From his standpoint it wasn't. But the single most important reason for the Southern rebellion from the South's point of view was defense of their institution of slavery. And there are dozens of quotes from Southern leaders of the time supporting that.
Lincoln Said secession was legal earlier in his career.
No he did not. He did say that people for whatever reason and having the power could rise in rebellion and replace their government. That is a far cry from secession.
The South did pay a disproportionate part of the taxes.
A disproportionately small amount perhaps.
Slavery was dying out. It had died out everywhere in the west by 1884.
I would challenge you to provide a single quote from a single Southern leader in 1861 who believed that slavery was dying out.
Prior to the Civil War, the primary source of federal revenues was import duties. The Southern economy was based on the export of raw materials to the North or abroad, and the import of manufactured goods. Tariffs worked to the advantage of Northern manufacturers by directly raising the price of imported manufactured goods and indirectly propping up the price of Northern manufactured goods.
Northern states might have paid more taxes in raw numbers, but they also receive the benefits of 19th century protectionism. It was a straight-up economic controversy, neither side good or evil, and the South arguably had a legitimate beef.
I agree with most of your points against the pro-Confederate revisionist view of the war, but I had to take issue with that narrow point.
I would challenge you to provide a single quote from a single Southern leader in 1861 who believed that slavery was dying out.
I'm sure a number of Southerners felt that way, but it was not the mainstream view, and you couldn't win an election with it. Things were so tetchy in the run-up to the 1860 elections that the merest suggestion of any restrictions on slavery would have you burned in effigy in the South. They were demanding unrestricted expansion of slavery into the territories, and with Dred Scott, it seemed they had it.
It was Northerners and Midwesterners -- Lincoln prominent among them -- who were saying aloud that, if contained where it then existed, slavery would slowly die out. And it probably would have. With a skilled enough federal government in the 1840s and '50s, it might even have been possible to engineer a soft landing, but by 1860 the stitches holding the country together had ripped beyond repair and the seam was blown.
Non-Sequitur said: "No he did not. He did say that people for whatever reason and having the power could rise in rebellion and replace their government. That is a far cry from secession.
NS -- If rebellion is such a far cry from secession then why did the U.S. Congress name the official records "The Official Records of the War Of The Rebellion" in 1880. Many other names for the war were considered however they decided that the chosen name was most appropriate!