Things changed in significant ways in the twenty-five (or so) [1837-1861] after he left the presidency.

Also, if one wants to take a lesson from this word salad, I would also look toward the election of James Buchanan. And the perils of voting for such a person when the time came to face secession. Finally, factoring in the reasons why he was chosen, and again, how that worked out. This all might not put Trump in a good light though.

Finally, it's hard to determine what would happen if things went down differently. I gather, e.g., it's good that the Eastern Union generals screwing up in the Spring of 1862 (including the whole Yorktown debacle) delayed the end of the war too. If the South was defeated in 1862, maybe the Emancipation Proclamation strategy would not have been put strongly in place. Well, there are books that do such "what ifs."

Or, if maybe slavery died out more slowly, but in the process there was an understanding that at least some blacks would be more of a part of society ala the elites in Africa after independence. Not a great parallel but the post-Reconstruction Era approach wasn't great either. Well, things happened.

 

Andy Jackson did negotiate the end of the South Carolina nullification crisis. However, this was due less to his "big heart," than to his well established reputation as a man not to be trifled with. Jackson obtained an AUMF known as the Force Bill to use military force to crush the state rebellion. Given Old Hickory's success as an often renegade general, I imagine South Carolinians feared Jackson might command the Army himself in a very real exercise of the CiC power.

For all of his virtues, Abe Lincoln did not share the same reputation.
 

Gerard's : "Jackson was against secession." some exploring. Perhaps SPAM's comment on nullification is relevant. But what president pre 1860 was for secession? As I understand history of that time (no, I was not around at the time), secession thoughts were mostly from the north primarily by abolitionists.

Does SPAM's closing sentence suggest a knock by SPAM on Lincoln who at one time provided principle to the Republican Party which has ceased to be the Party of Lincoln?

As to Trump's remarks, were these not so subtle hints to his base on racial views that earned the loyalty of his base?
 

One never knows what Trump's babbling means, but I interpret "had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn't have had the Civil War" to mean that, had Andrew Jackson been President in 1861, there wouldn't have been a Civil War. Of course, not, because the South would not have seceded if a pro-slavery President had been elected in 1860. I interpret "He was really angry that he saw with regard to the Civil War" to indicate that Trump thinks that Jackson was alive at the time of the Civil War. (He died in 1845.) Or maybe it indicates nothing, because Trump's words never mean anything. Discussing anything that Trump says makes as much sense as discussing any other toddler's babbling. So I guess that I shouldn't post this comment.
 

Henry:

Trump apparently lives rent free in the heads of all of the profs who post here. See the 100 days symposium post preceding this one.
 

Perhaps the Cruz Canadacy) has been paying rent to live in SPAM's head with SPAM's dreams of a Justice Dept. slot.
 

Following up on Henry's point, is The Donald aware of SCOTUS' Dred Scott decision in 1857 written by CJ Taney whom Jackson nominated? In this day and age, it's hard to believe that the founder/leader of an American university though now defunct wouldn't know that. And there's the history of Trump's racial discrimination proceedings with the federal government early in his career.
 

It was noted, for fans, that Rep. Jonah Ryan is the "Ted Cruz" of Veep Congress.

Henry adds some wise words though given his position, people will try.
 

I interpret "He was really angry that he saw with regard to the Civil War" to indicate that Trump thinks that Jackson was alive at the time of the Civil War. (He died in 1845.)

Unlike Frederick Douglass, who, apparently, is still with us.
 

Fake news. Fact: the Civil War did not happen while Andrew Jackson was president. Trump proven right again!
 

You all laugh, but Trump's words inspired some profound responses. Take, for example, Megan McArdle: "What interests me is 'Why was the north willing to invade another country over slavery?'..."
 

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Looking at her Twitter feed, McArdle seems to be trying to be serious here, but her comments are rather, well interesting is one way to say it.
 

McArdle raises an interesting point.

What modern presidents or presidential candidates would have gone to war and more importantly stayed at war to preserve the union and/or free the slaves?
 

In response to Bart's question, we should assume that the presidents or presidential candidates lived in the 1860s and had an 1860s outlook. If we do, then we can conclude that all Republicans, since the 1970s or so when liberal Republicans still existed, would have supported slavery, so the South would not have seceded and the issue of war would not have arisen. As for Democrats, if the South had seceded, I imagine that all Democrats of recent decades would have capitulated and agreed to allow slavery to expand into the territories. We have no Lincolns these days.
 

Henry: "If we do, then we can conclude that all Republicans, since the 1970s or so when liberal Republicans still existed, would have supported slavery, so the South would not have seceded and the issue of war would not have arisen."

You misspelled Democrats.

The only currently existing US political party which supported slavery and other forms of government racial discrimination and continues to support the latter today are the Democrats.
 

Bart,

Since I didn't misspell "Democrats," I am guessing that your point is that I spelled it "Republicans" and should have recognized that, in Lincoln's time, it was the Democrats who supported slavery. But that goes without saying, to anyone less ignorant than Trump. It is ironic, isn't it, that the parties have reversed themselves on the issue of race?

I interpret your final sentence as equating affirmative action, which was supported by the framers of the 14th Amendment, I believe, with slavery. If my interpretation is correct, then I will not dignify your final sentence with a reply, except to say that I expect that you are aware that it is the Republicans who enact voting restrictions that a court found to "target African Americans with almost surgical precision."
 

Henry:

The Republicans and Democrats never changed their positions on government racism - the former opposes it, the latter continues to support it.

In order to assume a generally applicable law requiring identification to vote "target[s] African Americans with almost surgical precision," a Democrat would have to believe African Americans are too stupid or lazy to obtain a document everyone else manages to obtain.

Apparently, Democrat racism remains alive and well.
 

I am not on Twitter so what I know about her tweets is the partial quote that Mark provides in his comment and Joe's general comment on reviewing her twitter feed. With the partial quote:

"What interests me is 'Why was the north willing to invade another country over slavery?'..."

I assume "another country" was the south. But the north and south were not separate countries. As to invasion by the north, does McArdle have anything to say about how the Civil War started? While the seceding states did so primarily to protect their culture of slavery supposedly threatened by a new president, the military reaction of the United States with its C-I-C/President Lincoln was to save the Union initially but because of the basis of secession being to protect slavery, to save the Union required defeating militarily the Confederacy.

Contrary to SPAM, McArdle's point in the quote is not interesting as it ignores history. SPAM's question is unanswerable even with the assumptions that Henry makes in his attempt to answer. Consider the status of slavery in the world back then with so many nations having already done away with slavery for economic reasons if not humanitarian. Is Henry with his assumptions suggesting that there would be slavery in America today? If that were the case, what might America look like today Henry with your assumptions?

The fact that SPAM finds McArdle's point interesting to pose his question raises questions about SPAM's motivation. Over the years I have noted frequently SPAM's claim that the late 19th century The Gilded Age were America's best days. What does SPAM think America would look like today if The Gilded Age had continued unabated?

We live in today's world. Trump imagines Fake History. SPAM comes up with his "what ifs," presumably seriously, but I have my doubts. "Profound responses," such as McArdle's and SPAM's reaction and Henry's assumptions lead to what? Does Trump's base take up his Fake History to suggest an answer to the concerns of many in Trump's base as a means to reverse the changing demographics that upsets Trump's base?
 

Once again SPAM with his Fake History demonstrates in his exchanges with Henry what he has in common with Trump.
 

May 1st was "Law Day," and as Chief Justice Roberts announced, the theme this year is the 14th Amendment.

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/public_education/initiatives_awards/law-day.html


 

It takes a special kind of dishonesty and/or detachment from reality to say that the party that works systematically to deprive minority citizens of their right to vote is the party that opposes government racism.

 

Joe, thanks for the link which provides the ABA's theme for this Law Day:


"The 2017 theme provides the opportunity to explore the many ways that the Fourteenth Amendment has reshaped American law and society. Through its Citizenship, Due Process and Equal Protection clauses, this transformative amendment advanced the rights of all Americans. It also played a pivotal role in extending the reach of the Bill of Rights to the states. Ratified during Reconstruction a century and a half ago, the Fourteenth Amendment serves as the cornerstone of landmark civil rights legislation, the foundation for numerous federal court decisions protecting fundamental rights, and a source of inspiration for all those who advocate for equal justice under law."

The reference to the Bill of Rights fits in with Gerard's earlier post on his new book. While the 14th A did not specifically reference the Bill of Rights, over the years since the ratification of the 14th A in 1868, SCOTUS has incorporated certain of the Bill of Rights to apply to the states, including as recently as the current century with McDonald on the 2nd A. 14th A interpretation/construction continues to evolve but not always with equal justice under law.

 

"I assume "another country" was the south. But the north and south were not separate countries."

Whether the South should have seceded can be argued, but denying that it did seems a bit much. It certainly walked and quacked like a separate country. Had it's own military and government, too. I think honesty demands recognizing that the South actually did secede, and then was conquered and forcibly reincorporated into the US, rather than having been part of the US all along.

"in 1868, SCOTUS has incorporated certain of the Bill of Rights to apply to the states,"

Nearly a century late, too. Incorporation was the very purpose of the 14th amendment. It's really too bad the Supreme court didn't just admit that the Slaughterhouse cases were bad law, and incorporate via P&I the way the 14th amendment was written to do it.
 

The Confederacy de facto did have certain aspects of a "separate country," but "bit much" or not, quite a few people did argue it did not truly secede as a matter of law and fact.

Likewise, the U.S. "walked and quacked" in various ways like a country before actually winning the won and signing a peace treaty where it was recognized as such by the U.K. In that case, before that point, France and other countries did a lot more to recognize their independence than what happened to the Confederacy. The South continuously, to nearly the end, tried to get England and France to recognize their independence. They never officially did so.

Texas v. White noted in 1870:

There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.

Considered therefore as transactions under the Constitution, the ordinance of secession, adopted by the convention and ratified by a majority of the citizens of Texas, and all the acts of her legislature intended to give effect to that ordinance, were absolutely null. They were utterly without operation in law. The obligations of the State, as a member of the Union, and of every citizen of the State, as a citizen of the United States, remained perfect and unimpaired.

I think honesty demands that the South never completed their attempt and like various other insurrectionists were stopped by force.
 

The traitor states lacked some important attributes of sovereignty, such as diplomatic recognition by foreign governments.
 

Nearly a century late, too. Incorporation was the very purpose of the 14th amendment. It's really too bad the Supreme court didn't just admit that the Slaughterhouse cases were bad law, and incorporate via P&I the way the 14th amendment was written to do it.

The author of the post, of course, wrote a book on John Bingham and has a book on the Bill of Rights coming out next year.

The "very purpose of the 14A," as many historians noted, was to provide some general protection of civil rights to citizens as a whole, particularly overruling Dred Scott v. Sandford's dictum as to black citizenship. The lesser known sections addressed specific concerns, including limiting the pardon power of the President. Finally, the fifth section gave Congress specific power of enforcement.

It was simply not a generally recognized sentiment that the Bill of Rights (or rather the first eight, perhaps) as a whole was to be incorporated into the P/I Clause. Some very well had that understanding, though even as to Bingham exactly what he meant is not fully clearly. Also, the three clauses (EP, DPC, P/I) in effect could be read as a unit, the Due Process Clause particularly helpful since it protects "persons," not only "citizens."

There is a way protect non-citizens too by simply incorporation into the P&I Clause, but due process allows universal coverage in one step. Anyway, that is how law develops over time. Old "mistakes" are not simply replaced, but in effect edited bit by bit. The incorporation basically started in the 1890s with the Takings Clause and continued to 2010 with the 2A. There is some debate if the Fines Clause was incorporated. The 3A was implicitly so in dicta in Griswold v. Connecticut, I think. That leaves grand juries and the 7A, which might be a special case.
 

Brett seems basically to lament the existence of the Civil War Amendments along the lines of the closing sentence to my 10:34 AM comment:


"Does Trump's base take up his Fake History to suggest an answer to the concerns of many in Trump's base as a means to reverse the changing demographics that upsets Trump's base?"

To be fair, Brett had not jumped in on Trump's Fake History, rather providing his own. Perhaps Brett is under a strain on considering an ambassadorship to the Philippines to better understand authoritarianism to suit Trump's purposes.

 

And, Shag? Take your assumption that anybody who disagrees with you about anything is an evil monster, and shove it where the Sun doesn't shine.
 

Is this one of those weird ideological tics liberals are prone to, where there are aspects of reality you're forbidden to recognize? The CSA didn't 'try' to secede. They did secede. They were a separate country for four years.

If an analogy helps, if someone bursts into a bank, shoots the tellers, and makes off with a half million dollars, we don't say they "tried" to rob a bank, just because the law catches up with them four years later. We don't charge them with attempted bank robbery. If somebody forcibly removes themselves from jail, and are brought back four years later, we don't say they attempted a jail break.

The CSA, no matter how bad their motives, didn't attempt to secede and become an independent country. They actually did it, and then got conquered by the country they left.

And I think the 'Union' would have been a much better place in the long run if they'd just let them go.
 

The CSA didn't completed secede because they didn't have all the aspects of an independent nation in law and fact, including as matter of international law.

The bank example isn't quite on point. That was a robbery. It is understood in law to be a robbery. A full "secession," however, require certain things that did not happen. This is not a matter of "motives." It is a matter of what happened. Both Mark and me didn't deny it was in part a secession. It's a tic with you to cite something a variety of people say, often in a confused fashion, and make it about "liberals."

I don't think it would have been a good thing to let a portion of the country leave because it didn't like who won the election of 1860, particularly because of the position of the winners on the slavery issue (a moderate Republican position at that). If it was done, the way to do it was for the nation as a whole, as Texas v. White noted, to decide the question.

The matter of federal forts alone made simply having the states, piecemeal, to go a bad policy. Of course. Lincoln had something to say about all of this. I say this beyond the fact that the alternative would have been years more of slavery, and not just in the sense of serving people in public accommodations.
 

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Brett, Lincoln didn't see it that way; he viewed the Confederates as traitors. But this isn't a question with a right or wrong answer. It is not a matter for academic debate; rather, the Confederates and Lincoln took the positions they took for their respective purposes. Your bank robbery analogy begs the question by assuming that the Southern states seceded, and that the argument that they didn't secede relies wholly on their having lost the war. But when someone robs a bank, both the bank and the robbers typically agree that a robbery occurred, whether or not the robbers are caught and the money recovered. By contrast, neither Lincoln nor foreign governments recognized the Confederacy as a nation. I am not saying that Lincoln was right, because this is not a question for which one can prove the correctness of the answer he prefers.

I agree that the Union would have been a much better place in the long run if they'd let them go. Wouldn't it be great today if we had no red states! The only problem would have been that 4 million people would have remained enslaved. Perhaps the Union should have let the Southern states go and then invaded them to rescue their slaves.
 

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The bank robbery example would only make sense if we agreed that, before the robbers were captured, they had right and title to the money. Nobody thinks that. The Confederacy was not an accomplished secession, it was a failed revolt. Treason in defense of slavery.
 

"The Confederacy was not an accomplished secession, it was a failed revolt."

One can view it as both an accomplish secession and a failed revolt.

Let's suppose for the sake of argument that the Confederacy would be the same thing during the Civil War, and, if it had won, after the Civil War. If we view it as a secession, then need it have won the war to be "accomplished"? But the question is whether we should view it as a secession. What are the necessary and sufficient conditions to be a secession? There are none, just as, for Wittgenstein, there were none for a "game." The Confederacy had family resemblances to both a separate country and to a traitorous revolt. There is no need to label it, unless one has a purpose in doing so, such as to secure international recognition or to prevent international recognition.
 

The argument at the time was that "secession" was Constitutional, whereas revolt was the exercise of a natural right (see the DoI). The slaveholders were anxious to reject any claim of natural right for the obvious reason that their slaves might decide to exercise their own undoubted natural rights. Also because claiming to exercise a natural right for the purpose of depriving others of their natural rights was not all that persuasive. The slaveholders therefore invented the concept of "secession" as something within the Constitution and offered increasingly arcane arguments to justify it.

From an external POV, of course, there wouldn't be any practical difference between revolt and secession. Inside the country, "secession" offered a gloss of "legality" and "right" as a cover to the fundamental injustice of the slaveholders' cause.

Constitutions could, no doubt, provide for secession. Ours just doesn't.
 

Ah, that's what I thought, and was hoping to crack through with the bank robbery analogy; It's a legitimacy thing in your minds, admitting they did secede is tied up with irrelevancies like it being legitimate for them to secede. Rather than being just a brute fact of history, something they actually did regardless of whether they should have or were legally entitled to.

Likewise, they weren't really an independent country, despite having all the trappings of such. (I suppose in your world Taiwan stopped being a country when we decided to pretend they were a rebel province of China.)

Weird way to view the world, where things only really happened if you approve of them having been done. Like we're still under the Articles of Confederation because the Constitution wasn't adopted according to the Articles' amendment process.

The Constitution doesn't really have anything to do with this; It's like you're playing a baseball game, and one of the teams up and decides they don't want to play baseball anymore, and walks off the field looking for a basket ball, whether or not the rules of baseball allow you to walk off the field in mid game is utterly irrelevant, because they're not playing baseball anymore.

The Constitution was irrelevant to the Confederate states, they'd stopped playing that game, and started a new one. Theoretically the Constitution was relevant for the Union, of course, but they violated it in all sorts of ways in the process of dragging the opposing team back onto the field.
 

Gee, I guess I went to bed too early last night. Brett credits me with an assumption I did not make. Not EVERYBODY who disagrees with me is an evil monster in my view. Brett tries a master debater trick with his claim at 7:53 PM yesterday. Nice try, Hemlock. And of course Brett goes anatomical while declining to respond to the question raised in my comment 5+ hours earlier.

And now Brett attempts to put aside the Constitution in his tirades in defense of the CSA and what it stood for. Is Brett an evil monster? His own words speak to that as Brett continues to defend The Donald, who is where he is because of the Constitution and who raised the "Why?" of the Civil War that inspired this post. Perhaps if Trump's new found friend Frederick Douglass had been around back then, together with his avatar friend/mentor Andrew Jackson, they could have prevented the Civil War from happening.

By the Bybee [expletives deleted], regarding what constitutes a secession, I recall Sandy Levinson suggesting that the American Revolution was secession, a successful one.
 

This is an argument over semantics.

Successful revolutions come in two flavors - regime change inside the same nation or secession from that nation.

What the USA achieved and CSA attempted was secession from a mother nation.

Brett's point that the CSA temporarily achieved effective secession is correct and largely irrelevant. They lost their revolution.


 

Bart, first you say that this is an argument over semantics, and then you say that Brett is right. So you're saying that you agree with his choice of words. As I said in an earlier e-mail, I don't care what label we apply, because it matters only when a practical purpose, such as securing international recognition, is at stake. But nothing is at stake now, so I think that we can drop this question.
 

To follow on Henry's response to SPAM, semantically what does this from SPAM:

" ... the CSA temporarily achieved effective secession ..."

mean? Yes, it is irrelevant as SPAM says, but not correct, rather asinine.

I disagree with Henry's closing sentence as Trump's Fake History that is the subject of this post has served as a dog whistle for Trump's "forgotten" voter base who remain "forgotten" following Trump's first 100 days millstone [sick!].


 

Henry:

Brett is correct that the CSA temporarily formed its own fully operational nation. Whether any other nation recognized the CSA as an independent nation does not change that fact.
 

Interesting contrast between how Jackson handled the SC nullification crisis and Buchanan the brewing southern secession.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/james-buchanan-was-no-andrew-jackson-1493766115?mod=rss_opinion_main
 

Bart,

Granted. But that doesn't make Lincoln wrong in regarding the seceding states as having been a traitorous insurrection. It was that too. Each side had its own point of view, and neither was objectively right or wrong. The CSA had to call itself a nation, because, if it did not, then it would have been merely a traitorous insurrection. Lincoln had to deny that it was a nation, because, if he did not, then he'd have been invading a foreign nation. So, once again, the label depends upon the purpose of its user.
 

If one team refuses to play a baseball game, the rules provide that the game is forfeited. There's a score entered in the official record books, and it goes down as a loss for the team refusing to play and a win for the other team. All of this takes place within the existing rules (i.e., the baseball "Constitution").


 

Henry: The CSA had to call itself a nation, because, if it did not, then it would have been merely a traitorous insurrection.

Another semantic note: Treason is giving aid and comfort to a foreign enemy. Sedition is rebelling against the government.

Both the USA and CSA engaged in seditious insurrections.

The fact that both the USA and CSA both formed effective governments during their revolutionary wars does not change the fact they were engaged in seditious insurrections. Indeed, that is the entire point of secession.
 

Bart, I was using "traitorous" in the vernacular, not the legal, sense. But, legally, under Article III, section 3, treason includes not only giving aid and comfort to enemies, but "levying War against the [United States]." Was the Confederacy doing that? Well, if only a nation can levy war, then we're going around in circles: Was the Confederacy a nation? But, in the Prize Cases (1863), the Supreme Court held that the Civil War was a war. It thus upheld Lincoln's blockade of Southern ports. So, once again, purpose guides semantics.
 

There are plenty of instances in US law where groups of individuals, not nations, were charged with treason for "levying war against the United States". In the Whiskey Rebellion, those arrested were charged with Treason. Same with Fries' Rebellion. Given that legal understanding of the time, it was not necessary for the Confederate states to constitute a "nation" in order for the participants in the slaveholders rebellion to be charged with treason.

The law today would probably be different.
 

I'm not so confident that the law today would be different. Consider Obama's charging whistleblowers with espionage. We'd have to depend on the Supreme Court to save us from gratuitous charges of treason, and I'm not confident that, with Gorsuch, it would.
 

By the Bybee [expletives deleted], not all of the slave states joined the CSA. And it is worth noting that SPAMS's 8:49 AM:

"Brett's point that the CSA temporarily achieved effective secession is correct ...."

has been modifies at SPAM's 9:12 AM to:

"Brett is correct that the CSA temporarily formed its own fully operational nation."

Yes, the CSA even had its own constitution - that significantly mirrored the Union's Constitution except for certain provisions impacting slavery - and that incorporated certain interpretations of the Union's Constitution. But the CSA was basically a COTTON REPUBLIC as, yes, the CSA had no Bananas.

The states that seceded did not do so in unison. At least one seceded before Lincoln was inaugurated. Others seceded on different dates. Like mobsters, they banded together. If you lose, it's treason.

Here's a "what if" that might be considered before this thread goes into moderation: What if the letter and spirit of the Civil War Amendments had been accepted by the losing citizenry of the CSA so that Jim Crow never came about? [Note: This is a trap for the "forgotten."]


 

Henry:

Your point concerning the Constitution's definition of treason is well taken.

FWIW, Whistleblowing is disclosing a organizational violation of law. American citizens (including the media, who have no legal exemption) publishing the means and methods of perfectly legal intelligence gathering to our wartime enemies are criminally violating the Espionage Act and very arguably crossing the line into treason.

 

Shag: And it is worth noting that SPAMS's 8:49 AM:

"Brett's point that the CSA temporarily achieved effective secession is correct ...."

has been modifies at SPAM's 9:12 AM to:

"Brett is correct that the CSA temporarily formed its own fully operational nation."

Ummm... Secession IS forming your own fully operational nation.
 

Shag, I'll expand your final question. What if the letter and spirit of the Civil War Amendments had been accepted by the losing citizenry of the CSA so that the war on drugs, "qualified" immunity for police who murder unarmed black men, voter ID laws, unconstitutional stop and frisks, and so forth, never came about? We are still fighting the Civil War. It's no coincidence, obviously, that the red states today are by and large the states that seceded in 1860-1861.

By the way, seven states seceded before Lincoln's inaugural. Four more seceded after Fort Sumter.
 

I shouldn't have included unconstitutional stop and frisks in my list of anti-black activities, because New York under Giuliani was a big offender there, but is not a red state. Of course, the draft riots took place in New York, so racism was hardly limited to the South then and isn't now. But, it is a valid generalization to say that we are still fighting the Civil War.
 

"whistleblowers with espionage"

Such a general statement doesn't convince me that Mark Field is wrong, especially without specifics. Wikileaks, e.g., is honored by some as merely whistle-blowing.

But, just as "espionage" is not the same as "treason,"and suggesting Wikileaks is not merely whistle-blowing (itself an open-ended term that very well can include espionage, depending on how we are defining things) is to me rather reasonable.


 

Brett says that the CSA "all the trappings," but it did not.

His bank robbery analogy only would hold, perhaps, if the robbery was by a freedom group, who argued they really weren't robbing a bank. They were taking money rightfully theirs, appealing in to law that both the bank and themselves are bound by. And, even then, it would be test of time to see if they won out.

International recognition is one of the "trappings" of an independent state. He appeals to Taiwan. But, that was recognized. The CSA was not. So, it did not have "all" the trappings. Besides that, it was not recognized as legitimate by the body it alleged independence from. The US did not have "all the trappings" in 1776 either.

Weird way to view the world, where things only really happened if you approve of them having been done. Like we're still under the Articles of Confederation because the Constitution wasn't adopted according to the Articles' amendment process.

It is not a matter of "approving" alone, though disapproval is cited for somewhat obvious reasons. Likewise, keep on repeating it, it is not denied that in some form in a de facto way (noting Mark Field's point on theory) secession occurred. But, you go further, including the "all" trappings point.

The Constitution was irrelevant to the Confederate states, they'd stopped playing that game, and started a new one. Theoretically the Constitution was relevant for the Union, of course, but they violated it in all sorts of ways in the process of dragging the opposing team back onto the field.

The baseball metaphor works better as a team being part of MLB and violating previous agreed terms to play games etc. The Constitution and previous baseball agreement both were relevant here & the CSA argued that they were not violating its terms because they did care about it. It was not irrelevant to them. They in fact patterned their own constitution on its text for that very reason.

The bottom line really is that the CSA was an attempted act of rebellion like the US was a successful one. Both appealed to law and constitution, in the US case the unwritten English version. The US won in part because of foreign recognition, an important "trapping" of sovereignty. As to the last part, it is true that war usually includes some violation of the law. But, rebels who started a war in defense of slavery on balance don't have much to be proud of net there.
 

ETA: The CSA did their own questionable moves to try to win the war as well with the additional burden of fighting for a much less admirable cause.