Fort Sumter did not fire on Charleston until fired upon Lincoln did not call up 75 000 until after Davis called up 100 000 Lincoln did not suspend habeas corpus from DC to Baltimore until after Davis suspended habeas corpus from Richmond to Norfolk Union troops did not enter Kentucky until after Confederate troops invaded The Anaconda Plan was ridiculed as too passive throughout the Northern press Only the rebel provocation by force of arms brought the civil war Although WP editors dismiss professor Coulter of University of Georgia as a racist I recommend his Confederate States of America 1950 in LSUs History of the South series It is still in print perhaps available in your library or by interlibrary loan Congress did not authorized a constitutional procedure for devolution of any individual state so no individual state could lawfully secede from the Union States gave up their absolute sovereignty on entering the Union as explained in the Federalist Papers there was no trick or slight of hand Patrick Henry objected that the new constitution was to based on we the national people and no longer to be a compact of the states and he was outvoted in the Virginia Ratification Convention when the Randolph faction was assured of a Bill of Rights The compact theory of the Articles was superseded by authorization of the Articles Congress with the adoption of the Constitution and We the People by majorities in over 3 4 of the states Undoing that Union requires the same procedure with consent of Congress At the link provided import tariffs impose a disproportionate burden on export dependent regions by passing the burdens of the tax onto export merchants This restatement of the Lerner symmetry theorem does not apply as it supposes a zero balance of trade which did not obtain in the antebellum United States In any case tariffs are not the center piece for causes of secession but slavery was explicitly called out in the Confederate Constitution and in the Southern press and tariffs are authorized to the Confederate Congress There is no trick of winner s history writing here The secessionists claimed slavery could not be protected without more slave holding states in the Senate and without slavery expansion the Fire Eaters drummed up racial fears of eventual emancipation and servile insurrection to persuade adoption of illegal individual state resolutions of secession When as your sources confirm without Confederates using slaves as army teamsters railroad repairmen and fortification laborers Lincoln might never have arrived at the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure to recruit contraband teamsters railroad repairmen laborers soldiers 5 as I recall about a division s worth total and sailors 20 of the Union navy