Was The Upper South's Secession Inevitable?

[Josh The Lighthouse Guy]

John Marshall Harlan, a Kentucky Whig and later supreme court judge of Plessy v. Ferguson fame, wrote to Joseph Holt on 11 Mar 1861 (emphasis added):

The chief cause for the excitement now in Kentucky, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri is the constant fear that the Lincoln Administration will attempt coercion, or commence between 'him' [Lincoln] and the Seceding States. No matter how it may be produced, no matter who may be in the wrong, whenever war commences between the Federal Government under Lincoln and any of the Seceding States, [at] that moment the Union cause in the above states will receive a blow from which it may never recover.

(Quoted in Daniel W. Crofts, "Joseph Holt, James Buchanan, and the Secession Crisis," James Buchanan and the Coming of the Civil War, 224

Was Holt correct that the Upper South have seceded in response to a USA-CSA war, no matter the circumstances?

If so, does that mean Lincoln and Davis were both right not to avoid war? Davis needed to instigate a war to ensure the Upper South joined the Confederacy and Lincoln needed the Confederacy to instigate a war to ensure strong support in the rest of the country?

 

[CW Buff]

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[J C J Barefoot]

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