These days in (US) History: 12/19-20

[Pogo]

Both yesterday and today, in different years of our history, marked significant events that shaped where we are today.

December 19, 1828:​

John Calhoun, sitting Vice President of the United States, had finished writing the "South Carolina Exposition and Protest", touching off the Nullification Crisis. On December 19, 1828, the tome was presented to the State House of Representatives, which had 5,000 copies of it printed and distributed. Calhoun was not publicly identified as the author at first. The document, in protest of the so-called "Tariff of Abominations" (Tariff of 1828) made the case for the concept of a state nullifying a Federal law and holding the right to secede if forced to comply with it.

These were the first noises (with a specific legislation target) of a state mulling secession over a federal dispute. The Tariff of 1828 was an economic move that favored the interests of the industrial North over the agrarian South.

Calhoun, who served as VP under two different Presidents, became the first VP to resign over the dispute with the POTUS, Andrew Jackson.

December 20, 1860 (32 years on plus one day):​

The state of South Carolina drew up its Ordinance of Secession, becoming the first state to secede from the union, and three weeks later firing the first shots of the coming War. Six more states followed suit before Lincoln's inauguration (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas) and after the battle at Fort Sumter four more followed (Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina).

 

[Steven_R]

I wonder what would have happened had one state simply sued in Federal court to secede.

 

[whitehall]

There is some dispute about which Northern state was the last to outlaw slavery but it seems that Pa. and N.J. were a close tie at about 13 years before the Civil War. Slavery was dying throughout the world and Lincoln must have been aware of it. Why didn't he promise and lie and stall for time and do anything he could to prevent the potentially seceeding states form leaving the Union? It seems that Lincoln was determined to promote warfare in order to teach the Southern states a lesson about the power of the federal government. He criminally underestimated the mess that he alone was responsible for creating.

 

[Pogo]

There is some dispute about which Northern state was the last to outlaw slavery but it seems that Pa. and N.J. were a close tie at about 13 years before the Civil War. Slavery was dying throughout the world and Lincoln must have been aware of it. Why didn't he promise and lie and stall for time and do anything he could to prevent the potentially seceeding states form leaving the Union? It seems that Lincoln was determined to promote warfare in order to teach the Southern states a lesson about the power of the federal government. He criminally underestimated the mess that he alone was responsible for creating.

Ummm.... more states seceded during the Buchanan Administration than during Lincoln's. It's right there in my OP.

Anyway, a POTUS doesn't have any control over what a state decides to do, whether legal or not -- and that status wasn't clearly established at the time, being a point of debate at least back to Jefferson.

The question really amounts to "what should the federal reaction be?" From his last address to Congress in December 1860, Buchanan seemed inclined to allow it to happen, but then he only had three months left in office anyway. Lincoln's decision was to step in and stop it. The new Republican Party was after all the party of doing big things with government, a legacy of the Whigs (of which Lincoln had been one).

As also mentioned in the OP, the first shots of that war were fired during Buchanan's term (January 9 1861) but he chose not to prosecute.

We can only speculate on how history would have evolved had the Union just shrugged it off and allowed the split, but the recurring dynamic stirring the pot in the years leading up to the War was all the new territory the hungry country was acquiring and establishing as new states -- and the political power that came with them.

 

[Pogo]

There is some dispute about which Northern state was the last to outlaw slavery but it seems that Pa. and N.J. were a close tie at about 13 years before the Civil War.

Bullshit.
Pennsylvania passed the Gradual Abolition Act in 1780, the first such law in the US. First in the Western Hemisphere actually.