WP: That is ridiculous. If that were true, they would have --insisted-- that the legality of secession be brought before the Supreme Court, as required by the Judiciary Act of 1789.
They believed the Constitution allowed them to secede. Once seceded, US laws did not apply to them -- they were no longer part of the US. They did not have to go to the Supreme Court to get a blessing.
If you don't understand where they were coming from, Walt, you really don't have a good understanding of the war.
They knew they dare not try that line in front of the Supreme Court, which ruled -unanimously- the first the issue was presented that secession was null and that the secessionists were traitors.
And you well know it.
Walt
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
"What might a Southern State, circa 1860, have done to lawfully leave the Union, other than unilateral secession?
(1) Certainly, the State's legislature and executive could have authorized the Congressional delegation to ask the other States for its release. Could Congress simply have passed a law, like the Northwest Ordinance, with a signature by the President, cutting a State free from the Union?
(2) Failing that, Congress could have passed a law detailing how a State or States could leave the Union.
(3) A State's government could have made a declaration of independence and sued in Federal court to determine if their unwritten "right of secession" existed. In 1860, the US Supreme Court still tilted decidely to the South, and it is not impossible that the Court would have allowed this.
(4) The representatives of a State or region could have proposed a Constitutional Amendment clarifying the process of secession or dissolution of the Nation.
(5) The same people could have called for another Constitutional convention to propose a secession amendment."
In short, by unilaterally seceding, the rebel states wagered that the North had no stomach for fighting to hold the Union. They figured that Lincoln would be another spineless Democrat, like Buchanan. They figured wrong.