To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a government for the whole is indispensable. No alliance, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a constitution of government better calculated than your former for an intimate union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.That's right... Washington foresaw that some day the bonds of union might be broken, but when they were broken, they would be broken by the whole people, not a secessionist minority. Until that time, the Constitution was obligatory... and how can the Constitution of the United States of America be obligatory to someone not a part of the United States of America?
So If the majority should decide to ignore the limitations of the Constitution and conspire to oppress and exploit the minority. There can be no possible redress. We must surrender ourselfs as perpetually exploited and abused slaves to the greater majority thou the bonds of unending union.
If thats your idea of Life dangus? I’d rather die fighting to be free of it!
To live as one of your “minority” slaves is not a life, but a subjugation of man’s free spirit.
I am not one with the self-defined and self-restraining(or Not) collective. I am an Individual with certain inalienable rights, and when the collective chooses to disregard them rights I will no longer be bound to their authority. Nor will I cede to them the fruits of my labor or the inherits of my birth.
Instead should they attempt to enslave me with the oppressive chains of unconditional union i shall fight with every thing I have to retain or regain my freedom.
That is the American spirit!
We are not slaves to the collective, but individual free men.
To amend the Constitution takes the act of majorities of state legislatures in three quarters of the states. I suppose that is what he meant by "whole people." But the Constitution was not the act of the lumpen mass of people of the whole country. It was the act of the people of the individual states acting through their ratification conventions.
Besides, the Constitution doesn't need to be changed for secession to take place. The withdrawing of a state from the Union was certainly viewed as permissible and consistent with the Constitution by people who actually ratified the Constitution. They had recently gone through a war to win their independence from an oppressive government. Why would they enter an untried form of Union from which they could not withdraw without a war if a majority other states or the central government were oppressing them?
The New York ratification document provides one of the clearest statements of the original intent that a state withdrawing was consistent with the Constitution. That ratification document was voted for by such Federalist luminaries as Alexander Hamilton and future Chief Justice John Jay:
WE the Delegates of the People of the State of New York, duly elected and Met in Convention, having maturely considered the Constitution for the United States of America, agreed to on the seventeenth day of September, in the year One thousand Seven hundred and Eighty seven, by the Convention then assembled at Philadelphia in the Common-wealth of Pennsylvania (a Copy whereof precedes these presents) and having also seriously and deliberately considered the present situation of the United States, Do declare and make known.
... That the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness; ...
... Under these impressions and declaring that the rights aforesaid cannot be abridged or violated, and that the Explanations aforesaid are consistent with the said Constitution, And in confidence that the Amendments which shall have been proposed to the said Constitution will receive an early and mature Consideration: We the said Delegates, in the Name and in the behalf of the People of the State of New York Do by these presents Assent to and Ratify the said Constitution.
Virginia's ratification document that talked about resuming governance was written by James Madison, future Chief Justice John Marshall, and three other Federalists.
The Union that remained after the southern states withdrew in 1860-1861 did not cease at all. However, during the war the Constitution was twisted into a pretzel by Lincoln.