Nor was it not because the federal government said it wasn't.
The legal right to own slaves in this country was a fact before the Constitution was even conceived, so the federal government had no say-so on the issue of slavery in the states where it existed.
After the election of Lincoln, the South's choice was to leave the Union, or stay and let the federal government collapse their agriculturally driven economies.
Some choice.
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The federal government, then, appears to be the organ through which the united republics communicate with foreign nations, and with each other. Their submission to its operation is voluntary: its councils, its sovereignty is an emanation from theirs, not a flame by which they have been consumed, nor a vortex in which they are swallowed up. Each is still a perfect state, still sovereign, still independent, and still capable, should the occasion require, to resume the exercise of its functions, as such, in the most unlimited extent.
View of the Constitution of the United States
No it wasn't. So neither side had the right to take any unilateral action that could infringe on the rights and interests of the other. The only reasonable outcome was negotiation towards a settlement. Unfortunately the South wasn't interested in negotiation.
The legal right to own slaves in this country was a fact before the Constitution was even conceived, so the federal government had no say-so on the issue of slavery in the states where it existed.
As Lincoln made abundantly clear on many occasions. But Lincoln also made it clear that be believed the Taney court was wrong when it ruled that Congress could not legislate slavery in the territories.
After the election of Lincoln, the South's choice was to leave the Union, or stay and let the federal government collapse their agriculturally driven economies.
How? If Lincoln couldn't interefere with slavery in the states where it existed then how could he collapse their economy?
Some choice.
The decision for war certainly didn't work out for the South now did it?
After the election of Lincoln, the South's choice was to leave the Union, or stay and let the federal government collapse their agriculturally driven economies.
Some choice.
Oh...My....God.
Well, now we know.
Where is the poster who complained about the the Lincoln posts ending in southerner revisionists being called racist? It is too bad that people who make good faith arguments about the right of sovereign states to secede under the Constitution get lumped in with this kind of stuff.
The Constitution provided for amendments. If slavery was outlawed by amendment, it might have been opposed by the south, but it would have been Consitutional. That was not in the offing in any event, only the prospect that someday in the far off future, with the creation of non-slave states in the west, the South might get outvoted someday. Based on that, they decided they had to leave.
What you call the their "agriculturally driven economies" others call brutal, immoral, debasing, un-Christian slavery. Any thinking human being in 1860 understood that it needed to be phased out, over maybe 30 years. A principled person might say get rid of it right away. A decent person does not suggest that the notion that it might have been eliminated through the political process would have been a bad thing.
I am stunned. Are there more of you here?