LOL - That's not a defense of your false statement, Wlat. You said, and I quote: "There were no illusions in 1788-90 as to the permanence of Union under law".
Your statement was completely false, and if the above is your response to the evidence I presented that proved it, then you are admitting your error. They would not have deliberately included statements that they could reassume those powers if they thought the union "permanent".
None of these ratification documents suggest any resumption of complete state sovereignty was in keeping with United States law.
The assumption at all the ratification conventions was that the Constitution was both binding and perpetual except for intolerable abuse.
These people were all familiar with the incompetence of the national government under the Articles.
"It is to that Union we owe our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted for whatever makes us most proud of our country. That Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the severe school of adversity. It had its origins in the necessities of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined credit. Under its benign influences these great interests immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed with fresh proofs of its utility and blessings; and although our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our population spread farther and farther, they have not outrun its protection, or its benefits. It has to us all a copious foundation of national and personal happiness.
I have not allowed myself, Sir, to look beyond the Union, to see what might be hidden in the dark recess behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us shall be broken asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the precipice of disunion to see whether, with my short sight, I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I regard his as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this Government, whose thoughts should be mainly bent on considering, not how the Union may best be preserved, but how tolerable might be the condition of the people when it should be broken or destroyed. While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. God grant that in my day at least that curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision may never be open on what lies behind. When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonoured fragments of a once glorious Union; on states disservered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil fueds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance be rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known, and honoured throughout the earth, still ful high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as 'What is all this worth?' nor those other words of delusion and folly, 'Liberty first and Union afterwards,' but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart--Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseperable!"
-- Daniel Webster
It's just as true now as when Webster said it.
What the rebs and neo-rebs both want is some nirvana not based in human experience.
Walt
LOL - That wasn't the point of that post, and you know it. At that point in time I was only proving your lie to be what it was, a lie. You said the framers understood the union to be "permanent", and I provided quotes from the ratification documents stating otherwise. They would not have deliberately included statements that they could reassume those powers if they thought the union "permanent". You lied. Again. I proved it. Again.
As to "keeping with United States law", to deny them the right of "resumption of complete state sovereignty" would be to void the union as a fraudulent agreement because that agreement was made with that right as a stated condition.
The assumption at all the ratification conventions was that the Constitution was both binding and perpetual except for intolerable abuse.
"binding and perpetual except..." - LOL. Now you're backing up and inserting conditions that contradict your earlier statements. Apparently you need a dictionary so you can look up words like "permanent" and "perpetual". As to "intolerable abuse", that is not the condition stated in the declarations. For example, New York merely said the powers could be reassumed "whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness". That condition was accepted by the framers.
What the rebs and neo-rebs both want is some nirvana not based in human experience.
LOL - What the neo-unionist hatemongers want is some nirvana based on revisionist lies.