>The constitution explicitly says that it's aim is to perfect the (perpetual) union that was established in the articles. The SCOTUS viewed that as clear evidence that the framers intended the union to be indissoluble.

You put parenthesis around perpetual because it wasn't explicit. The SCOTUS confirm that in 1868, after the fact. At the time it could have been easily argued that it was omitted from the constitution for a reason, one being that the southern states wouldn't have signed it.

>Ex-post-facto means a law that makes an act illegal that was previously legal.

>In this case, that is not what happened. The legality of unilateral succession wasn't fully clear until the supreme court ruled. There was no new law created, just an official confirmation that Lincoln's position was indeed what the framers had intended and what the law had been all along.

But it was. Lincoln deemed secession was illegal and sent troops to capture Richmond as a police/military act in response to secession. The legality of secession at the time was not clear, as in not confirmed by the SCOTUS, therefore not explicitly illegal. In the US, actions are default legal unless explicitly deemed otherwise by law and there was no law or ruling, particularly an explicit one, outside the AoC which weren't the law of the land. The SCOTUS confirmed it was illegal to secede after the fact, justifying Lincoln's prior police/military actions, which would have themselves been illegal had secession been confirmed as legal.

Ask yourself this, why were no CSA politicians or military personnel ever brought up on charges of treason?

>Trying to paint the confederate states as a victim is simply inaccurate.

I'm not trying to paint the CSA as a victim, I'm just discussing history, establishing cause and effect, chain of events, and most importantly trying to answer the "why?" Again you are looking at history through modern eyes and trying to apply modern sensibilities to it. Victim is such an overused word today. We were having a good discussion, why would you throw that angle in it?

>They chose the path of violence and the entire country paid the price for their desire to maintain slavery.

Slavery was legal in the southern states and many of the northern states at the time of secession. Of course had they been allowed to secede, which wasn't confirmed to be illegal at the time, no one would have died.

>An institution that was not only highly immoral

It was certainly immoral and it was the US' "original sin," that we are still paying for. Of course the British are the ones who introduced it to the colonies, so we inherited that sin when we rebelled and 700K+ people died trying to atone for that sin.

>but also one that was doomed and that would have put them at odds with the rest of the world within half a century.

I'm not so confident in that, though I would want it to be true. There are still major countries where slavery exists today. I think has the CSA successfully seceded, they would either be a third rate country, or would have been invaded by now. They certainly would have missed the Industrial Revolution.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

Ok, the text is getting narrow indicating this is getting to be a long thread. Thanks for the discussion, I'll let you have the last word.