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They believed the Constitution allowed them to secede.

They did not believe that. They aimed to get what they wanted at the point of a gun.

See the Judiciary Act of 1789. Were they just ignorant of the law, these noble scions of the south?

This is section 13 of the Judiciary Act of 1789:

"And be it further enacted, That the Supreme Court shall have exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies of a civil nature, where a state is a party, except between a state and its citizens; and except also between a state and citizens of other states, or aliens, in which latter case it shall have original but not exclusive jurisdiction."

Now unless the actions of the secessionists in the ACW were in fact a criminal act (got my vote), it was a civil controversy. And since the Supreme Court has jurisdiction, no ordinance or act of secession can withstand that challenge, can it? The Supreme Court has the final say. It's not -only- the Constitution that is the supreme law of the land, but the laws passed also. There is no reasonable interpretation that allows of unilateral state secession, and few put it forward at the time, relying instead on natural rights -- the right of revolution, about which there is no controversy.

Walt

A previous poster made the excellent point that the secessionists violated Article I, Section 10, Item 1: "No state shall into any treaty, alliance, or CONFEDERATION"

Also, the CSA law voiding southern debts with northern creditors also violated that constitutional provision.

And, the rebel states violated that provision by keeping troops without the consent of Congress.

rb: They believed the Constitution allowed them to secede.

WP: They did not believe that. They aimed to get what they wanted at the point of a gun.

Jefferson Davis:

...the tenth amendment of the Constitution declared that all which had not been delegated was reserved to the States or to the people. Now, I ask where among the delegated grants to the Federal Government do you find any power to coerce a state; where among the provisions of the Constitution do you find any prohibition on the part of a State to withdraw; and if you find neither one nor the other, must not this power be in that great depository, the reserved rights of the States? How was it ever taken out of that source of all power to the Federal Government? It was not delegated to the Federal Government; it was not prohibited to the States; it necessarily remains, then, among the reserved powers of the States.

Is Davis wrong in his argument that powers not delegated to the Federal Government by the Constitutiton remain powers of the states?