Replies

FLT-bird: "Of course, I’ve never held that the opinion of one man...even the guy who wrote most of the constitution...decades after ratification meant anything."

MamaTexan: "Exactly! If their intention was to have a single, central government with ultimate authority, why painstakingly outline it's powers?"

Political Junkie Too: "So, the historical score is Jefferson yes, Madison no, Paine no, when it comes to taking their opinions as definitive."

You all have two problems when it comes to Madison's opinions on secession, as expressed in his 1830 letter to Trist.

The first is that you've never correctly stated his views, because you refuse to grasp the key point he made.
The second is that these were not only Madison's views, but the views of every Founder -- you will not find any to directly contradict him.

Madison's view is that there is, we would say, a "right of secession" under two, but only two conditions:

From necessity, as our Founders experienced in 1776, when they had no other choice, "...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government..."
By mutual consent, as our Founders accomplished in 1788, in "seceding" from the old Articles of Confederation, in favor of their new Constitution.

These conditions for "secession" were agreed to by 100% of our Founders, and by nearly everyone since.

What no Founder ever agreed to was unilateral declaration of secession "at pleasure", meaning, without just cause.
This is the point Madison made to Trist, and every other Founder made in other words or actions.

These words are also found in the 1788 Constitution ratifying statements by Virginia and New York.
So let's look at them:

"WE the Delegates of the people of Virginia... DO... declare... 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..."

"We, the delegates of the people of the state of New York, duly elected and met in Convention...declare... That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness... "

Clearly, Virginia's words correspond exactly to those of Madison in his 1830 letter to Trist:

"It is the nature & essence of a compact that it is equally obligatory on the parties to it, and of course that no one of them can be liberated therefrom without the consent of the others, or such a violation or abuse of it by the others, as will amount to a dissolution of the compact."

Virginia in 1788 and Madison in 1830 said effectively the same thing.

In the case of New York, their 1788 language, while not as explicit as Virginia, still includes the key word "necessary", as was used in the Declaration of Independence:

"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands "
"Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. "
"We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends."

Necessity drove the Declaration of Independence, which defined and spelled out what that word "necessary" meant to our Founders.
It means the same thing in the New York ratification statement.

Again, what no Founder ever suggested or agreed to was an unlimited, unilateral "right of secession", "at pleasure", meaning for any reason whatever, or for no reason at all.
Secession "at pleasure" could only be done by mutual consent as they did in their 1788 "secession" from the old Articles of Confederation to their new Constitution.

Any time our Founders were confronted with threats of rebellion or unilateral secession, they always acted with enough military force to stop it:

In 1794, Pres. Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion by raising a 13,000 man army (huge in those days) and putting Light Horse Harry Lee in charge of defeating the rebels.
In 1798, Pres. Adams addressed threats of alien sedition and insurrection during the Quazi-War with France by passing laws to suppress them.
In 1807 Pres. Jefferson sent the US Army to arrest his own former VP, Aaron Burr, and tried him for treason after Burr planned to declare the secession of Louisiana.
In 1814, Pres. Madison moved US Army troops off the frontier with Canada to Albany, NY, in case the Hartford Convention's threats of secession became actual rebellion.

Yes, the question of Thomas Jefferson's relationship to secession -- his word for it was "scission" -- is, ah... "complicated".
But the bottom line is that Jefferson could agree to "scission" under some dire circumstances, but never for no good reason, "at pleasure", and absolutely not when threatened by his own former VP, Aaron Burr.

And yet, in 1860, the Deep South declared secessions "at pleasure", and that is why even the most sympathetic of Northern Doughfaces -- such as Democrats, Pres. Buchanan and former Pres. Van Buren -- opposed secession on principle and supported civil war when push came to shove at Fort Sumter.