There was no more United States as constituted under the compact agreement of the Constitution. It died four score and four years after its inception. We have not fully lived under all of the provisions and limitations of governmental powers of that Constitution since.
In fact we don't know what we are living under today. We think we live under that Constitution today, but we don't. We only live under some of its privisions so long as it does not limit the desires of the Federal Government. So we have no Constitution, we have governmental dictate which superceeds the Constitution.
Who gave Lawyers and Judges the right to determine what the limits to our rights are? I refer the recent Kilo case, the US Supreme Court decision regarding property rights. Or the attempts to limit the 2nd Amendment along with recent hate speech legislation which will be used to restrict peaceful protest and religious speech.
THAT is the reason the South left the Union and why they fought.
It wasn't about keeping their slaves. It was about the Rights. The Rights of States to conduct their own internal affairs, the RIGHT to keep their slaves under the RULE OF LAW contained in a Constitution which granted such rights, along with all the other such rights. And the unlawful superceeding of the limitations of powers placed upon that government and its authority.
I don't much care what my neighbor owns, if he has the legal right to own that property. I might like his Motorhome, or I may not like it, just like I may not like what he has to say. But for the Greater good of all, I will defend his right to own that property, or say what he has to say.
I worked with Black Police Officers in the 1980's who could not understand, or did not want to understand, that under the Constitutional and the laws of the land, no matter how irreproachable or how much they dislike it, they had a responcibility to protect the K.K.K rally, as much as they did the N.A.A.C.P. rallies. I don't like the K.K.K., or what it presently stands for either, but they have a right to exist and say what they will, so long as they break no laws.
Such was the South in 1860, They had broken no laws. But they did not have the right to exist in their lifestyle as a free people, in the abolishionist opinions. And it seemed like that was the opinion of the Federal Government, under Lincoln, also.