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The states delegated certain explicit powers to the Federal government, and nothing else. The Tenth Amendment states that all other powers remain with the several states and their people. Saying that the Tenth Amendment gives the states the power to secede is not the same as saying the rest of the Constitution is null and void, because the document is still in effect and is still the law of land for the remaining states in the Union.

To deny the states a right to secede when they feel their rights have been denied or abused is to negate Article IV Section 4's guarantee that:

The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.

because the states would then be at the mercy of the federal Supreme Court with no other recourse for satisfaction in a dispute. If no reconciliation is possible in a dispute, then the state must be allowed to leave on its own volition or else its people are reduced to being subjects instead of remaining citizens.

Saying that the Tenth Amendment gives the states the power to secede is not the same as saying the rest of the Constitution is null and void, because the document is still in effect and is still the law of land for the remaining states in the Union.

Bump for honesty!

If no reconciliation is possible in a dispute, then the state must be allowed to leave on its own volition or else its people are reduced to being subjects instead of remaining citizens.

Unreconstructed bump.

A few points that I would like to get out there(respectfully I hope):

1. Powers weren't delegated to the Federal Government by the states. They were delegated by the Constitution. Last time I checked that wasn't a state document, it is a national document. The Feds are agents of the nation, not any individual state. The first few words of the Constitution: "We the People of the United States", notice it does not say "We the people of the several individual states". The Feds had that power they were delegated in ALL the states. Therefore to remove that power from any state you would have to go through the constitutional amendment process.

2. A state is a political entity. Political entities do not have "rights". Rights, as I have been lectured to so many times(not by you), flow directly from God to man(individualy). States have powers which they use to coerce people. Check the first 10 amendments. The first nine concern "rights" and people in the individual(except perhaps the 7th). No mention is made of "states".The 10th concerns powers which people or states can have. I guess "states powers" just doesn't sound as good.

3. You added some words to the 10th. It doesn't say to the states and their people it says to the states or to the people. As in "we the people". See point 1.

4. If the feds are behaiving unconstitutionaly there is always revolultion. It worked for the colonies against England. The Civil War wasn't just the Confederate states against the Federal Government. It was the Confederate states against the Federal Government and the loyal Union States. Of course it would have been nice for the confederate states if Abe would of thrown his lot in with Jeff Davis and turned Federal guns on the North and occupied Wisconsin, but that would of been kinda absurd wouldn't it? I'v heard some who plead the Confederate cause here imply that the North didn't go to war willingly that it was forced by Lincoln, but there was a lot of enthusiasm for the war in the North, just as there was in the South.

5. The southern states secession did not only effect the south, it effected the whole nation. The constituion creates a federal government, but it is not the nation, only a part of it. Nations have certain concerns, one of which is territorial integrity.

All of this is just my opinion. As I have stated before in these threads, I could be wrong.