No constitutional right to secession existed, he said. If it did, the Union would be merely “a rope of sand, to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States.” But, he noted, states confronted by egregious federal behavior could follow another path. In that case secession would be justified by a higher law of “revolutionary resistance” that superseded even the Constitution. “Secession is neither more nor less than revolution,” he wrote. “It may or it may not be a justifiable revolution, but still it is revolution.”
