarding an invasion:

"What is ``invasion''? Would the marching of an army into South California, for instance, without the consent of her people, and in hostility against them, be coercion or invasion? I very frankly say, I think it would be invasion, and it would be coercion too, if the people of that country were forced to submit."
Abraham Lincoln, "Speech from the Balcony of the Bates House at Indianapolis, Indiana", 11 Feb 1861, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, ed., vol IV. p.195.

The South sent three men to meet with Lincoln, to pay the federal government for any property seized, yet Lincoln refused to meet with them. Despite his promises to the contrary, Lincoln invaded South Carolina, forcing the South to defend themselves. Many claim that the South was the aggressor, would they assert that the woman shooting the rapist enetering her bedroom to be the aggressor? The South stood upon the well-established principle of public law that "the aggressor in a war is not the first who uses force, but the first who renders force necessary" [Henry E. Hallam, The Constitutional History of England from Henry VII to George II, (1827)]. Lincoln invaded a sovereign nation, instigated a war that needlessly killed over 623,000 men, women and children, black and white, soldier and civilian. Lincoln waged war against the very principles of the Declaration and Constitution.