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Walt, I'm becoming convinced that the original confederates knew they'd lose in front of the US Supreme court on the issue of secesssion. They also knew the precedent such an unfavorable ruling would set, both domestically as well as in europe.

The Supreme Court was not the friend of the secesh.

"In order, therefore, to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for common defense and to secure the blessings of liberty, those people, among whom were the people of Georgia, ordained and established the present constitution. By that constitution, legislative power is vested, executive power is vested, judicial power is vested...We may then infer, that the people of the United States intended to bind the several states, by the legislative power of the national government...

Whoever considers, in a combined and comprehensive view, the general texture of the constitution, wil be satisfied that the people of the United States intended to form themselves into a nation for national purposes. They instituted, for such purposes, a national government complete in all its parts, with powers legislative, executive and judiciary, ad in all those powers extending over the whole nation. "

John Jay, first Chief Justice, 1793:

"It is remarkable that in establishing it, the people exercised their own rights and their own proper sovereignty, and conscious of the plenitude of it, they declared with becoming dignity, "We the people of the United States," 'do ordain and establish this Constitution." Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the state governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform. Every State Constitution is a compact made by and between the citizens of a state to govern themeselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is liekwise a compact made by the people of the United States to govern themselves as to general objects, in a certain manner. By this great compact however, many prerogatives were transferred to the national Government, such as those of making war and peace, contracting alliances, coining money, etc."

--Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793

Chief Justice John Marshall:

"The subject is the execution of those great powers on which the welfare of a nation essentially depends. It must have been the intention of those who gave these powers, to insure, as far as human prudence could insure, their beneficial execution. This could not be done by confining their choice of means to such narrow limits as not to leave it in the power of Congress to adopt any which might be approprate, and which were conducive to the end...to have prescribed the means by which the government, should, in all future times, execute its powers, would have been to change, entirely, the character of the instrument, and give it the properties of a legal code...To have declared, that the best means shal not be used, but those alone, without which the power given would be nugatory...if we apply this principle of construction to any of the powers of the government, we shall find it so pernicious in its operation that we shall be compelled to discard it..."

From McCullough v. Maryland, quoted in "American Constittutional Law" A.T. Mason, et al. ed. 1983 p. 165

As to Virginia:

"The mischievous consequences of the construction contended for on the part of Virginia, are also entitled to great consideration. It would prostrate, it has been said, the government and its laws at the feet of every state in the Union. And would this not be the effect? What power of the government could be executed by its own means, in any states disposed to resist its execution by a course of legislation?...each member will possess a veto on the will of the whole...there is certainly nothing in the circumstances under which our constitution was formed; nothing in the history of the times, which justify the opinion that the confidence reposed in the states was so implicit as to leave in them and their tribunals the power of resisting or defeating, in the form of law, the legislative measures of the Union..."

ibid, p. 169-70

"Thus it fell to Story in his first constitutional decision almost to surpass Marshall in his nationalistic leanings, if that were possible. The hopes of the Jeffersonians were blasted. A case came to the Court involving rival grants of land in Virginia. One grant stemmed from the state and one from the British government before the Revolution. Marshall disqualified himself from hearing the case because of a family relation on the side of the ultimate winner. The Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Story, held against the grant of the state of Virginia. Normally this would have ended the litigation, as the state supreme court would be expected to issue court process to carry out the decision. But the Supreme Court of Virginia openly defied the decision and refused to issue the proper legal process upholding it! Remember, this was Virginia, the home of the Jeffersonians and the scat of the opposition to Marshall and the Court.

Back the case went to Washington. Story again delivered the opinion of the Court--an opinion which surely reached the ultimate in the doctrine of federal supremacy over the states. Story held that the Virginia court must follow the mandate of the Supreme Court, and indirectly hinted that if this were not done the Supreme Court would issue legal process against the Virginia justices personally, compelling their acquiescence upon threat of contempt. The possible spectacle of a judge of the highest court of a state being called to account before the United States Supreme Court under pain of possible fine or jail sentence is certainly the acme of federal supremacy over the states. The spectacle never took place. The Supreme Court of Virginia acquiesced.

Story's opinion, one of his longest, was one of his ablest. It is magnificently reasoned, as might be expected from a meticulous scholar, but its very thoroughness makes it a somewhat difficult opinion to read and understand. Less than half of it is printed here.

See Professor Jerre S. Williams, University of Texas, author of Constitutional Analysis in a Nutshell for more info

Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheaton 304; 4 L. Ed. 97 (1816).

"Before proceeding to the principal questions, it may not be unfit to dispose of some preliminary considerations which have grown out of the arguments at the bar. The constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the constitution declares, by "the people of the United States."

The secesh dared not go before the Supreme Court. They had to drug the mind of their section with "treason thus sugar coated", as President Lincoln said.

Walt