“The Union is older than any of the States,” Lincoln asserted, “and, in fact, it created them as States.” The Declaration of Independence transformed the “United Colonies” into the United States; without this union then, there would never have been any “free and independent States.” “Having never been States, either in substance, or in name, outside the Union,” asked Lincoln, “whence this magical omnipotence of ‘State rights,’ asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself?” Perpetuity was “the fundamental law of all national governments.” No government “ever had provision in
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