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June 25, 2024 - April 21, 2025
ARGUMENT FROM THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE STATES.
All the control to which she was liable in the Union was self-imposed; and not one particle of it was laid upon her by any authority but her own. The act, indeed, by which she entered into the compact of the Constitution, was an exercise, not an abridgement, of her sovereign power.
For, in such case, it is conceded, as we have repeatedly seen, by the great lights of American jurisprudence, that a State may secede at pleasure, or resume the powers she may have delegated to the Federal Government. Indeed, if a State could not thus delegate her sovereign powers, she would cease to be sovereign.
Or, if any one is pleased to call any Government, whether State or Federal, sovereign; he should not forget that it is merely a delegated sovereignty. It is not original; it is derived. It is not inherent; it comes from without; and, instead of being supreme, it depends on a power greater than itself. It is divisible, and may be divided among different governments, or agents of the supreme power. On the contrary, the sovereign power of a State, or, in other words, the power of the people of a State, is inherent, original, supreme, indivisible, and inalienable.
Where, then, does this one sovereign power reside? It resides, as we have seen, in each State, and not in the people of the United States. The people of the United States, indeed, were not one people, or nation, in the political sense of the word, and were never clothed with any sovereign power whatever.
As the one sovereign power, which makes, and therefore unmakes, Constitutions and Governments, resides in each State; so each State had the right to secede from the Federal Government. As each State, however, only made or adopted that Government for itself; so she could unmake it as to herself only. That is, she had no power to destroy the Federal Union, but only to withdraw from it, and let it move on in its own sphere. In the exercise of her original, inherent, indivisible, and alienable sovereignty, she merely seceded from the Union to which she had acceded, and asked to be let alone.
As the people of Virginia in 1788 acceded to the Union, because they believed it would be for their good; so the people of Virginia in 1861 had a right to secede from the Union, because they believed it had been made to work their insufferable harm.
ARGUMENT FROM THE SILENCE OF THE CONSTITUTION.
It is a remarkable fact, that, in the Constitution of the United States, there is not a word relating to the perpetuity or continuance of the Government established by it.
This provision was deliberately struck out, or not permitted to appear in the new Constitution. In the act of receding from the compact of the Union, which had expressly pronounced itself “perpetual,” the fathers had not the face to declare that the new compact should last forever. Time had demonstrated the futility of such a provision.
The truth is, that the new Constitution was designed by its authors to last just as long as it should be faithfully observed by the parties to it, or as it should answer the great ends of its creation, and no longer.
Both Story and Webster admit, as we have repeatedly seen, that if sovereign States enter into a compact or Confederation, without expressly prescribing any period for the continuance of the Union; then any State has the right to secede at pleasure.
“It would have been puerile,” says he, “for the Constitution to say formally to each State, thou shalt not secede.” There was no necessity, perhaps, that the Convention should have been very formal in the language it addressed to the States. But would it have been puerile, or ridiculous, if the Convention had said, “the Union shall be perpetual.” Who can doubt that if these words had been inserted in the new Constitution, that Mr. Motley would have wielded them as an unanswerable argument against the right of secession? Indeed, these words answer that purpose so well, that Dr. Hodge borrow
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The truth is, that the
Convention, in its desire to secede from the old compact, was so greatly embarrassed by the clause declaring that “the Union shall be perpetual,” that it deliberately removed that obstacle from the path of future legislation: and, whether it was intended by the Convention or not, the legal effect of this was to establish the right of secession under the new compact between the same parties.
ARGUMENT FROM THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF THE UNION.
Even Mr. Greely, before the war, could say,—”We hope never to live in a Republic, whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets.”
In like manner, John Quincy Adams says, “The indissoluble link of union between the people of the several States of this confederated nation is, after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political associations will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies;
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ARGUMENT FROM THE RIGHT OF SELF-GOVERNMENT.
The thirteen Colonies, in the Declaration of Independence, justified their separation on the distinct ground, that all “ governments “ derive “ their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It was in obedience to this great principle, that the American Union became a free and voluntary association of States. This, by its very nature, excludes the idea of coercion.
It is no longer a sisterhood of free States, but the vassalage of some, and the dominion of others.
When asked, as President of the United States, “why not let the South go?” his simple, direct, and honest answer revealed one secret of the wise policy of the Washington Cabinet. “Let the South go!” said he, “where, then, shall we get our revenue?” There lies the secret. The Declaration of Independence is great; the voice of all the fathers is mighty; but then they yield us no revenue.
In open and shameless violation of the great principle of '76, the South is united to the North by the tie of “taxation without representation.”
The Union waged a seven years’ war to establish that right, and a four years’ war to demolish it.
Accordingly, on the 9th of November, three days after Mr. Lincoln's election, that organ uttered the sentiments: “If the cotton States shall become satisfied that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. We must ever resist the right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof. To withdraw from the union is quite another matter; and whenever any considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, We shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Republic
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Resolved, ‘That years of warfare against the slave power has convinced us that every act done in support of the American Union rivets the chain of the slave—that the only exodus of the slave to freedom, unless it be one of blood, must be over the remains of the present American Church and the grave of the 'present Union.’
That the word which went forth from President Lincoln. “If we let the South go, where shall we get our revenue?” is one of the causes of the great change in question.
She was naturally indignant at the thought of losing the bird, which had so long laid for her the golden egg. 2. Secession offered a splendid opportunity, or occasion, on which to wreak a little wrath on the slave-holders of the South, on those “incorrigible men-stealers, merciless tyrants, and blood-thirsty assassins,” who so richly deserved to die. But it would, of course, be much more respectable to kill them as “rebels and traitors,” than merely as slave-holders.
3. Secession furnished a fine pretext, a glorious occasion, for the forced emancipation of the slaves at the South.
It was to be a new Union; a bright and beautiful emanation; not from the consent of the governed, but from the sovereign, the supreme, the sublime will of the Northern abolitionists.
Previous to the war, it was frequently alleged, that the abolitionists constituted only a small minority in the Republican party. It is certain, that they controlled the policy of Mr. Lincoln's administration. “The higher law,” “the law written on the hearts and consciences of freemen,” was the rule of their conduct. For the Constitution, for the compact of 1787, for that “covenant with death and agreement with hell,” they cared less than nothing; except when it agreed with their own will, or could be made a pretext for their dark designs.
But if coercion is a wrong under the Constitution; then, surely, secession is a Constitutional right.
But if the Constitution does not authorize coercion, then it permits secession; or, in other words, secession is a Constitutional right, which every power on earth is bound to respect as existing under the supreme law of the land; a Constitutional right, which the Federal Government could deny only by an act of usurpation.
Coercion is unconstitutional. Coercion is wrong. Coercion strikes down and demolishes the great fundamental principle of the Declaration of Independence,—the sacred right of self-government itself. Coercion wages war on the autonomy of free States. Secession, on the other hand, asserts the right of self-government for every free, sovereign, and independent State in existence.
The pilgrim fathers of Massachusetts delighted in two things; first, in the freedom from persecution for themselves; and, secondly, in the sweet privilege and power to persecute others. In like manner, their sons have rejoiced in two things; first, in the right of self-government for themselves; and, secondly, in the denial of that right to others.
Argument from the opinion of well-informed and intelligent foreigners.
Thus says M. De Tocqueville, in his celebrated work on Democracy in America: “The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the States choose to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right.” (Vol. 1, ch. xviii., 413)
The Federal Government exists on sufferance only. Any State may, at any time, Constitutionally withdraw from the Union, and thus virtually dissolve it. It was not certainly created with the idea that the States, or several of them, would desire a separation; but whenever they choose to do it, they have no obstacle in the Constitution.”
Though Lord Brougham, a British statesman who became Lord Chancellor of Great Britain, to select only one example, most profoundly sympathized with the abolitionists of the North; yet, in spite of all his natural affinities, the simple facts of history constrained him to adopt the Southern view of the Constitution. Hence, in his work on Political Philosophy, he says: “It is plainly impossible to consider the Constitution which professes to govern this whole union, this federacy of states, as anything other than a treaty.”(vol.
1798.
ARGUMENT FROM THE VIRGINIA ORDINANCE OF RATIFICATION.
Yet, however strange it may seem, Mr. Justice Story and Mr. Webster have, as we have seen, (Ch. xi. Pages 84-85) selected one of these objections to show what the Constitution is; though this very objection had been most triumphantly refuted by Mr. Madison, both in the Federalist and in the ratifying Convention of Virginia.
This result was, in fact, eloquently predicted by Patrick Henry, George Mason, William Grayson, and other members of the same Convention. This argument proceeded on the supposition, either that Virginia would not have the right to secede from the Union, or else that this right would be denied by her oppressors. The debates in the Virginia Convention of 1788 are, indeed replete with passages of burning eloquence, which predict the calamities that would fall on that noble State, as well as on other Southern States, from the oppressions of “the Northern majority.” Hence, the people of Virginia,
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The words of this ordinance are as follows: “We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected, &c do in the name, and in behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression.”
The powers of the new government are derived, said he, from the people of the United States, “but not the people as composing one great society, but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties.”
The sovereignty which delegates, is the sovereignty which resumes; and it is absurd to speak of a resumption of powers by any other authority, whether real or imaginary.
Their fears were for the weak, not for the strong; not for the people of the United States in the aggregate, but for the Southern States in the minority; and especially for the State of Virginia. They feared, as the burning eloquence of Henry, and Mason, and Monroe, and Grayson evinced, that the new Government would “operate as a faction of seven States to oppress six;” that the Northern majority would, sooner or later, trample on the Southern minority.
By declaring, that this one great society, or rather the majority of this society, might resume the powers of the Federal Government whensoever they should be pleased to use them for the oppression of the minority? Could any possible interpretation render any legislation more absolutely ridiculous? It puts the remedy in the hands of those from whom the evil is expected to proceed! It gives the shield of defence to the very power which holds the terrible sword of destruction!
But, it may be asked, were the powers of the Federal Government perverted to the injury or oppression of any Southern State? It might be easily shown, that they were indeed perverted to the injury and oppression of more States than one; but this is unnecessary, since the parties to the compact, the sovereign States by whom it was ratified, are the judges of this question.
Arguments against the Right of Secession.
