The key point for you to grasp here is that I follow Madison on this subject, and that no other Founder ever seriously contradicted him, qualifying Madison's words as "Founders Original Intent".
So, FRiend, once you've grasped that you are not arguing with BroJoeK, you are arguing with Madison, then we can make some progress, even at this late stage in life... ;-)
What Madison said was there were only two acceptable conditions for disunion and the first of those is "mutual consent".
I merely listed methods by which "mutual consent" can be expressed, including a Constitutional Convention of the states, or simply an act of Congress, similar to an act admitting a new state.
Logically, since Congress authorizes a new state to come in, it should also authorize states to secede.
rustbucket: "If your "by implication" interpretation is correct, why did some Republicans in 1860 and 1861 propose amendments to the Constitution that would require something like what you propose?"
Some of those last minute amendments & bills offered in 1861, in last ditch efforts to reach "compromise" with secessionists, got a little crazy.
I can't justify them as anything else.
But the idea that Congress might approve a state's secession seems entirely reasonable to me, and according to Madison's idea of "mutual consent".
The second valid reason for secession Madison took from our own Declaration of Independence, necessity caused by a material breach of compact, rendering its mutually binding obligations null & void.
Madison's examples were "usurpations" and "abuses of power", just as colonists had experienced under King George.
These are not my new ideas, they are his, and I prefer to be on Madison's side in any such debate.
rustbucket: "...the Constitution wasn't ratified by NY and VA until those reassume or resume the posers of governance statements were put in their ratification documents."
Sure, but even if you assume such statements are legally valid (I don't), then read them carefully.
None of them refer to secession "at pleasure", but only of of necessity, just as the Declaration of Independence does.
Virginia's even spells out the necessity from powers: "perverted to their injury or oppression."
These are not, in the Declaration's words, "light and transient causes", not in Madison's words, "at pleasure" but rather only for the most serious of material breaches of compact.
rustbucket: "During Virginia's ratification convention, Patrick Henry warned that there were more Northern states than Southern ones and worried what that might portend in the future."
Patrick Henry was an anti-Federalist who voted against ratification of the Constitution.
His views were duly considered by the majority and rejected.
So they are not part of Founders' Original Intent.
rustbucket: "Sorry my excerpt was so long, but hopefully it helps you understand what Virginians were thinking in 1861."
But only some Virginians, far from all, and not even a majority before Fort Sumter.
But it absolutely explains why Virginians felt they needed a major excuse to declare secession, something far beyond "at pleasure" or "light and transient causes".
Rather, they needed a major "usurpation" and "abuse of power" to justify secession, and that is what the Confederate military assault on Fort Sumter gave them, the constitutional excuse.
Of course, the original seven Deep South secession states had no such excuse, they did secede "at pleasure" for "light and transient causes", but once Virginia joined them in their declared war against the United States, then all such constitutional niceties became mute & null.
A declared war can be a law unto itself, regardless of other laws.
Which Madison was that? The one that said the following when trying to get the Virginia Ratification Convention to ratify the Constitution? My emphasis below.
An observation fell from a gentleman, on the same side with myself, which deserves to be attended to. If we be dissatisfied with the national government, if we should choose to renounce it, this is an additional safeguard to our defence.
Hmmm. Merely "dissatisfied."
Madison was a member of the five-member committee along with future Chief Justice John Marshall who put together the words in Virginia's ratification document:
The People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will.
The Virginia secession convention used those very words put together by Madison, Marshall, and three others in their April 17, 1861, Ordinance of Secession: [Link]:
AN ORDINANCE
To Repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said Constitution:
The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention, on the 25th day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eight-eight, having declared that the powers granted them under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States.
Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain that the Ordinance adopted by the people of this State in Convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong to a free and independent State. And they do further declare that the said Constitution of the United State of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.
This Ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day when ratified by a majority of the votes of the people of this State, cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.
Done in Convention, in the city of Richmond, on the seventeenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the eighty-fifth year of the Commonwealth of Virginia
JNO. L. EUBANK,
Sec'y of Convention.
That did not take effect until they the voters of Virginia, the sovereign voice of the state, approved the ordinance, which they did. Checking with their voters directly was a big step further than what the original 13 did to form the Union in the first place. In the only instance where the voters of an original state (RI) voted on whether to join the Union under the Constitution, they rejected it by a ten to one margin. It was later approved by a small convention.
The Constitution was ratified in each of the original 13 by 13 separate conventions, each commissioned by the people of their state for that purpose. The people that gave the power are the ones who can take it back. From former poster 4 ConservativeJustices (later known as 4CJ):
John Marshall [during the Virginia Ratification Convention] reiterated that the powers can be resumed by the states, '[w]e are threatened with the loss of our liberties by the possible abuse of power, notwithstanding the maxim, that those who give may take away. It is the people that give power, and can take it back. What shall restrain them? They are the masters who give it, and of whom their servants hold it.'
Marshall went further, stating that 'the people hold all powers in their own hands, and delegate them cautiously, for short periods, to their servants.' Not a perpetual delegation.
The people of each state separately delegated powers to the Federal Government. The people of an individual state can resume or reassume the powers of government if they so chose. There is no power given to the lumpen mass of all the American people in the Constitution. The lumpen mass can't reassume or resume something they didn't have to begin with. The people of an individual state can.
This is all consistent with the Tenth Amendment, which says [my emphasis below]:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
"Respectively" means "individually."
I've told you much of this before. So why do I respond now? I only reply to you now to perhaps educate some who are new to these Civil War threads about what the actual history was rather than your fractured version of Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine.
BroJoeK Sure, but even if you assume such statements are legally valid (I don't), then read them carefully.
None of them refer to secession "at pleasure", but only of of necessity, just as the Declaration of Independence does.
Who gets to decide what is necessary to someone's happiness? Do you get to decide what is necessary for my happiness? If you continually violate local law ordinances about noise at night, and I've been fighting you for 20 years through the courts without success, why is it that you get to decide whether I move away or not?
Maybe if I am disappointed (to use Madison's own words) living next to you, you can block me from moving away?
It is the aggrieved state who gets to decide what is necessary to their happiness or whether they are disappointed enough to leave. Not the state that may be ripping off the aggrieved state that wants to leave.
So, FRiend, once you've grasped that you are not arguing with BroJoeK, you are arguing with Madison, then we can make some progress, even at this late stage in life... ;-)
Sounds to me like I'm arguing with BroJoeK. You don't seem to realize that Madison was not consistent. How do you rationalize the "disappointed" statement he made in response to Patrick Henry. Was Madison promising one thing to mollify an opponent and saying something else later?
Madison even tried to come to grips with "happiness" and how it applied to the Union. From Madison's Federalist Paper No. 45, where he tried to explain the Constitution to the people:
Were the plan of the convention adverse to the public happiness, my voice would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent with the public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union.
New York's ratifiers may well have used his happiness statement as a basis for the "necessary to their happiness" statement in their ratification document. Madison said it; they used it in their ratification document; now BroJoeK says "noooo!"
The Southern states certainly viewed that the Union had become inconsistent with their public's happiness, as direct votes on secession certainly established.