That would be, John Quincy Adams:
[snip] ...Notwithstanding the commemorative purpose of Jubilee, Adams said recent events made it necessary once again to consider, as in the revolutionary era, questions "of the deepest and most vital interest to the continued existence of the Union itself." The key questions were "whether any one state of the Union had the right to secede from the confederacy at her pleasure," and "the right of the people of any one state, to nullify within her borders any legislative act of the general government."Secession was possible under the confederation. Adams pointed out that the question came up and was "practically solved" in the framing and ratification of the Constitution. The people of Rhode Island, for example, refusing to take part in the Convention, "virtually seceded from the Union." When eleven states formed and ratified the Constitution, North Carolina, although it participated in the Convention, joined with Rhode Island in staying out of the reorganized Union. Adams wrote: "Their right to secede was not contested. No unfriendly step to injure was taken;...the door was left open for them to return whenever the proud and wayward spirit of state sovereignty should give way to the attractions of clearer sighted self-interest and kindred sympathies."
With the ratification of the Constitution, secession assumed a different aspect. Adams explained: "The questions of secession, or of resistance under state authority, against the execution of the laws of the Union within any state, could never again be presented under circumstances so favorable to the pretensions of the separate state, as they were at the organization of the Constitution of the United States." Although a national government had the power to decide when violation of a contract absolved it from reciprocal obligations, Adams argued that "this last of earthly powers is not necessary to the freedom or independence of states, connected together by the immediate action of the people, of whom they consist."
Nevertheless, in the conduct of American federalism, uncertainty about the boundary line between the constitutional authority of the general and the state governments led to collisions threatening the dissolution of the Union. In different sections of the Union, Adams noted, the right of a state, or of several states in combination, to secede from the Union, and the right of a single state, without seceding, to nullify an act of Congress within the borders of that state, had been "directly asserted, fervently controverted, and attempted to be carried into execution." Fortunately, these examples of state resistance proved abortive, demonstrating in Adams's view the superiority of the Constitution over the Confederation, as a system of government "to control the temporary passions of the people." Adams observed: "In the calm hours of self-possession, the right of a State to nullify an act of Congress, is too absurd for argument and too odious for discussion. The right of a state to secede from the Union, is equally disowned by the principles of the Declaration of Independence." Adams's fundamental argument was that no right of state secession or nullification existed under the Constitution because the right to revolution was a natural right of the people. "To the people alone is there reserved, as well the dissolving, as the constituent power, and that power can be exercised by them only under the tie of conscience, binding them to the retributive justice of Heaven." In Adams's theory of the Union, the "whole people" of America, in the Declaration of Independence, declared the existence of a "compound nation." In their dual or compound character, the people were capable of acting as a "whole people" for national purposes in the government of the Union, and as a state people for particular purposes in their state government. "With these qualifications," Adams summarized, "we may admit the same [natural] right as vested in the people of every state in the Union, with reference to the General Government, which was exercised by the people of the United Colonies, with reference to the Supreme head of the British empire, of which they formed a part—and under these limitations, have the people of each state in the Union a right to secede from the confederated Union itself."
Throughout his public career Adams struggled with the seeming contradiction involved in maintaining a constitutional order that owed its existence to the right of revolution. At a high level of generality, and more explicitly than in any previous writing, Adams in Jubile advanced a theory of the right to revolution for Declarationist ends, couched in the language of secession or disunion. The timing and specific form that a division of the Union might take was a contingent matter, to be decided on prudential grounds. A few years later, Adams provoked the fury of Southerners by defending the constitutional right of Massachusetts abolitionists, in order to avert unjust domination by the slave power, to petition Congress for dissolution of the Union, without himself recommending exercise of the right to revolution on the merits. [snip]
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1207/article_detail.asp
Cordially,
How wrong Lincoln was:
“It is not immaterial to remark, that the Signers of the Declaration, though qualifying themselves as the Representatives of the United States of America, in general Congress assembled, yet issue the Declaration, in the name and by the authority of the good people of the Colonies - and that they declare, not each of the separate Colonies, but the United Colonies, free and independent States. The whole people declared the Colonies in their united condition, of RIGHT, free and independent States.
The dissolution of allegiance to the British crown, the severance of the Colonies from the British empire, and their actual existence as Independent States, thus declared of right, were definitively established in fact, by war and peace. The independence of each separate State had never been declared of right. It never existed in fact. Upon the principles of the Declaration of Independence, the dissolution of the ties of allegiance, the assumption of sovereign power, and the institution of civil government, are all acts of transcendent authority, which the people alone are competent to perform - and accordingly, it is in the name and by the authority of the people, that two of these acts - the dissolution of allegiance, with the severance from the British empire, and the declaration of the United Colonies, as free and independent States, were performed by that instrument.
snip
With these qualifications, we may admit the same right as vested in the people of every state in the Union, with reference to the General Government, which was exercised by the people of the United Colonies, with reference to the Supreme head of the British empire, of which they formed a part - and under these limitations, have the people of each state in the Union a right to secede from the confederated Union itself.
Thus stands the RIGHT. But the indissoluble link of union between the people of the several states of this confederated nation, is after all, not in the right, but in the heart. If the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred, the bands of political association will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states, to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint. Then will be the time for reverting to the precedents which occurred at the formation and adoption of the Constitution, to form again a more perfect union, by dissolving that which could no longer bind, and to leave the separated parts to be reunited by the law of political gravitation to the center.”
John Adams
BLACKSTONE’S COMMENTARIES:
“In governments whose original foundations cannot be traced to the certain and undeniable criterion of an original written compact”
[snip]
“This memorable precedent was soon followed by the far greater number of the states in the union, and led the way to that instrument, by which the union of the confederated states has since been completed, and in which, as we shall hereafter endeavour to shew, the sovereignty of the people, and the responsibility of their servants are principles fundamentally, and unequivocally, established; in which the powers of the several branches of government are defined, and the excess of them, as well in the legislature, as in the other branches, finds limits, which cannot be transgressed without offending against that greater power from whom all authority, among us, is derived; to wit, the PEOPLE.”
[snip]
“These, and several others, are objects to which the power of the legislature does not extend; and should congress be so unwise as to pass an act contrary to these restrictions, the other powers of the state are not bound to obey the legislative power in the execution of their several functions, as our author expresses it: but the very reverse is their duty, being sworn to support the constitution, which unless they do in opposition to such encroachments, the constitution would indeed be at an end.
Here then we must resort to a distinction which the institution and nature of our government has introduced into the western hemisphere; which, however, can only obtain in governments where power is not usurped but delegated, and where authority is a trust and not a right .... nor can it ever be truly ascertained where there is not a written constitution to resort to. A distinction, nevertheless, which certainly does exist between the indefinite and unlimited power of the people, in whom the sovereignty of these states, ultimately, substantially, and unquestionably resides, and the definite powers of the congress and state legislatures, which are severally limited to certain and determinate objects, being no more than emanations from the former, where, and where only, that legislative essence which constitutes sovereignty can be found.”
What makes the State; to wit, the PEOPLE.!
Fortunately, these examples of state resistance proved abortive, demonstrating in Adams's view the superiority of the Constitution over the Confederation, as a system of government "to control the temporary passions of the people." (Emphasis supplied)Now we're getting down to it.
Yes, to make those Southerners and Westerners eat the Tariff of Abominations, it would be good to have some system to control the people.
Enter the Civil War.
This is "Claremonster" propaganda and John Quincy Adams's poppycock.
The Claremont "Declarationist" crowd, students of Harry Jaffa, an ardent Lincoln partisan, have always hewed closely to Lincolnian propaganda and justified it by citing the Declaration of Independence. Which is awkward, since constitutional questions always recur to the Constitution itself, and to the terms of its framing and ratification debates, and the commentary of the Federalist Papers and Madison's notes and letters.
Adams's "compound people", ie. his amalgamated and massified "people of the Union" is falsified by Madison's explication of the nature of the Union in Federalist No. 39 and 40, and by the decision of the Philadelphia Convention to submit the Constitution to the People in each State.
The Philadelphia Convention explicitly and publicly rejected the idea of submitting the Constitution for ratification to a massified "people of the Union" or a mass, all-Union ratification convention. One was proposed, but the motion failed even to find a second. Or, to put it in language everyone will understand, the idea of a lumpen "people of the Union" was
reeeee-JECTED!!
There is no mass People of the Union. The "People" are always the People of each State.
John Quincy Adams's formulation, shifty as it is, serves one purpose only, which is to bend over the populations of the smaller, more rural States in favor of the more populous big States of the eastern seaboard, which created the Tariff of Abominations to enrich themselves under color of top-level, high-concept policy-supportive gobbledygook such as Adams spouts here.