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. Secession was not an enumerated right, nor specifically prohibited, therefore, by default, it was a right reserved to the states.
No, because secession was never a right to begin with and thus could not be retained.
The States had an opportunity to stand on their own if they so had chosen by rejecting the Constitution and becoming independent.
They chose to join the Union and thus, became bound to it.
Secession was not written into the Constitution, no provision was made for it and thus, it was no legal to do so.
And that was the view of Madison as well.
You guys take the same view as Liberals, looking for things not stated in the Constitution as for what is.
Yea, sure we do. (SARCASM) Slavery wasn’t prohibited either, but you will “howl” to the skies about that.
I am beginning to tire over this "tastes great, less filling" king of debate. There are/were many who found/find constitutional precedent in the right secede and an absence of that right. The issue is extra-constitutional and was not unexpectedly settled outside the constitution.
In the context of the time, the voluntary union was sold as an experiment in the ratification process. Individual state (colony) legislatures were reluctant to cede power and control to the collective representatives of the other stated and were understandably concerned about clearly establishing by-laws as to what the union could and could not do. So called "extra constitutional" powers were absolutely not transferred to the federal government. This condition of ratification was specifically addressed in New York's ratification and the 10th Amendment is evidence of the acceptance of this condition. (It must be noted that had the Bill of Rights not bee ratified, multiple states would have rescinded their ratification, effectively seceding).
It seems your argument involves things extra constitutional and the default understandings of the time. Things that are universally understood to mean one thing today were clearly interpreted differently in 1787. In the 1787 debates in the constitutional ratification conventions of the various states, even those that did not make right of withdrawal explicit or implied in their articles of ratification were presented with a union that was anything but "inviolable." They looked to a union so well-made and so obviously mutually beneficial that it would prove inviolable. They did not make it so by threat of force.
In Pennsylvania, James Wilson, as the only member of the ratification convention who had also been a delegate at the Constitutional Convention, did the bulk of explaining and defending the new document. He equated the American states with the individuals in Johnathan Locke's Invisible Hand theory, giving up a part of their natural liberty in the expectation of more good and happiness in the community than they would have alone. "The states should resign to the national government that part, and that part only, of their political liberty, which, placed in that government, will produce more good to the whole than if it had remained in the several states."
And this implied the ability to take it back again. In the proposed Constitution, the citizens of the various states "appear dispensing a part of their original power in what manner and what proportion they think fit. They never part with the whole; and they retain the right of recalling what they part with." A Lockean principle, that any power given can be reclaimed again, echoes throughout the speeches. "If (the people) choose to indulge a part of their sovereign power to be exercised by the state government, they may. If they have done it, the states were right in exercising it; but if they think it no longer safe or convenient they will resume it, or make a new distribution, more likely to be productive of that good which ought to be our constant aim." Power resides in the people, divided into distinct communities of sovereign states.
Wilson told them again and again that, by accepting the Constitution, they were entering into an "experiment." "... I am sure that our interests, as citizens, as states, and as a nation, depend essentially upon a union. This Constitution is proposed to accomplish that great and desirable end. Let the experiment be made; let the system be fairly and candidly tried, before it is determined that it cannot be executed."
Would you agree, in a modern context, the constitution and the union it represents is a voluntary union? Would you further agree no state was forced to join against its will, the will of its people, or the will of the other member states? Would you agree that it defies logic to be forced to remain in a "voluntary" union?