State Sovereignty and the Right of Secession

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In his excellent book entitled Is Davis a Traitor?, Southern political apologist Albert Taylor Bledsoe wrote, "The final judgment of History in relation to the war of 1861 will, in no small degree, depend on its verdict with respect to the right of secession. If, when this right was practically asserted by the South, it had been conceded by the North, there would not have been even a pretext for the tremendous conflict which followed."(1) Secession became the great political question of the Nineteenth Century to be decided, not by appealing to law and reason, which method Abraham Lincoln ridiculed as "exceedingly thin and airy,"(2) but, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Grier, by "wager of Battle,"(3) or, to quote John Andrews, Governor of Massachusetts, by "the logic of bayonets and rifles and pikes...."(4) Christian gentlemen and honorable statesmen do not resort to such methods of settling disputes, for "it is only the atheist who adopts success as the criterion of right."(5) As will be shown in this book, such would have made a fitting inscription for the tombstones of the "sainted" sixteenth President of the United States(6) and his Republican cohorts, whose hands, though long ago moldered away to dust, remain eternally stained with the blood of innocent millions and which still clutch the tattered garments of Lady Liberty, whom they brutally outraged in their godless lust and ambitious grasping for power. From the formation of the original Confederacy under the Articles of Confederation of 1777, and continuing on after the ratification of the Constitution of 1789, it was a well-understood and universally accepted political doctrine that the Union was a compact, or a "league of friendship" between thirteen independent and sovereign States, from which the parties thereof could constitutionally and peacefully withdraw at will. In the words of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge:

When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of States at Philadelphia, and accepted by the votes of States in popular conventions, it is safe to say there was no man in this country, from Washington and Hamilton on the one side to George Clinton and George Mason on the other, who regarded our system of Government, when first adopted, as anything but an experiment entered upon by the States, and from which each and every State had the right to peaceably withdraw, a right which was very likely to be exercised.(7)

The truth of Senator Lodge's statement is established by George Washington himself, who, in his Farewell Address, asked, "Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. It is well worth a fair and full experiment." In his correspondence with various dignitaries, Washington constantly referred to the Union of States as "the new confederacy"(8) and a "confederated Government,"(9) and he spoke of the Constitution as "a compact or treaty"(10) between "the people of the several states."(11) In a letter to General Knox, dated 17 June 1788, he wrote, "I can not but hope that the States which may be disposed to make a secession [from the Union] will think often and seriously on the consequence."(12) Eleven days later, writing to General Pinckney, he announced that New Hampshire had "acceded to the new Confederacy," and, referring to North Carolina, he said, "I should be astonished if that State should withdraw from the Union."(13) James Madison, who is commonly referred to as "the father of the Constitution," and who was in an authoritative position to properly interpret that instrument, envisioned a "confederate republic" composed of "confederate States," and described the proposed constitutional system as "a confederacy founded on republican principles, and composed of republican members."(14) Madison, was certainly aware of the "republican principles" contained in the Declaration of Independence which stated, not only that governments are not republican which do not "deriv[e] their just powers from the consent of the governed," but that, should a government not answer to the purposes for which it was established, "it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." Indeed, he practically repeated the words of Thomas Jefferson when he wrote of "the great principle of self-preservation" and of "the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed."(15) Madison also said, "Were the plan of the Convention adverse to the public happiness, my voice would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent with the public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union."(16) It may be argued that these were Madison's opinions prior to ratification of the Constitution and therefore cannot be made to apply to the status of the States after they had entered the new Union. However, as late as 1830, after the new system had been operational for over forty years, he was still uncertain "whether the Union will answer the ends of its existence or otherwise." He went on:

Should the provisions of the Constitution as here reviewed be found not to secure the Government and rights of the States against usurpations and abuses on the part of the United States, the final resort within the purview of the Constitution lies in an amendment of the Constitution according to a process applicable by the States. And in the event of a failure of every constitutional resort, and an accumulation of usurpations and abuses, rendering passive obedience and non-resistence a greater evil, than resistence and revolution, there can remain but one resort, the last of all, an appeal from the cancelled obligations of the constitutional compact, to original rights and the law of self-preservation. This is the ultima ratio under all Government whether consolidated, confederated, or a compound of both; and it cannot be doubted that a single member of the Union, in the extremity supposed, but in that only, would have a right, as an extra and ultra constitutional right, to make the appeal.(17)

Even Alexander Hamilton, who advocated a strong centralized government bordering on a monarchy, had to admit that the Union under the proposed Constitution would "still be, in fact and in theory, an association of States, or a confederacy."(18) Hamilton was not so dull-witted to believe secession from a confederacy of States to be illegal, since that is precisely what the States would have to do in relation to the Articles of Confederation "in order to form a more perfect Union" under the Constitution. In a letter to Timothy Pickering dated 16 September 1803, he wrote that the republican form of government set forth in the Constitution "should have a fair and full trial," and then added, "I sincerely hope that it may not hereafter be discovered, that through want of sufficient attention to the last idea, the experiment of republican government, even in this country, has not been as complete, as satisfactory, and as decisive as could be wished." It is interesting to note that State sovereignty and the reserved right of secession was taught by the United States Government to cadets at West Point Military Academy from 1825 to 1840 through William Rawle's book, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America.(19) In this book, which was also used as a political textbook by several other colleges and academies throughout the country at the time,(20) the author, a Philadelphia lawyer and staunch Federalist, wrote the following:

It depends on the state itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle of which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed.... The secession of a state from the Union depends on the will of the people of such state. The people alone, as we have already seen, hold the power to alter their constitutions. But in any manner by which a secession is to take place, nothing is more certain than that the act should be deliberate, clear, and unequivocal. To withdraw from the Union is a solemn, serious act. Whenever it may appear expedient to the people of a state, it must be manifested in a direct and unequivocal manner.(21)

It is clear from the available historical facts that the Constitution would have never been ratified if it had been understood that, in doing so, the States would surrender their sovereignty, as well as their right of secession should the experiment fail. We need look no further for proof of the reserved right of secession than in the ratification of at least three of the original thirteen States. Following are excerpts from the ratifications of the States of Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island respectively:

We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation from the general assembly, and now met in convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us to decide thereon, Do, in the name and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will....

We, the delegates of the people of New York... do declare and make known that the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness; that every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the department of the government thereof, remains to the people of the several States, or to their respective State governments, to whom they may have granted the same; and that those clauses in the said Constitution, which declare that Congress shall not have or exercise certain powers, do not imply that Congress is entitled to any powers not given by the said Constitution; but such clauses are to be construed either as exceptions in certain specified powers or as inserted merely for greater caution.

We, the delegates of the people of Rhode Island and Plantations, duly elected... do declare and make known... that the powers of government may be resumed by the people whenever it shall become necessary to their happiness; that every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the department of the government thereof, remains to the people of the several States, or to their respective State governments, to whom they may have granted the same; that Congress shall guarantee to each State its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Constitution expressly delegated to the United States.

These expressions are not mere obiter dicta, thrown out incidentally, and entitled only to be regarded as an expression of opinion by their authors. Even if only such, they would carry great weight as the deliberately expressed judgment of enlightened contemporaries, but they are more: they are parts of the very acts or ordinances by which these States ratified the Constitution and acceded to the Union, and can not be detached from them. If they are invalid, the ratification itself was invalid, for they are inseparable. By inserting these declarations in their ordinances, Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island, formally, officially, and permanently, declared their interpretation of the Constitution as recognizing the right of secession by the resumption of their grants. By accepting the ratifications with this declaration incorporated, the other States as formally accepted the principle which it asserted.(22)

It was not until the Nineteenth Century was well underway that the theory of a "perpetual union," from which withdrawal was unlawful, first made an appearance in Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution.(23) Daniel Webster would rely heavily on Story's work in his debates in Congress, first with South Carolina Senator Robert Hayne in 1830 and then with John C. Calhoun, also of South Carolina, three years later. The proponents of this novel theory denied that the Constitution was either "a compact between State governments" or that it had been "established by the people of the several States," asserting that it had instead been established by "the people of the United States in the aggregate."(24) The States had thus never been sovereign political bodies, but instead drew their very life breath from the Union. In other words, the States were the creatures of the Union rather than vice versa. Therefore, it was reasoned, for the people of a State to declare their independence from this indivisible Union was to declare the impossible and to commit an act of treason against the nation which had given it the right to exist. What is most remarkable about this theory is that it originated from within the rapidly dwindling ranks of the old Federalist party, which had, less than a generation before, been the chief agitator for the secession of the Northeastern States from the Union. Having been driven from power by the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800, the Federalists were thereafter, during the second war with England, seen agitating once again for the secession of those States and for the establishment of a New England confederacy. Story's own State of Massachusetts was the most vocal in proclaiming the doctrine of State sovereignty and the right of nullification which would later be so ably championed by Calhoun and so vehemently opposed by Story's apprentice, Webster. As a Supreme Court justice, Story "perpetually insisted on construing the Constitution from the standpoint of that small and defeated party in the Federal Convention which wanted to form a government on the model of the English monarchy in everything but the name."(25) This was the party which, while John Adams was President, was responsible for passing the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1796, the latter of which prescribed a two thousand dollar fine and two years imprisonment for anyone who "should write or publish, or cause to be published, any libel against the Government of the United States, or either House of Congress, or against the President." C. Chauncey Burr described the effects of this Act: "A great many editors, and other gentlemen, were imprisoned under this act. Even to ridicule the President was pronounced by the corrupt partisan judges a violation of the law. Men were beaten almost to death for neglecting to pull off their hats when the President was passing, and every man who did not instantly prostrate himself before the ensigns of Federal royalty, was denounced as the enemy of his country."(26) Both the Alien and Sedition Acts were promptly denounced by Thomas Jefferson in the Kentucky Resolutions and by James Madison in the Virginia Resolutions, and they were thereafter repealed. We need not review how the Federalists not long afterwards violated the spirit of their own sedition law in the deprecations they heaped upon the Government, and the President in particular, during the War of 1812. Had Alexander Hamilton, the consummate monarchist at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, still been living when Story's Commentaries were initially published in 1830, they would have likely received his hearty endorsement. Unfortunately, due to their otherwise brilliant content, they did not receive the reprobation they deserved for their advancement of the consolidationist heresy of the Federalists, and they soon supplanted the abler work of Story's more honest Federalist colleague, William Rawle, as the textbook most widely consulted by politicians and lawyers on questions of American constitutional law. It should be noted that in 1830, the records of the debates in the Philadelphia Convention had not yet been published and since the proceedings had been conducted in secret, their contents were entirely unknown to the public. Furthermore, the generation of men who had participated in the founding of the Republic under the Constitution had, with few exceptions, but recently passed from the scene. The appearance of Story's theory on the political stage occurred concurrent to this passing; had a Jefferson or even a Washington still lived to rebut Story's postulations, it is doubtful that his work would have long survived or risen above obscurity. Unfortunately, a closer examination and critique of Story's Commentaries would be left to the succeeding generation. In 1868, after the monarchical faction had already achieved a costly victory on the field of battle and had ascended to the throne of power, Abel P. Upshur, a lawyer from Virginia, published his brilliant, albeit belated, response to Story entitled The Federal Government: Its True Nature and Character. Responding to the claim advanced by Story that prior to the severance of political ties with Great Britain, the people of the thirteen colonies "were in a strict sense fellow-subjects, and in a variety of respects, one people," Upshur wrote:

In order to constitute "one people," in a political sense, of the inhabitants of different countries, something more is necessary than that they should owe a common allegiance to a common sovereign.... By the term "people," as here used, we do not mean merely a number of persons. We mean by it a political corporation, the members of which owe a common allegiance to a common sovereignty, and do not owe any allegiance which is not common; who are bound by no laws except such as that sovereignty may prescribe; who owe to one another reciprocal obligations; who possess common political interests; who are liable to common political duties; and who can exert no sovereign power except in the name of the whole. Anything short of this, would be an imperfect definition of that political corporation which we call "a people." Tested by this definition, the people of the American colonies were, in no conceivable sense, "one people." They owed, indeed, allegiance to the British King, as the head of each colonial government, and as forming a part thereof; but this allegiance was exclusive, in each colony, to its own government, and, consequently, to the King as the head thereof and was not a common allegiance of the people of all the colonies, to a common head. These colonial governments were clothed with the sovereign power of making laws, and of enforcing obedience to them, from their own people. The people of one colony owed no allegiance to the government of any other colony, and were not bound by its laws. The colonies had no common legislature, no common treasury, no common military power, no common judicatory. The people of one colony were not liable to pay taxes to any other colony, nor to bear arms in its defence; they had no right to vote in its elections; no influence nor control in its municipal government; no interest in its municipal institutions. There was no prescribed form by which the colonies could act together, for any purpose whatever; they were not known as "one people" in any one function of government. Although they were all, alike, dependencies of the British Crown, yet, even in the action of the parent country, in regard to them, they were recognized as separate and distinct. They were established at different times, and each under an authority from the Crown, which applied to itself alone. They were not even alike in their organization. Some were provincial, some proprietary, and some charter governments. Each derived its form of government from the particular instrument establishing it, or from assumptions of power acquiesced in by the Crown, without any connection with, or relation to, any other. They stood upon the same footing, in every respect, with other British colonies, with nothing to distinguish their relation either to the parent country or to one another (emphasis in original).(27)

That this was how the signers of the Declaration of Independence understood their political condition is beyond dispute. In the words of James Wilson, for example, "All the different members of the British empire are distinct states, Independent of each other, but connected together under the same sovereign."(28) Upshur also attacked Story's supposition that the Declaration of Independence necessarily consolidated the inhabitants of the former colonies into "one people." According to Story, "The colonies did not severally act for themselves, and proclaim their own independence." Not only is this assertion proven false by the very words of the Declaration itself, which, in its closing paragraph, referred to the colonies as possessing the right "to be Free and Independent States," but also by the Treaty of Peace, signed at Paris on 3 September 1783, in which King George III acknowledged, separately and by name, each of the thirteen former colonies "to be free sovereign and independent states," promising to "treat with them as such." Upshur wrote:

The Congress of 1775, by which independence was declared, was appointed... by the colonies in their separate and distinct capacity, each acting for itself, and not conjointly with any other. They were the representatives each of his own colony, and not of any other; each had authority to act in the name of his own colony, and not in that of any other; each colony gave its own vote by its own representatives, and not by those of any other colony. Of course, it was as separate and distinct colonies that they deliberated on the Declaration of Independence. When, therefore, they declare, in the adoption of that measure, that they act as "the representatives of the United States of America," and "in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies," they must of course be understood as speaking in the character of which they had all along acted; that is, as the representatives of separate and distinct colonies, and not as the joint representatives of any one people.... It is impossible to suppose, therefore, in common justice to the sagacity of Congress, that they meant anything more by the Declaration of Independence, than simply to sever the tie which had theretofore bound them to England, and to assert the rights of the separate and distinct colonies, as separate and independent States; particularly as the language which they use is fairly susceptible of this construction. The instrument itself is entitled, "The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America;" of States, separate and distinct bodies politic, and not of "one people" or nation, composed of all of them together; "united," as independent States may be, by compact or agreement, and not amalgamated, as they would be, if they formed one nation or body politic (emphasis in original).(29)

While the colonies were certainly united in their efforts to throw off the yoke of British tyranny, they had no such political union as envisioned by Story, and would not have any semblance of political union whatsoever until they became so associated under the Articles of Confederation. Even then, we find in the second article of that document the declaration that each State "retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled." Obviously, then, when Jefferson in the Declaration spoke of a time when "it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them," he was either speaking abstractly or applying the phrase "one people" to each of the colonies respectively. Read in any other way, the Declaration would place Jefferson, the champion of decentralization and of State sovereignty, squarely in the camp of Hamilton, the consolidationist. The absurdity of such an attempt is too transparent for comment.

Finally, Story brought his faulty premise to an equally faulty conclusion: the "one people" who issue their Declaration of Independence in 1776 are the same "people of the United States" who, in 1787 "do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Thus, the theory of the people "in the aggregate" is presented for our consideration. However, Story fared no better in his exposition of this doctrine than in his exposition of those preceding it, for his thesis is immediately disproved when the original wording of the Preamble is read: "We, the people of the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, do ordain, declare and establish the following Constitution, for the government of ourselves and our posterity."(30) Upshur commented:

On the very next day this preamble was unanimously adopted; and the reader will at once perceive, that it carefully preserves the distinct sovereignty of the States, and discountenances all idea of consolidation. The draft of the Constitution thus submitted was discussed, and various alterations and amendments adopted (but without any change in the preamble), until the 8th of September, 1787, when the following resolution was passed: "It was moved and seconded to appoint a committee of five, to revise the style of, and arrange the articles agreed to by, the House; which passed in the affirmative." It is manifest that this committee had no power to change the meaning of anything which had been adopted, but were authorized merely to "revise the style," and arrange the matter in proper order. On the 12th of the same month they made their report. The preamble, as they reported it, is in the following words: "We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union...." It does not appear that any attempt was made to change this phraseology in any material point, or to reinstate the original. The presumption is, therefore, that the two were considered as substantially the same, particularly as the committee had no authority to make any change except in the style.... There is, however, another and a perfectly conclusive reason for the change of phraseology, from the States by name, to the more general expression "the United States;" and this, too, without supposing that it was intended thereby to convey a different idea as to the parties of the Constitution. The revised draft contained a proviso, that the Constitution should go into operation when adopted and ratified by nine States. It was, of course, uncertain whether more than nine would adopt it or not, and if they should not, it would be altogether improper to name them as parties to that instrument (emphasis in original).(31)

The testimony of the framers themselves substantiate Upshur's observations. In response to Patrick Henry's fear that what was being established by the Constitution "must be one great consolidated national government of the people of all the States"(32) -- Story's theory of the people in the aggregate -- James Madison said:

Who are parties to it? The people -- but not the people as composing one great body; but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties: were it, as the gentleman [Henry] asserts, a consolidated government, the assent of a majority of the people would be sufficient for its establishment, and as a majority have adopted it already, the remaining States would be bound by the act of the majority, even if they unanimously reprobated it: were it such a government as is suggested, it would be now binding on the people of this State [Virginia], without having had the privilege of deliberating upon it; but, sir, no State is bound by it, as it is, without its own consent. Should all the States adopt it, it will be then a government established by the thirteen States of America, not through the intervention of the Legislatures, but by the people at large. In this particular respect the distinction between the existing and proposed governments is very material. The existing system has been derived from the dependent, derivative authority of the Legislatures of the States, whereas this is derived from the superior power of the people.(33)

The Constitution is to be founded on the assent and ratification of the people of America, given by deputies elected for the special purpose; but this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals comprising one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State -- the authority of the people themselves. The act, therefore, establishing the Constitution will not be a national, but a federal act. That it will be a federal, and not a national act, as these terms are understood by objectors, the act of the people, as forming so many independent States, not as forming one aggregate nation, is obvious from this single consideration, that it is to result neither from the decision of a majority of the people of the Union, nor from that of a majority of the States. It must result from the unanimous assent of the several States that are parties to it, differing no otherwise from their ordinary assent than in its being expressed, not by the legislative authority, but by that of the people themselves. Were the people regarded in this transaction as forming one nation, the will of the majority of the whole people of the United States would bind the minority; in the same manner as the majority in each State must bind the minority; and the will of the majority must be determined either by a comparison of the individual votes, or by considering the will of the majority of the States, as evidences of the will of a majority of the people of the United States. Neither of these has been adopted. Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its voluntary act (emphasis in original).(34)

Likewise, Luther Martin, one of the delegates to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787, commented:

At the separation from the British empire, the people of America preferred to establish themselves into thirteen separate sovereignties, instead of incorporating themselves into one. To these they look up for the safety of their lives, liberties, and properties. They formed the Federal Government to defend the whole against foreign nations, and to defend the lesser States against the ambition of the larger ones.(35)

William Patterson, another delegate who later became Governor of New Jersey, had this to say of the intent of the Convention:

Can we, on this ground, form a national Government? I fancy not. Our commissions give a complexion to the business; and can we suppose that, when we exceed the bounds of our duty, the people will approve our proceedings? We are met here as the deputies of thirteen independent, sovereign States, for federal purposes. Can we consolidate their sovereignty and form one nation, and annihilate the sovereignties of our States, who have sent us here for other purposes?(36)

Such statements as these are to be found in abundance throughout the writings, public statements, and private correspondence of the people living at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, especially those who were instrumental in the actual framing of the document. Since Story and Webster had access to many of these writings, especially the Federalist Papers, one is left to conclude that their groundless theories and postulations were the product of a deliberate and pre-meditated attempt to deceive their followers.

It was the hopelesly false monarchical theory of Story and Webster which Abraham Lincoln, contrary to the intent of the framers of the Constitution, contrary to the disunionist sentiments of prominent members of the Republican party, and contrary even to the pro-secession views expressed at one time by himself on the floor of Congress,(37) adopted and proclaimed in his first Inaugural Address of 4 March 1861:

I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.... Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778 [sic]. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union." But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity. It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances. I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and maintain itself.(38)

Lincoln elaborated further on this view in his address to Congress in special session on 4 July 1861:

Our States have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution, no one of them ever having been a State out of the Union.... Having never been States, either in substance or in name, outside the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of "State rights," asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the "sovereignty" of the States, but the word even is not in the National Constitution, nor, as is believed, in any of the State constitutions.... The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can do so only against law and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their independence and their liberty. By conquest or purchase the Union gave each of them whatever of independence and liberty it has. The Union is older than the States, and, in fact, it created them as States (emphasis in original).(39)

Lincoln, the "eminent lawyer," had either not done his homework or had chosen to ignore the clear testimony of the historical record. It was his assertion that no State had "been a State out of the Union... either in substance or in name." However, the States of North Carolina and Rhode Island were indeed, both "in substance and in name," out of the Union after the Constitution had already been in operation for, in the case of the former, nearly nine months, and in the case of the latter, a full fifteen months. It was hoped that both States would eventually ratify the Constitution and thus accede to the Union thereunder, but not a single voice was raised to suggest that either North Carolina or Rhode Island should be treated by the eleven States of the then-existing federal Union as anything less than sovereign political bodies. For example, George Washington, in his capacity as President of the United States, wrote to the Senate on 26 September 1789: "Having yesterday received a letter written in this month by the Governor of Rhode Island, at the request and in behalf of the General Assembly of that State, addressed to the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives of the eleven United States of America in Congress assembled, I take the earliest opportunity of laying a copy of it before you."(40) Portions of the letter mentioned by Washington follow:

State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, In General Assembly, September Session, 1789.

To the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives of the eleven United States of America in Congress assembled:

The critical situation in which the people of this State are placed engages us to make these assurances, on their behalf, of their attachment and friendship to their sister States, and of their disposition to cultivate mutual harmony and friendly intercourse. They know themselves to be a handful, comparatively viewed, and, although they now stand as it were alone, they have not separated themselves or departed from the principles of that Confederation, which was formed by the sister States in their struggle for freedom and in the hour of danger.... Our not having acceded to or adopted the new system of government formed and adopted by most of our sister States, we doubt not, has given uneasiness to them. That we have not seen our way clear to it, consistently with our idea of the principles upon which we all embarked together, has also given pain to us. We have not doubted that we might thereby avoid present difficulties, but we have apprehended future mischief.... Can it be thought strange that, with these impressions, they should wait to see the proposed system organized and in operation? -- to see what further checks and securities would be agreed to and established by way of amendments, before they could adopt it as a constitution of government for themselves and their posterity?... We are induced to hope that we shall not be altogether considered as foreigners having no particular affinity or connection with the United States; but that trade and commerce, upon which the prosperity of this State much depends, will be preserved as free and open between this State and the United States, as our different situations at present can possibly admit.... We feel ourselves attached by the strongest ties of friendship, kindred, and interest, to our sister States; and we can not, without the greatest reluctance, look to any other quarter for those advantages of commercial intercourse which we conceive to be more natural and reciprocal between them and us. I am, at the request and in behalf of the General Assembly, your most obedient, humble servant.

In the Federalist, Number XLIII, Madison had raised the question, "What relation is to subsist between the nine or more States ratifying the Constitution, and the remaining few who do not become parties to it?" The above letter certainly supplied the answer. It could not be clearer to the unbiased reader that it was both unabashedly declared by Governor Collins and accepted without question by the authorities of the eleven United States of America, that, not only was Rhode Island a lawful State prior to her entrance into the Union under the Constitution, but that she had a lawfully functioning government which was in all respects foreign to the United States. We have already seen how the people of Rhode Island clung tenaciously to and without equivocation declared their sovereignty in their ratification of the Constitution in May of 1790, which, incidentally, was passed by a mere majority of two votes. Lincoln’s claim that the States were never acknowledged in their constitutions as sovereign is also easily disproved. The original constitution of Massachusetts opened with these words: “The people inhabiting the territory formerly called the Province of Massachusetts Bay do hereby solemnly and mutually agree with each other to form themselves into a free, sovereign, and independent body politic, or State, by the name of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” As we have seen, it was this attribute of sovereignty which was boldly asserted when Massachusetts repeatedly threatened to secede from the Union. The New Hampshire constitution likewise referred to the State as a “free, sovereign, and independent body politic.” Of course, it was not necessary for a State to declare itself to be a sovereign power in its own constitution for such a document was but the declared will of the people of the State, in whom the sovereignty resided. It was well understood that, in a republic, as each State was and remained, a constitution may be changed or abolished as the people see fit. Lincoln was apparently under the delusion that the States were created by their constitutions, rather than vice versa. Finally, the absurdity of Lincoln’s assertion that the federal Constitution nowhere applies the attribute of sovereignty to a State should have been obvious to his audience. The Constitution did not need to explicitly refer to the several States as sovereign any more than it was necessary for the constitutions of the States to do so; this was because, in its own words, it was merely a compact entered into “between the States so ratifying the Same.”(42) If the States were sovereign prior to their ratification of the Constitution, then they did not somehow lose that sovereignty simply because they failed to so declare themselves in the document of their own creation. We have already discussed how the States had once and for all time declared themselves in the Declaration of Independence to be “Free and Independent States,” and were acknowledged to be such by King George III when he signed the Treaty of Peace. In this condition, they asserted “full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.” It was this sovereign right to “contract alliances” that gave birth to the first Union under the Articles of Confederation in which document each State expressly reserved “its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.” This reservation was repeated in the Constitution, the Tenth Amendment of which states that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Nowhere in this document did the States surrender any portion of their sovereignty to the new federal Government, nor was it possible for them to have done so since true sovereignty is not an attribute capable of division:

Under the American theory of republican government, conventions of the people, duly elected and accredited as such, are invested with the plenary power inherent in the people of an organized and independent community, assembled in mass. In other words, they represent and exercise what is properly the sovereignty of the people. State Legislatures, with restricted powers, do not possess or represent sovereignty. Still less does the Congress of a union or confederacy of States, which is by two degrees removed from the seat of sovereignty. We sometimes read or hear of “delegated sovereignty,” “divided sovereignty,” with other loose expressions of the same sort; but no such thing as a division or delegation of sovereignty is possible (emphasis in original).(43)

Whatever was done in establishing the Constitution of government, must have been done by sovereignty. Of course I speak of voluntary action, i.e. free exercise and effectuation of will. So that if any sovereignty was put in the federal pact, sovereignty must, ex mero motu, have divided itself. It must have exerted its will, whether it intended to divide itself, or delegate powers. When this will was exerted, the Constitution was made and established, and the said will necessarily existed through the act. We know, then, that it was not sovereignty, but something else that was put, by sovereignty, in the federal pact.... Any thinking man can see that sovereignty’s exercise of its right of government is functional, and involves no change of itself, in place, nature, or right, much less does it divide and conquer itself — committing felo de se (emphasis in original).(44)

Instead, what the States delegated to their common agent was power to act in certain specifically enumerated instances. Agency never involves an actual transfer of one particle of the principal’s sovereignty to the agent; since the latter merely acts in behalf of and in representation of the former, a sovereign agent is an obvious contradiction in terms. In the words of the Supreme Court, "While sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the People, by whom and for whom, all government exists and acts."(45) Hence, we find that the articles establishing each of the three Branches of the Government begin with the words, “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States” (Article I), “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America” (Article II), and “The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish” (Article III). If one were inclined to use Lincoln’s own logic against him, it might be argued that the federal Government cannot be sovereign because the Constitution nowhere says that it is so. However, we need not rely upon specious syllogisms to prove our point since the historical record clearly speaks for itself. In the Federalist, Number XL, Madison wrote that, under the new system of government, “the States, in all unenumerated cases, are left in the enjoyment of their sovereign and independent jurisdiction,” adding that “the great principles of the Constitution proposed by the Convention may be considered less as absolutely new, than as the expansion of principles which are found in the Articles of Confederation.” In Number XLIII, he described the Senate as “a palladium to the residuary sovereignty of the States” — that is, the inherent powers which the States withheld from the general Government. In Number LXXXI of the same series, Alexander Hamilton also stated, without equivocation, that the attribute of sovereignty “is now enjoyed by the government of every State in the Union.” In addition to Madison and Hamilton, we also have the united testimony of the other members of the 1787 Convention. John Dickinson, who had served as President of Delaware, and later of Pennsylvania, prior to attending the Convention, described the new system as “a confederacy of republics... in which the sovereignty of each state is represented with equal suffrage in one legislative body... and the sovereignties and people... conjointly represented in a president.”(46) Gouverneur Morris, the delegate from Pennsylvania who presided over the Committee on Style which was responsible for the change in the wording of the Preamble, declared some years after the Constitution had gone into effect that it was “a compact, not between individuals, but between political societies... each enjoying sovereign power, and, of course, equal rights.”(47) James Wilson, also of Pennsylvania, said that the States under the Constitution “confederate[d] anew on better principles” than under the Articles and that the resulting government was “a federal body of our own creation.” He went on: “Let it be remembered that the business of the federal convention was not local, but general; not limited to the views and establishments of a single state, but co-extensive with the continent, and comprehending the views and establishments of thirteen independent sovereignties.”(48) Tench Coxe, yet another delegate from Pennsylvania, said, "Had the federal convention meant to exclude the idea of union, that is, of several and separate sovereignties joining in a confederacy, they would have said, 'We, the people of America,' for union necessarily involves the idea of competent states, which complete consolidation excludes. But the severalty of the states is frequently recognised in the most distinct manner, in the course of the Constitution."(49) Roger Sherman stated that “the government of the United States was instituted by a number of sovereign states for the better security of their rights, and the advancement of their interests.”(50) Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, at the ratification convention of that State, boldly asserted that “consonant with the second article” of the Articles of Confederation, each State in the new Union “retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power... not expressly delegated to the united states.”(51) These men were saying nothing different than such a noted authority on international law as Emmerich de Vattel, who wrote:

Every nation that governs itself, under what form soever, without any dependence on foreign power, is a sovereign state.... Several sovereign and independent states may unite themselves together by a perpetual confederacy, without each in particular ceasing to be a perfect state. They will form together a federal republic: the deliberations in common will offer no violence to the sovereignty of each member, though they may, in certain aspects, put some restraint on the exercise of it, in virtue of voluntary engagements. A person does not cease to be free and independent, when he is obliged to fulfill the engagements into which he has very willingly entered.(52)

As such, there could be nothing but self-imposed forbearance to keep the people of a State from exercising said sovereignty by withdrawing from the Union which they had entered of their own volition. Thus, Lincoln’s argument against State sovereignty and the right of secession rested upon the fallacious theory of Story and Webster that the American people form one conglomerate political mass, rather than a confederation of distinct political bodies. Furthermore, he interpreted the Constitution as if it were the source of political sovereignty, with certain powers being reserved by the same to each State as a king might grant a charter to a body of subjects desiring to form a colony. In light of the massive weight of evidence against such views, it is a wonder that Lincoln was not hooted from his platform by an angry crowd justly feeling their intelligence insulted by such ignorant drivel as was delivered in his first Inaugural Address; it is also no less a wonder that such nonsense was accepted by the Northern people as justification for war against the South. Bernard Janin Sage wrote:

Would to God these perversions and blunders had been as harmless as they are amusing!... These are called “constitutional views!” If “views” at all, they are “views” afar off — through the moral mirage of platforms, partisan speeches, and sectional commentaries, which distort every thing, and turn it upside down. Why! if Hamilton, Jay, Washington, Hancock, Franklin, and all those fathers who were so fortunate as to die early, were to re-visit their beloved America, such “views” would astonish them as much as it would to see people standing on their heads, houses inverted, ships “walking the waters,” with masts for legs; trees rooted in the sky; rivers running to their sources; or babes giving birth to their parents. They would find their voluntary union of states to have grown involuntary and indissoluble: states degraded to counties, and returned to a worse than British provincialism; and the quondam governmental agency, transmuted to an “absolute supremacy,” and swaying the sceptre of an empire! (emphasis in original)(53)

In his book The American Union, which was published in Great Britain just after the start of the war, James Spence asked the following questions:

Assuredly there is no disposition in this country to lean in favour of turmoil; but we cannot realize an act as that of rebellion or treason or piracy, simply because these names are applied to it. We are told that in the United States the people are sovereign. Here is an act committed by many millions of this sovereign people; against whom do they rebel? Can a sovereign, or a large portion of a sovereignty, be a rebel? In the usual meaning of our language rebellion is an act of the subject. Are, then, many millions of the sovereign people of the United States subjects, and to whom? Who is the monarch so supreme that in comparison even the sovereignty of the people may be termed a rebel? Is it the law? But where is the law? Assertions are not laws, nor yet ambitious theories, nor yet conceptions of advantage. Laws are enactments solemn, comprehensive, on known and legible record. Where, then, is the law which the States of the South have broken? And if in America the Government be merely an agent, then, as there exists no law that forbids the secession of a State, against whom or what do they rebel?(54)

These are questions which the demagogues in the North never attempted to answer before marching their troops southward to subjugate sovereign States. Oddly enough, the doctrine of State sovereignty and the right of secession was well understood by leading Republicans until they were all infected with sudden mass amnesia by Lincoln's first Inaugural Address. For example, on 20 March 1850, William Seward, author of "The Irrepressible Conflict," stated, "Every man in this country, every man in Christendom, who knows anything of the philosophy of government, knows that this republic has been thus successful only by reason of the stability, strength, and greatness, of the individual States."(55) On 9 November 1860, the editors of the New York Herald put these words into print: "The current of opinion seems to set strongly in favor of reconstruction, and leaving out the New England States. These latter are thought to be so fanatical it would be impossible there would be any peace under a Government to which they are parties."(56) Two days later, they continued: "The South has an undeniable right to secede from the Union. In the event of secession, the City of New York, the State of New Jersey, and very likely Connecticut, will separate from New England, where the black man is put on a pinnacle above the white. New York City is for the Union first, and for the gallant and chivalrous South afterwards."(57) Also on the ninth of November, Horace Greeley, editor of the Republican organ, the New York Tribune, expressed much the same sentiments:

If the cotton States consider the value of the Union debatable, we maintain their perfect right to discuss it; nay, we hold with Jefferson, to the inalienable right of communities to alter or abolish forms of government that have become oppressive or injurious: and if the cotton States decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless; and we do not see how one party can have a right to do what another party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist the asserted right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof: to withdraw from the Union is quite another matter. And, whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep her in. We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets.(58)

On the seventeenth of December, only three days before the secession of South Carolina, he continued, "If it [the Declaration of Independence] justified the secession from the British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on this point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein and why?"(59) Of course, none of Greeley's fellow Republicans dared take up his challenge until after war hysteria seized the North four months later, because they knew that the historical and constitutional evidence would not have led rational minds to any other conclusion. Wendell Phillips, for example, responded to news of the secession of the Gulf States with these words: "Twenty years ago the men of the North resolved to dissolve the Union. Who dreamed success would come so soon?"(60) Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts said, "Nothing can possibly be so horrible, so wicked or so foolish as a war on the South."(61) Senator Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, who was even more vocal in declaring "the States in their sovereignty" to be "the judge in the last resort of the violation of the Constitution of the United States," asserted "the rights of the States to protect their own citizens" against efforts "to consolidate this government into a miserable despotism."(62) On 4 December 1856, he had this to say on the floor of the Senate:

I am not one to ask the South to continue in such a Union as this. It would be doing violence to the platform of the party to which I belong. We have adopted the old Declaration of Independence as the basis of our political movement which declares that any people, when their government ceases to protect their rights, have the right to recur to original principles, and if need be to destroy the government under which they live, and to erect upon its ruins another conducive to their welfare. I hold that the people of the South have this right. You cannot forcibly hold men in the Union, for the attempt to do so would subvert the first principles of the Government under which we live.(63)

On the eighteenth of December, 1860, he again stated, "I do not so much blame the people of the South, because I think they have been led to believe that we [Republicans] to-day, the dominant party, who are about to take the reins of government, are their mortal foes, and stand ready to trample their institutions under foot."(64) Wade's feigned sympathy for the people of the South is astounding, for who had led them to this conclusion but prominent members of the "dominant party" themselves, repeatedly in their own speeches and published works! The Senator's hypocrisy was further demonstrated when he made the following statements after the war had commenced:

And, after all this, to talk of a Union! Sir, I have said you have no Union. I say you have no Union to-day worthy of the name. I am here a conservative man, knowing, as I do, that the only salvation to your Union is that you divest it entirely from all the taints of slavery. If we can't have that, then I go for no Union at all; but I go for a -- fight!(65)

I would reduce the aristocratic slaveholders to utter poverty. I know they are conceited; I know they are essentially aristocratic. I am fully persuaded that their minds and their feelings are so in antagonism to Republican Democratic doctrines that it is impossible to reconcile them, and we shall never have peace until we have reduced the leaders to utter poverty, and taken thereby their influence away. I am for doing it. It ought to be done.(66)

In light of these facts, we must ask the question, Did the States of the North possess the right "to protect their own citizens" from "the violation of the Constitution of the United States" -- or worse, from the threatened wholesale murder of helpless women and children -- while the States of the South were somehow destitute of this right? Apparently so, for it should be noted that Greeley, Phillips, Sumner, and Wade would, not many months thence, become the most vicious mouthpieces of Republican hatred of the Southern people, calling for, at least in Wade's case, their utter destruction as a just punishment for merely asserting and acting upon the very ideals expressed by the Chicago Convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln in 1860:

Resolved, 1. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions, according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends, and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

On his way to Washington, D.C. to be inaugurated as President of the United States, Lincoln further elaborated on his party's platform in a speech which he delivered at Indianapolis, Indiana: "What is 'invasion'? Would the marching of an army into South Carolina, without the consent of her people, and with hostile intent toward them be 'invasion'? I certainly think it would, and it would be 'coercion' also if South Carolinians were forced to submit." As we shall see in the next chapter, Lincoln was a criminal by his party's and his own definition of the word.

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1. Albert Taylor Bledsoe, Is Davis a Traitor? (Dahlonega, Georgia: Crown Rights Book Company, [1907] 1997), page 1.

2. Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Paul S. Whitcomb, essay: "Lincoln and Democracy," Tyler's Quarterly Magazine, July 1927; reprinted in Minor, Real Lincoln, page 255.

4. John Andrews, excerpt from a speech delivered in Tremont Temple, Boston; quoted by the New York Herald, December 1859.

5. Robert Lewis Dabney, essay: "The Duty of the Hour," Discussions (Mexico, Missouri: S.B. Ervin, 1897), Volume IV, page 119.

7. Henry Cabot Lodge, Daniel Webster (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company, 1899), page 176.

8. George Washington, letter to General Pinckney, 28 June 1788; quoted by Sage, Republic of Republics, page 248.

9. Washington, letter to Sir Edward Newenham, 20 July 1788; quoted by Sage, ibid., page 251.

10. Washington, letter to David Stuart, 17 October 1787; quoted by Sage, ibid., page 247.

11. Washington, letter to Count Rochambeau, 8 January 1788; quoted by Sage, ibid., page 248.

12. Washington, letter to General Knox, 17 June 1788; quoted by Sage, ibid., pages 249-250.

13. Washington, letter to Pinckney, 28 June 1788; quoted by Sage, ibid., page 250.

17. Madison, letter to the North American Review, 28 August 1830; quoted in Marvin Meyers (editor), The Mind of the Founder: Sources of the Political Thought of James Madison (Indianapolis, Indiana: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1973), page 529.

19. Reference: Edgar S. Dudley, "Was 'Secession' Taught at West Point?", The Century Magazine (New York, 1909), Volume LXXVIII, page 635.

20. Reference: The National Cyclopedia of American Biography (New York: James T. White and Company, 1897), Volume VII, page 442.

21. William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of United States of America (Dahlonega, Georgia: Crown Rights Book Company, [1825] 1998), pages 296, 302.

23. Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution (Boston, Massachusetts: Hilliard, Gray and Company, 1833).

24. Daniel Webster, in Thomas Benton (editor), Abridgment of the Debates of Congress From 1789 to 1856 (New York: Appleton and Company, 1863), Volume X, page 448. With this assertion, Webster contradicted his earlier, and correct, assertions in an address to the citizens of Boston on 15 December 1819, not only that the States enjoyed "the exclusive possession of sovereignty" within their own boundaries, but that "the only parties to the Constitution, contemplated by it originally, were the thirteen confederated States" and that the Constitution "rests on compact" (quoted by Davis, Rise and Fall, Volume I, page 166).

25. C. Chauncey Burr, "Introduction," in Abel P. Upshur, The Federal Government: Its True Nature and Character (New York: Van Evrie, Horton and Company, 1868), page i.

28. James Wilson, quoted by T.R. Fehrenbach, Greatness to Spare (Princeton, New Jersey: D. Van Nostrand, 1968), page 107.

30. Reference: Jonathan Elliott (editor), Journal and Debates of the Federal Convention (Washington, D.C.: Self-published, 1836), Volume I, page 255.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right -- a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit (excerpt from a speech delivered in Congress on 12 January 1848; Congressional Globe, Volume XIX, page 94).

Technically, Lincoln was referring to the “right of revolution” stated in the Declaration of Independence rather than the right of a State under the Constitution to secede from the Union. This was just one of the many times he displayed his bent for inconsistencies. If the thirteen colonies had a right to secede from the British Crown to whom they were subject, why did not the thirteen Southern States have the right to peacefully withdraw from their sister States with whom they were co-equals? If the political condition of the States in 1861 was more mature than it had been in 1776, then so was their right of secession. If the right of secession existed under the royal charters which gave them existence, then it also existed under a Constitution which they, by an act of their sovereign ratification, had brought into existence. The logic is inescapable even though it was later lost on Lincoln when he was President.

38. Lincoln, First Inaugural Address, in Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States From George Washington to George Bush (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1989).

39. Lincoln, address to Congress in special session; in James D. Richardson (editor), A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, D.C.: Bureau of National Literature, 1922), Volume VII, page 3228.

40. George Washington, letter to Congress dated 26 September 1789; quoted by Davis, Rise and Fall, Volume I, page 112.

41. Rhode Island Governor John Collins, letter to The President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives of the eleven United States of America in Congress assembled; quoted by Davis, ibid., pages 112-113.

44. Sage, Republic of Republics, pages 328, 329. See also Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations: Principles of the Law of Nature Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns (New York: Samuel Campbell, 1796), Book I, Chapter 1, Section 65; Francis Lieber, Civil Liberty and Self Government (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J.B. Lippincott and Company, 1859), page 156.

46. John Dickinson, The Political Writings of John Dickinson, Esquire (Wilmington, Delaware: Bonsol and Niles, 1801), Volume II, page 107.

47. Gouverneur Morris, quoted by Jared Sparks, Life of Gouverneur Morris With Selections From His Correspondence and Miscellaneous Papers (Boston, Massachusetts: Gary and Bowen, 1832), Volume III, page 193.

48. James Wilson, in Elliott, Debates in the Several State Conventions, Volume II, page 443.

51. Samuel Adams, in Elliott, Debates in the Several State Conventions, Volume II, page 131.

56. New York Herald, 9 November 1860; quoted by Edmonds, Facts and Falsehoods, page 180.

58. Horace Greeley, New York Tribune, 9 November 1860; quoted by Davis, Rise and Fall, Volume I, page 252.

59. Greeley, New York Tribune, 17 December 1860; quoted by George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, Fifteenth President of the United States (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1883), Volume II, page 430.

62. Benjamin F. Wade, quoted by Christian, Confederate Cause and Conduct, page 43.

66. Wade, speech delivered on 25 June 1862; quoted by Carpenter, Logic of History, page 91.

I believe in his rush to make his arguement and have his view totally accepted, the author glosses over half of the history and miscasts the events. He fails to mention the overwhelming acceptance and almost reverential attitude the nation took toward Webster's Second Reply to Hayne....a speech that was reprinted and studied by every scool child in much of the nation, much as the Gettysburg Address would be in its day.

There are points of worthy note here, but there is no proportionality, simply a piece meaning to present one side and view of this complexe subject.

This is Jefferson Davis, on the wording of the ratification documents of certain states:

but they are more: they are parts of the very acts or ordinances by which these States ratified the Constitution and acceded to the Union, and can not be detached from them. If they are invalid, the ratification itself was invalid, for they are inseparable. By inserting these declarations in their ordinances, Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island, formally, officially, and permanently, declared their interpretation of the Constitution as recognizing the right of secession by the resumption of their grants. By accepting the ratifications with this declaration incorporated, the other States as formally accepted the principle which it asserted.(22)

Maybe it's me. But this argument makes no sense. I looked it up. I researched the journals of the Continental Congress to see what consideration the ratification documents were given. The journals record that a committee was delegated to examine and report on the ratifications, which they did. But the record only shows that the committee found the ratifications "sufficient". What does that mean?

I turned to the Constitution itself, which states that the ratification of nine states shall be sufficient. It says nothing more about it. Davis asserts that if the various declarations contained in certain ratifications are invalid, then the ratification is invalid, but that has not been shown to be true. Where is the evidence to support that claim? The ratifications also declare the need for several amendments. Some, but not all, of those amendments were eventually passed, but none was guaranteed.

Davis would have us believe that each individual state legislature had the unilateral power to interpret the Constitution--a state legislature--that all the other states--even if they had never seen the interpretation--would be bound to follow. Further, he would have us believe that the Continental Congress, which had no authority over the new Constitution other than to set dates for elections, had the authority, merely by accepting the documents, for codifying these interpretations into law. It makes no sense at all.

Then of course there is the Supremacy clause, which blows the whole idea out of the water. So we have an idea that not only defies common sense, it defies the evidence, and the known Constitutional law.

Or maybe it's just me.

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