I don’t understand why “preserving the union” was anything more than a platitude. Once one accepts this platitude as being the most noble of causes, then it follows logically that secession must be evil, since it is a threat to what is most noble, namely, “preserving the union”.
Yet, arguably preserving the union is not the be-all and end-all of noble causes. The argument would go something like this: after recently declaring and fighting for independence from a central authority, the colonies called themselves states and ratified the constitution as willing participants, with the condition of that the federal government had authority over the states only to the extent of their ongoing consent. This implies that at any time should their consent be undeserved, their willing participation could be severed - i. e., secession.
If a state is not free to quit the union, has it not been lured to join under false pretenses of Liberty? Has it not fallen prey to the tyranny it so recently threw off?
And if secession is not necessarily a bad thing, then “preserving the union” is not necessarily a good thing.
I submit that had states been allowed to secede and rejoin freely without prejudice, the consideration of costs and benefits of being a member of the union would have resulted in better compromises and less state-on-state legislative abuse (which the south was arguably suffering) and the union may have been preserved, but without war.
I don’t want my wife to divorce me, but the fact that we are free to sever the bond makes us each more respectful of the other’s grievances and more mindful of the benefits of marriage. If it was made illegal to divorce, I suspect the rate of spousal abuse and the rate of “spousicide” would increase dramatically.
Is not this the essence of a constitutional republic - that the collective has limited authority to impose central authority over the separate states? If the north had heeded that lesson and resisted the temptation to coerce the southern states into remaining (at gunpoint no less), wouldn’t we now be enjoying the blessings and liberties of a limited federal government, instead of (again) facing extinction at the hands of this tyrannical monstrosity the federal government has become?
Exactly!
Almost everyone knows the Founders started with the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, yet later adopted the US Constitution. What people don't seem to give much thought to is how they went about it. It's quite simple. They seceded from it.
From the first legal; treatise written after Constitutional ratification -
Consequently whenever the people of any state, or number of states, discovered the inadequacy of the first form of federal government to promote or preserve their independence, happiness, and union, they only exerted that natural right in rejecting it, and adopting another, which all had unanimously assented to, and of which no force or compact can deprive the people of any state, whenever they see the necessity, and possess the power to do it. And since the seceding states, by establishing a new constitution and form of federal government among themselves, without the consent of the rest, have shown that they consider the right to do so whenever the occasion may, in their opinion require it, as unquestionable, we may infer that that right has not been diminished by any new compact which they may since have entered into, [86] since none could be more solemn or explicit than the first, nor more binding upon the contracting parties. Their obligation, therefore, to preserve the present constitution, is not greater than their former obligations were, to adhere to the articles of confederation; each state possessing the same right of withdrawing itself from the confederacy without the consent of the rest, as any number of them do, or ever did, possess.
Of the Several Forms of Government, George Tucker, View of the Constitution of the United States, Section XIII