No, I'm saying the federal government had no authority to outlaw slavery.
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Sumter continued to be the property of the federal government.
Which owns nothing. It merely holds such property as a delegated trust for the collective States.
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The federal government was the lawful authority under the Constitution. The defiance was to them.
And since the seceding states, by establishing a new constitution and form of federal government among themselves, without the consent of the rest, have shown that they consider the right to do so whenever the occasion may, in their opinion require it, as unquestionable, we may infer that that right has not been diminished by any new compact which they may since have entered into, since none could be more solemn or explicit than the first, nor more binding upon the contracting parties. Their obligation, therefore, to preserve the present constitution, is not greater than their former obligations were, to adhere to the articles of confederation; each state possessing the same right of withdrawing itself from the confederacy without the consent of the rest, as any number of them do, or ever did, possess.
St. George Tucker, View of the Constitution of the United States, Of the Several Forms of Government, Section XIII
There is no way to justify the reaction of the Union on the simple basis of destruction of a fort that had yet to be completed, manned, or even fully armed until after South Carolina delivered her notification.
It had everything to do with an involuntary union of States.
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Precedent goes back to 1794 when Washington called up the militia to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion without the request of governor.
First, the ability to legislate for an enumerated area and the authority to collect a tax are two totally different powers.
Secondly, Washington only attempted to call out the militia without the request of the Governor. He did not succeed.
But Mifflin declined, asserting that a president in peacetime and in the absence of any local request for help had no authority to direct a state governor to use a state militia for any purpose. In the process, he established a precedent that is still honored today.
The Whiskey Rebellion
Washington then issued a proclamation requesting the assistance of Pennsylvania, and Mifflin agreed.
Not in the states, no. But territories were not states and the government controlling it was the federal government. Most people at the time of the rebellion believed that Congress should be able to control or outlaw slavery in the territories, and the loathsome decision that prevented it would undoubtably have been overturned.
Which owns nothing. It merely holds such property as a delegated trust for the collective States.
Not according to Article I, Section 8, Clause 17 which grants Congress exclusive control over property acquired by the government for such purposes.
There is no way to justify the reaction of the Union on the simple basis of destruction of a fort that had yet to be completed, manned, or even fully armed until after South Carolina delivered her notification.
The attack on Sumter was a deliberate act of war, and turned the Southern cause from a peaceful attempt to leave into armed rebellion. All the death and destruction that was to rain down upon the South in the next four years were self inflicted.
It had everything to do with an involuntary union of States.
It had everything to do with the Constituiton and the rights of all the states, not just the rebelling ones.
Secondly, Washington only attempted to call out the militia without the request of the Governor. He did not succeed.
He certainly did. He took 13,000 militia from several states into Pennsylvania and marched all over the state attempting to find the ringleaders. At least two men were tried and convicted for treason.
Washington then issued a proclamation requesting the assistance of Pennsylvania, and Mifflin agreed.
But that's not what your source says. And if you read Washington's Proclamation it's clear that he did not act at the request or with the permission of Governor Mifflin or the Pennsylvania legislature. All the authority he needed came from Article I, Section 8 and the Militia Act of 1792.