"You may wholeheartedly believe that the “Law of Gravity” is unconstitutional and a violation of your sovereign rights. That does not relieve you of adherence to it." (said by….somebody who must be famous) Seriously though, CHOP, Deez, Monahorns, your arguments are good ones, and they resonate with conservative libertarians, clearly. They are not clear cut, and not self-evident, however. As with many matters, the issue has long been in dispute. Determining “original intent” is rarely as easy a matter as some would assume, but many founders believed that secession was not permitted under the Constitution – and many believed that it was. Patrick Henry opposed ratification because the proposed constitution purported to act for “[w]e the people” instead of “we the states,” the new entity was a unity, that divested the states of fully independent character. Gouvenor Morris, Madison and others put forth the notion that appears in the preamble and throughout the Constitution that we are citizens of a single nation, as well as citizens of a State. This was a great concern of Patrick Henry, who argued: “
Who authorized them to speak the language of, We, the people, instead of, We, the states? States are the characteristics and the soul of a confederation. If the states be not the agents of this compact, it must be one great, consolidated, national government, of the people of all the states.”
http://press-ubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/preambles14.html. He believed in a right of secession, and that that formulation would not permit secession. (see also North Carolina and Virginia ratification conventions). His side lost, and Virginia ratified.
As discussed in my previous post (3rd post on page 2), James Madison argued that the Constitution implicitly prohibited secession. In addition to that previous quotation, I offer from his letter to Daniel Webster: “
I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession". But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy.” In other words, secession may only be by revolution – and Madison wrote the sunovabitch. .
Right of Revolution: James Madison to Daniel Webster Of course a lot of equally prominent thinkers firmly believed in a right of secession, which is why we had a war, of course.
The good news is that, perhaps you would agree, the post-Civil War Amendments have created more constitutional support for the illegality of secession.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. [14th Amendment]. Clearly secession would divest citizens of the seceding state of the P&I’s of United States citizenship, and any such action, one could argue (and this one does) that such a law could therefore not be made or enforced by the state after 1868. This doesn’t answer Chop’s original question, but at least I am now safe from the vagaries of the Texas Lege, if a 2/3 majority of Hornfans (as required by the XXVII Amendment) can agree that the 14th had that affect . E Pluribus Unum, man.
