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"Article 1

Section 7 - The Congress shall have Power...To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections.

Section 9 - The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Section 10 - No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation;...

Article 2
Section 1 ...Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: — "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.".

Article 1, Section 7: An insurrection is different than secession, one of the main issues surrounding the constitution was whether or not the Constitution was a compact of states or the legislative act of the people. If it is the former then each state retained the power, as Jon Roland puts it, "to withdraw from the compact if it were violated, either partially, by nullification of an offending act, or entirely, by secession.". Clearly there is a logical and ideological basis for the proposal that article 1 section 7 did not apply to the seceding states, whether or not you agree to the basis for it is up to you. Does one want an intentionally weakened federal government with power resting primarily in the hands of the states and the people therein, or does one want a powerful centralized federal government with weakened checks and balances against oppression?...

Article 1, Section 9: Lincoln suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus in reaction to the copperheads, what amazingly wicked thing were they doing? Protesting lincolns actions and his violations of the constitution. I seem to remember speech being protected by the first amendment, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus to get rid of opposing voices to his own.

Article 1, Section 10: They seceded, they were no longer bound by the this article of the constitution...

Article 2, Section 1: How was waging war on the south, or for that matter refusing to resolve the issue peaceably as Jackson did, protecting the constitution? How did he protect the constitution by violating it and assuming powers in the executive branch and federal government that were never delegated to them to begin with?

Without the actions of lincoln we never would have had the abuses of power and enlargement of government by FDR. With concepts like Nullification the federal government doesn't have the power to assume rights that were never granted it.

You are wrong to assume that they lost their sovereignty when they joined the union, all one has to do is read the constitutional debates, doctrine of 98', and other writings by the Jeffersonian Republicans and other founding fathers to see this. Does power lay in the hands of the people or the federal government? I cannot see how you could rail against the governmental enlargement and abuses by FDR, and then ignore the previous usurptions of power that caused it to happen, or the fundamental basis of our freedoms and sovereignty.

I think you have a valid point as to the original thirteen colonies. They had existence as soverign states prior to adoption of the Consitution. However, the other states are "products" of the United States and as such owe their existence to the United States.
The proposition that we as modern day Americans would be better off if the South won or Lincoln let them go is moot because Lincoln did what he did.
I think a good deal of the debate on Lincoln is healthy...especially the extension of power of the federal government.
However, I think people who despise Lincoln should examine who precipatated the crisis. Lincoln won the election under the constitution. The northern states had compromised repeatedly to preserve the union. It was the southern states that having lost an election took up arms to void the results.
Finally, I think people who admire Lincoln are suspicious of the motives of people who hate Lincoln. Slavery must be rejected and vilified. Lincoln while not alive for the 13th -15th amendments certainly can be seen as the person most responsible for the end of slavery. The failure to give credit to Lincoln for this acheivement leads to (perhaps) a (mis)understanding that the critic is a racist.

You are wrong to assume that they lost their sovereignty when they joined the union, all one has to do is read the constitutional debates, doctrine of 98', and other writings by the Jeffersonian Republicans and other founding fathers to see this.

Wrong.

"The men at the [Constitutional] convention, it is clear enough, assumed that the national government must have the power to throw down state laws that contradicted federal ones: it was obvious to them that the states could not be permitted to pass laws contravening federal ones...

It did not take long for the supremacy of the Supreme Court to become clear. Shortly after the new government was installed under the new Constitution, people realized that the final say had to be given to somebody, and the Connecticut Jurist and delegate to the Convention Oliver Ellsworth wrote the judicary act of 1789, which gave the Supreme Court the clear power of declaring state laws unconstitutional, and by implication allowing it to interpret the Constitution. The power to overturn laws passed by Congress was assumed by the Supreme Court in 1803 and became accepted practice duing the second half of the nineteenth century."

"The convention was slow to tackle the problem of an army, defense, and internal police. The Virginia Plan said nothing about a standing army, but it did say that the national government could 'call forth the force of the union against any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof.' The delegates had expected to discuss something like this clause, for one of the great problems had been the inability of the old Congress to enforce its laws. Surely it should be able to march troops into states when necessary to get state governments to obey.

But in the days before the convention opened Madison had been thinking it over, and he had concluded that the idea was a mistake. You might well march your troops into Georgia or Connecticut, but then what? Could you really force a legislature to disgorge money at bayonet point? 'The use of force against a state,' Madison said, as the debate started on May 31, 'would be more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.' Although he did not say so at the moment, he had another way of enforcing national law, which not only would be more effective, but also philosophically sounder. As the government was to derive its power from the people, it ought to act on the people directly. Instead of trying to punish a state, which was, after all, an abstraction, for failure to obey the law, the U.S. government could punish individuals directly. Some person -- a governor, a tax collector, a state treasurer -- would be held responsible for failure to deliver the taxes. Similarly, the national government would not punish a state government for allowing say, illegal deals with Indians over western lands, but would directly punish the people making the deals. All of this seemed eminently sensible to the convention and early in the debate on the Virginia Plan the power of the national government to 'call forth the power of the Union' was dropped. And so was the idea that the government should be able to compell the states disappeared from the convention. It is rather surprising, in view of the fact that the convention had been called mainly to curb the independence of the states, that the concept went out so easily. The explanation is, in part, that the states' righters were glad to see it go; and in part that Madison's logic was persuasive: it is hard to arrest an abstraction."

--"Decision in Philadelphia" by Collier and Collier

Everyone in the generation of the framers knew the Constitution was permanently binding under law.

Walt