6 states had already seceded by the time of the decision, with a seventh, Texas seceding on the date of the memorandum. The shooting hadn’t begun, but Taney, who was a Unionist, certainly knew it was coming.
“No power or right is constitutional but what can be exercised in a form or mode provided in the constitution for its exercise.”
Taney is making this up. If it were true it would nullify the 9th and 10th Amendments.
Odd that you would adopt a view expressed in a memorandum written by the judge who authored the Dred Scott decision.
The Constitution forms a government, not a league.... Each state having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute jointly with other nations, a single nation, cannot from that period, posses any right to secede, because such succession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation.... To say that any state may at pleasure secede from the union is to say that the United States is not a nation.... Because the union was formed by a compact, it is said that the parties to that compact may, when they feel themselves aggrieved, depart from it; but it is precisely because it is a compact that they may not. A compact is a binding obligation....