If a federalist, if believing this to be a Government of force, if believing it to be a consolidated mass and not a confederation of States, he [Buchanan] should have said: no state has a right to secede; every State is subordinate to the Federal Government, and the Federal Government must empower me with physical means to reduce to subjugation the State asserting such a right.
Buchanan said there was no right to secede unilaterally.
"In his final message to Congress, on December 3, 1860, James Buchanan surprised some of his southern allies with a firm denial of the right of secession. The Union was not "a mere voluntary association of states, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties," said Buchanan. "We the People" had adopted the Constitution to form "a more perfect Union" than the one existing under the Articles of Confederation, which had stated that "the Union shall be perpetual." The framers of the National Government "never intended to implant in its bosom the seeds of its own destruction, nor were they guilty of the absurdity of providing for its own dissolution." State Sovereignty was NOT superior to national sovereignty, Buchanan insisted. The Constitution bestowed the highest attributes of sovereignty exclusively on the federal government: national defense; foreign policy; regulation of foreign and interstate commerece; coinage of money. "This Constitution," stated the document, and the laws of the United States...shall be the supreme law of the land...anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." (McPherson, p. 246)
Walt