But if the sovereignty persists in the States severally, any State, saving its faith, may whenever it chooses to do so, withdraw from the Union, absolve its subjects from all obligation to the Federal authorities, and make it treason in them to adhere to the Federal government.Secession is, then, an incontestable right; not a right held under the constitution or derived from the convention but a right held prior to it, independently of it, inherent in the State sovereignty, and inseparable from it.The State is bound by the constitution of the Union only while she is in it, and is one of the States united.In ratifying the constitution she did not part with her sovereignty, or with any portion of it, any more than France has parted with her sovereignty, and ceased to be an independent sovereign nation, by vesting the imperial power in Napoleon III.and his legitimate heirs male.The principal parts not with his power to his agent, for the agent is an agent only by virtue of the continued power of the principal.Napoleon is emperor by the will of the French people, and governs only by the authority of the French nation, which is as competent to revoke the powers it has conferred on him, when it judges proper, as it was to confer them.The Union exists and governs, if the States are sovereign, only by the will of the State, and she is as competent to revoke the powers she has delegated as she was to delegate them.The, Union, as far as she is concerned, is her creation, and what she is competent to make she is competent to unmake.
In seceding or withdrawing from the Union a State may act very unwisely, very much against her own interests and the interests of the other members of the confederacy; but, if sovereign, she in doing so only exercises her unquestionable right.The other members may regret her action, both for her sake and their own, but they cannot accuse her or her citizens of disloyalty in seceding, nor of rebellion, if in obedience to her authority they defend their independence by force of arms against the Union.
Neither she nor they, on the supposition, ever owed allegiance to the Union.Allegiance is due from the citizen to the sovereign state, but never from a sovereign state or from its citizens to any other sovereign state.While the State is in the Union the citizen owes obedience to the United States, but only because his State has, in ratifying the Federal constitution, enacted that it and all laws and treaties made under it shall be law within her territory.The repeal by the State of the act of ratification releases the citizen from the obligation even of obedience, and renders it criminal for him to yield it without her permission.
It avails nothing, on the hypothesis of the sovereignty of the States as distinguished from that of the United States, to appeal to the language or provisions of the Federal constitution.That constitutes the government, not the state or the sovereign.It is ordained by the sovereign, and if the States were severally independent and sovereign states, that sovereign is the States severally, not the States united.The constitution is law for the citizens of a State only so long as the State remains one of the United States.No matter, then, how clear and express the language, or stringent the provisions of the constitution, they bind only the citizens of the States that enact the constitution.
The written constitution is simply a compact, and obliges only while the compact is continued by the States, each for itself.
The sovereignty of the United States as a single or political people must be established before any thing in the constitution can be adduced as denying the right of secession.
That this doctrine would deprive the General government of all right to enforce the laws of the Union on a State that secedes, or the citizens thereof, is no doubt true; that it would weaken the central power and make the Union a simple voluntary association of states, no better than a rope of sand, is no less true; but what then? It is simply saying that a confederation is inferior to a nation, and that a federal government lacks many of the advantages of a national government.Confederacies are always weak in the centre, always lack unity, and are liable to be dissolved by the influence of local passions, prejudices, and interests.But if the United States are a confederation of states or nations, not a single nation or sovereign state, then there is no remedy.
If the Anglo-American colonies, when their independence of Great Britain was achieved and acknowledged, were severally sovereign states, it has never since been in their power to unite and form a single sovereign state, or to form themselves into one indivisible sovereign nation.They could unite only by mutual agreement, which gives only a confederation, in which each retains its own sovereignty, as two individuals, however closely united, retain each his own individuality.No sovereignty is of conventional origin, and none can emerge from the convention that did not enter it.Either the states are one sovereign people or they are not.If they are not, it is undoubtedly a great disadvantage; but a disadvantage that must be accepted, and submitted to without a murmur.
Whether the United States are one sovereign people or only a confederation is a question of very grave importance.If they are only a confederation of states--and if they ever were severally sovereign states, only a confederation they certainly are--state secession is an inalienable right, and the government has had no right to make war on the secessionists as rebels, or to treat them, when their military power is broken, as traitors, or disloyal persons.The honor of the government, and of the people who have sustained it, is then deeply compromised.
