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The Confederate States withdrew from the Union lawfully, civilly, and peacefully, after enduring several years of excessive and inequitable federal tariffs heavily prejudiced against Southern commerce. Refusing to recognize the Confederate secession, Lincoln called it a "rebellion" and a "threat" to "the government" (without ever explaining exactly how "the government" was "threatened" by a lawful, civil, and peaceful secession) and acted outside the lawfully defined scope of either the office of president or the U.S. government in general, to coerce the South back into subjugation to Northern control. The South's rejoining the Union at the point of a bayonet in the late 1860s didn't prove secession is "not an option" or unlawful. It only affirmed that violent coercion can be used—even by governments (if unrestrained)—to rob men of their very lives, liberty, and property.

See Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by James M. McPherson; The Real Lincoln by Thomas J. DiLorenzo; A Constitutional History of Secession by John R. Graham; Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men by Jeffrey R. Hummel; When in the Course of Human Events by Charles Adams; Union And Liberty by John C. Calhoun; States' Rights and the Union by Forrest McDonald