My exact argument is show me where is says they can. I did emphasize in my last post the bit about reneging on a contract as it refers to the states which could be used to refute their right. However at the time the constitution was sufficiently ambigious on the matter that it could have gone either way. When the states did secede congress decided to act on the matter and said it was illegal.
You don't quit first then ask if you can quit. They should have pursued their case in a far more legal fashion that was not subject to the ambiguities of the constitution. They didn't. They started siezing federal forts and stores. They committed acts of war and gave Lincoln the US a casus belli. He didn't need to wait for them. He and the congress had the authority to act and they did.
What they debated about doesn't mean jack. What got put on paper and became the laws of the country does.
It wasn't a "little bit of trouble". The southern states had comitted acts of war against the union, their secession not withstanding. The border states were about to go. Riots were springing up due to drafting. Now compared to then would be like saying a social cat fight between two cheerleaders in beverly hills is equatable to sets of crips and bloods in compton having a gang fight.
It's not an opinion. As president lincolns job was to assert the authority of the federal government. The president isn't about the states. He's about the country as a whole and primarily about the fed. His job was to keep the country together, maintain the feds authority (the expansion thereof a side effect), and protect Americas soverignty over it's states. He did that. Whether or not people liked the fact that that was his job is open to opinion. But his job was his job and he did what he needed to do. The fact that congress, and the judiciary didn't stop him (attempts to notwithstanding) just means that in the end his mission as president was more important to them too.
While it is agreed that things obviously didn't turn out from the South, there was no rebellion. There was a secession. You speak of seizing federal property. The problem with this, is that this was not federal property. It was property that the states allowed the federal government to occupy. And when the states seceeded, it was no longer the Union's right, according to the southern states, for federal troops to occupy forts in the south. This is why during emergencies, the state has to ask for federal assistance or troops. Hence the big deal behind hurricane Katrina and the Governor waiting to ask for federal help. It would be the same concept of a foreign nation wishing the U.S. to leave the U.S. embassies because they did not want us there.
The states voluntarily became annexed to the United States.
The North relied on indudrialization for their profits and trade, the South relied heavily on agriculture, which increased the demand for (at the time) legal slavery according to the federal government.
The South seceded from the UNion before Lincoln became president, which leads to the illegal activity of Northerners during the Buchanan administration. Do we all remember the infamous John Brown and Harper's Ferry. Illegal activities by the Union involved the the illegal arming of slaves to start a rebellion against the South by John Brown. There were illegal things going on from both sides. You could only imagine the reception this would receive in the South.
The Civil War was not one sided by any means. The South were not simply a bunch of traitors that decided to rebel against the North. They felt like the federal government was intervening more than had been let on upon their annexation, and wanted no part of it. How else can you explain numerous U.S. generals serving in the Confederacy? It was POV conflict. The South believed they were being mistreated by the North, and the North felt the South was rebelling.
The Confederacy had no benefits from sending their secession to Congress for ratification, since the majority of COngress would not have voted for it.
As far as states rights are concerned, the states can do things that are not prohibited to them in the Constitution.
Amendment 10 - Powers of the States and People. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
So since secession was not prohibited to the states...they could reserve that right respectively.