re: If secession was legal then what right did the North have to keep the South in the USA?

That's why it's called the war of northern aggression.

Here you go friend:

LINK

“If you bring these [Confederate] leaders to trial it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one.”
Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1867 (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3, p. 765)

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Secession wasn't illegal. Nothing prohibited any state, legally, from leaving the union.

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You are correct.

I read a great discussion about this from a guy who was either a historian or legal scholar. He claimed that in order for the states to sign on the dotted line to agree to become part of the union of states, they were given guarantees that they could withdraw from the union if they felt that the federal government wasn't living up to their end of the agreement.

He had a great analogy about a woman having to stay in an abusive marriage because divorce was not an option given to her.

If secession was legal then what right did the North have to keep the South in the USA?

Secession was not legal under U.S. Law. Some states published secession documents. We get that.

But the sovereignty of the United States rests upon the people of the whole United States.

Right?

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The states have no power to act when the sovereign power lies with the people.

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He claimed that in order for the states to sign on the dotted line to agree to become part of the union of states, they were given guarantees that they could withdraw from the union if they felt that the federal government wasn't living up to their end of the agreement.

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I mean it's possible, but this seems highly unlikely, especially since usually the potential states were the ones petitioning to join. It doesn't make sense that the Federal Government would have the advantage, yet give the states this disproportionate advantage as a condition to join them.

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He had a great analogy about a woman having to stay in an abusive marriage because divorce was not an option given to her.

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This analogy is flawed, because in this case, it would mean, abused or not, the woman would then be the only one with the power to divorce. The man couldn't, and an agreement is not necessary, nor is any legal process really required to re-mediate or arbitrate that matter.

In other words, it would in theory allow a woman, married to a perfectly fine and very rich husband, to divorce him, take all the assets she enjoyed on his behalf, and give him no legal recourse or power whatsoever.

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Remember, the US Government pardoned Jefferson Davis because they were afraid he would prove in court that secession was legal.

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Nonsense.

Besides dead president Lincoln not wanting -any- trials, Davis would have to be tried in Virginia -- by Virginians.

Here is the deal on that.

Let Dana, in a letter to Attorney General W.M. Evarts on August 24, 1868, express his opinion why there should be no attempt to try Davis (and by extension, any other Confederate) for their activities during the War. The letter is a little long but I think it important to read all of it.

"Sir,

While preparing with yourself, before you assumed your present post, to perform the honorable duty the President had assigned to us, of conducting the trial of Jefferson Davis, you know how much my mind was moved, from the first, by doubts of the expediency of trying him at all. The reasons which prevented my presenting those doubts no longer exist, and they have so ripened into conviction that I feel it my duty to lay them before you in form, as you now hold a post of official responsibly for the proceeding.

After the most serious reflection, I cannot see any good reason why the Government should make a question whether the late civil war was treason, and whether Jefferson Davis took any part in it, and submit those questions to the decision of a petit jury of the vicinage of Richmond at "nisi prius" ["court of original jurisdiction"].

As the Constitution in terms settles the fact that our republic is a state against which treason may be committed, the only constitutional question attending the late war was whether a levying of war against the United States which would otherwise be treason, is relieved of that character by the fact that it took the form of secession from the Union by state authority. In other words the legal issue was, whether secession by a State is a right, making an act legal and obligatory upon the nation which would otherwise have been treason.

This issue I suppose to have been settled by the action of every department of the Government, by the action of the people itself, and by those events which are definitive in the affairs of men.

The Supreme Court in the Prize Cases held, by happily a unanimous opinion, that acts of the States, whether secession ordinances, or in whatever form cast, could not be brought into the cases, as justifications for the war, and had no legal effect on the character of the war, or on the political status of territory or persons or property, and that the line of enemy's territory was a question of fact, depending upon the line of bayonets of an actual war. The rule in the Prize Cases has been steadily followed in the Supreme Court since, and in the Circuit Courts, without an intimation of a doubt. That the law making and executive departments have treated this secession and war as treason, is a matter of history, as well as is the action of the people in the highest sanction of war."

This sorta bears repeating.

"...by happily a unanimous opinion, that acts of the States, whether secession ordinances, or in whatever form cast, could not be brought into the cases, as justifications for the war, and had no legal effect on the character of the war"

War of Northern Agression.

North Attached.
South Defended.

Winners wrote the history book.

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If you don't know the history shut your fricking mouths.

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LMAO at this coming from you. Delete your account.

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Here you go friend:

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I mean that's interesting, because of the citizenship issue. And it does mention some were worried he would prove it was legal, but this assertion is not supported:

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Remember, the US Government pardoned Jefferson Davis because they were afraid he would prove in court that secession was legal.

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First of all everyone was pardoned as long as they applied for it.

And despite the concerns that he would prove the legality, his defense was trying to argue double jeopardy instead. And besides, a few years later they was a SCOTUS decision regarding this so those unsupported concerns seem especially irrelevant.