"In the case of West Virginia this state legislature requirement was ignored, because Lincoln clearly insisted that the Southern states were in "rebellion" and therefore still a part of the Union, therefore still under the Constitution."

Raping the Constitution became quite fashionable during the Lincoln Regime. Now, whenever a President suspends habeous corpus during wartime, Lincoln's endorsement is used as justification. I hope it is not too late to dust off the 9th and 10th Amendments, but 150 years of neglect is a long, long time. The first 5 Amendments have also been bent over....and quite often.

Texas never lost the right to secede and neither did any other state. Lost the war, not the Constitutional right.