I didn't say that Lincoln "dissove" the Constitution. Words have meaning; and those weren't my words.
When the Southern states walked out of Congress; the quorum to conduct business under the Constitution was lost. The only votes that Congress could lawfully take, under Parliamentary Law, were to set the time to reconvene, take a vote to get a quorum, and vote to adjourn, and set a date, a time, and a place, to reconvene at a later time.
That is not what happened. Congress abandoned the House and Senate without setting a date to reconvene. Under the parliamentary law of Congress, when this happened, Congress became sine die; thus when Congress adjourned sine die, it ceased to exist as a lawful deliberative body.
I absence of Congress the Federal Government was no longer operating under the Constitution. Only Congress has the authority to declare war; but Lincoln stepped up as a de facto Dictator and issued Executive Order 1.
"Now therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution, [
] and the laws [
], have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed[
]. The details, for this object, will be immediately communicated to the State authorities through the War Department. "
