You misunderstand the language. It means simply that if someone in the fort is being sued in a civil suit or is being charged with a crime under South Carolina law process can be served upon him on the fort by South Caroina authorities. It has nothing to do with the fort's ownership.
"Provided, that all processes civil and criminal issued under the authority of this State, or any officer thereof, shall and may be served and executed upon any of the land so ceded, or structures to be erected upon the same, and any person there being who may be implicated in law"
All processes.
Civil and criminal. It does not get much clearer than that. If SC issued an eviction, that is a civil proceeding. If SC declared the inhabitants to be criminals, they had that right as well. Either way, SC had every right to remove the inhabitants from that property.
You're also misreading the language. Check the grammar carefully, they are referring to executing orders related to the
land itself. Not just the people on it.
"shall and may be served and executed upon any of the land so ceded, or structures to be erected upon the same, and any person there".
You could remove the last piece ", and any person there" - and the language would still have meaning.
You also misunderstand the concept of ownership. The concept of ownership implies sovereignty over that land. Considering the significant limitations placed on the land, ownership was not ceded.
What the United States was ceded, could at best be described as a leasehold. Possession, without ownership. SC retained sovereignty over the land.
That doesn't follow. Even assuming the people "own" the federal government it means all of the people, not just South Carolinians. They would have no greater claim to the Fort than Virginians or Vemonters.
When South Carolina seceded, the federal government owed a portion of its assets to SC. It's entirely reasonable to assume, by default, that the "federal" assets that are in South Carolina, should be allocated to SC. SC made no claims over forts in other states.
If that does not seem reasonable to you, if for example you believe that the US government invested heavily into SC, without SC reciprocating proportional taxes in return, then that dispute can be resolved through civil proceedings.
The North made it impossible to resolve it through civil proceedings, because they refused to even recognize that SC had even left the union.
The North gave them literally no option but to re-take their rightfully owned property by force. (and in a manner, I would point out, that resulted in zero people getting killed)
But secession has no bearing on ownership. If South Carolina had sold the fort to the federal government would you seriously claim it could get it back by seceding?
If it had transferred sovereignty of that property to a membership group they do not belong in (e.g., another state), they would not be able to reclaim it back through secession. Two things to point out though, is:
1) SC did not transfer sovereignty of Fort Sumter to the US. They ceded, at best, a leasehold agreement.
2) SC at the time of ceding Fort Sumter, was a member of the US. They in effect ceded the land to themselves.
Or what if it sold cotton raised on state-owned land -- would the cotton suddenly become SC's property upon secession? The fact that the fort was ceded instead of sold is irrelevant. If someone makes a gift to you the subject of the gift is still your property even though you paid nothing for it, and the donor has no legal claim to it. The same applies to property that's ceded by a State.
This is reinforced by I.8.17, which contemplates that the area comprising the Seat of Government of the United States would come from land ceded by States. Would you claim that when Virginia seceded it magically became the owner of the portion of D.C. that it had ceded?
Married couples are able to divorce and separate their assets without needing to murder each other. Separation of assets is done through civil proceedings. The South gave the US plenty of time to either vacate the property or begin civil proceedings. Instead the North refused to acknowledge the South's sovereignty, and began militarizing the borders & seas, preparing for war.
Given the circumstances that SC was placed in, by the North, it was entirely reasonable for them to assert their ownership on the forts within the geographic area of their state. If the North wanted to make any kind of negotiation to decide what assets are distributed to whom, they had that opportunity and chose not to do so.
If every state seceded, there wouldn't be a federal government anymore.
Exactly.
And if you think the federal government can't own property, the Constitution begs to differ: "The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States..." (IV.3.2).
And if there is no federal government anymore, to whom does that Constitution apply? To nobody.
You're missing the point however.
The point is that entities cannot own property. A piece of paper such as the Constitution does not own property.
Only people can own property. When you say the "federal government owns this property" what you are really saying is that each citizen in the country owns 1/300,000,000 of that property.
And if the 5 million people in SC were to want to secede, they would be entitled to ~2% of the federal government's assets (and liabilities).
Again, look to divorce proceedings to how its supposed to work. One party does not get to just keep all the assets in a divorce, though I'm sure Bezos would be much happier if that were the case.