In the months before the April 12, 1861, firing on Fort Sumter, there were lots of sharp divisions in the North about the proper reaction to the first seven Confederate states that had already left the Union.

Not all Unionists believed a civil war was inevitable: Some, in fact, were happy to be done with the departing South and thus see the stain of slavery gone from the Union.

Similarly, others agreed that the emerging Confederacy was not worth the trouble and costs of war, and the secessionists could just form their own nation and stew in their own backward, servile juice.

But after Fort Sumter, President Abraham Lincoln — who was hated as much by the Confederates as President Trump is by the woke and socialist left — gained a consensus that the Constitution had no clauses about any lawful departure from the Union.

It operated under a clear supremacy clause that made state obstruction of federal law and occupation of federal property veritable sedition.

Lincoln and the preservationists felt they easily had the moral high ground of abolition versus the continuance of slavery.

Nor did they want a North America of fragmenting, warring nations in the manner of Europe.

Something similar is emerging over Minnesota, the South Carolina of our age.

Once sanctuary states, cities and counties had established the precedent that, with impunity, they........

© New York Post