2. To the extent that the Tenth Amendment and the Supremacy Clause in the original Constitution of 1787 are incompatible on the subject of a state having the right to secede, and given that the right to secede is not specifically prohibited by the Supremacy Clause or any other clause in the constitution in any event, the Tenth Amendment (the later enactment) controls by well settled rules of jurisprudence.
3. I have not considered whether the Congress would have the authority to expel a state from the "Union." I suspect not since such a power is not specifically granted to Congress and would therefore be prohibited by the Tenth Amendment.
4. Further "Union" lawlessness during the late unpleasantness included the admission of "West Virginia" to the "Union," carving territory out of the pre-existing state or Commonwealth of Virginia without Virginia's consent. Of course, if the secession of Virginia were to have been recognized by the Lincoln Regime and the Radical Congress, then a petition for admission to the "Union" by the citizens of that region of the former state of Virginia to be admitted to the "Union" as "West Virginia" would stand on far firmer ground.
5. Another instance of Lincoln wanting to have his cake and eat it too was the imposition of the naval blockade of Confederate ports. A naval blockade is an act of war and may be undertaken only against a sovereign nation not against a domestic rebellion. A naval blockade affects the shipping of other nations peacefully engaged in commerce. Therefore naval blockades of ports on the Atlantic Ocean and on the Gulf of Mexico are subject to traditional principles of international law. The Lincoln Regime and the Radical Congress were unwilling to concede the sovereign nation status of the Confederacy but, nonetheless, in fact imposed the naval blockade.
6. I legitimately recognize that the right to secede or break entirely free of the "Union" and its constitution was in fact a right reserved by each state to exercise at its will. The immediate pre-war governor of Wisconsin seems to have agreed when he proposed in 1860 (before Lincoln's election) that Wisconsin should secede from the "Union" because the "Union" insisted that Wisconsin return fugitive slaves to their owners under the federal Fugitive Slave Act as such compliance by returning slaves was repugnant to his morality and that of many Wisconsin citizens.
7. You are certainly free to question the political decision-making of James Buchanan as POTUS but I note that you are not expounding any theory that he was lawless in his exercise of his powers or any alleged failure to exercise his obligations. There is a distinction in the law of what is called "mandamus" (seeking orders of courts to compel the positive actions of public officials as opposed to injunctions which may restrain such actions) between ministerial actions and discretionary actions. A court may order an official to exercise his discretion as to those matters that are his to decide. A court may order the official to perform specific actions (ministerial actions and not subject to his exercise of discretionary judgment) which are required of him by relevant and applicable law (ordering a tax collector to accept a legal payment of taxes, for example).
8. There may have been a few casualties as a result of Buchanan's governance but nothing comparable to more than 600,000 dead Americans and a total, including the injured in excess of 1,000,000. To serve s POTUS, give me Buchanan any time over Lincoln. So many fewer American widows and orphans.
That was a theory. It was by no means the only one or a universally accepted one. This was something that should have been decided in the courts.
In any case, if you want to sever the bonds that make you part of the country, you don't get to do it simply on your own demand. You don't simply get to have everything your own way and take over all federal in your territory.
You don't get to walk out on the national debt that you've helped to borrow over decades simply because you want to. Act without consideration and respect and of course, there will be a crisis. We learned that from history. Why forget it?
I have not considered whether the Congress would have the authority to expel a state from the "Union." I suspect not since such a power is not specifically granted to Congress and would therefore be prohibited by the Tenth Amendment.
By that standard, we could never have acquired the Louisiana Territory (as indeed Thomas Jefferson believed we couldn't -- before he went ahead and did just that). A state can't simply leave the country either according to another part of the Constitution (not your favorite one, maybe not even one you pay attention to), so we're at an impasse. Mutual consent, involving a petition by a state and agreement by Congress (or a Constitutional Convention) would be a reasonable way to resolve the conflict. Unilateral action by either party would not be.
You are certainly free to question the political decision-making of James Buchanan as POTUS but I note that you are not expounding any theory that he was lawless in his exercise of his powers or any alleged failure to exercise his obligations.
Give me time and maybe I will. Or maybe I won't since I'm so tired of years of this sh#t. My point was he was a failure as President in pragmatic terms. He was passive. He was inactive. He did neglect his responsibilities to the country and the Constitution. You could call that a violation of his oath and the laws if you like, but that's not the main point here.
If a President fails to make an appointment or spend money you may be able to take him to court. If he fails completely at more complicated tasks, if, say, he lets a foreign power or insurrection take over part of the country and does nothing, there's not much that a court case could do to fix that. You can't give someone a will, a resolve, a backbone by court decree and it's foolish to suggest that anyone could.
You may believe that the federal government is the locus of all evil and that state governments are good and vested with some magical sovereignty that persists even when they don't use it. You may believe that the Confederate government was composed of victims, a bunch of good ol' boys who got together in their garages to talk about guns when the evil feds busted down the doors. I don't. History's more complex than that.
Of course, you charge Lincoln with all those deaths. Yet Davis started the war.
You can try to lawyer the old devil out of it, but it was his war and his gang's war. Whether or not it was what Lincoln wanted, it certainly was what they wanted, and what they gave us.
Now, if you were confronted with a situation like what we had in 1941 or 2001, would you really want someone like James Buchanan in the White House?
What is Congress but the voice of all the states? So don't look at is as whether Congress has the power to expel another state. Ask yourself if the states themselves, expressing their desires through a vote of their members in Congress, have the right to expel a single state from the Union. And if your answer is 'no' then please point out the clause of the Constitution that forbids it.
And if it is your position that the government only has powers explicitly granted to it by the Constitution then how can organizations like NASA, the Department of Veteran's Affairs, the air traffic control system, USDA Food Safety and Inspection, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Federal Park System be Constitutional since none of those are explicitly authorized by the Constitution?