South Carolina and the other rebellious states violated Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution. There is no provision in that article (or anywhere else) for those restrictions to be waived if a group in a state say that their state "seceded". In fact there is no provision anywhere in the Constitution for any such secession to supercede the supreme law of the land.
We're conservatives, not liberals. We need to be strict constructionists and go by what the Constitution says, not by what it doesn't.
Wrong. As Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution notes:
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.
That clause contains no prohibition of State secession, a right the States (even those which did not explicitly reserve it, via their ratification documents) reserved by their insistence upon, and ratification of, the Tenth Amendment.
The right of secession was recognized at the time. As William Rawle (http://www.constitution.org/wr/rawle_32.htm) observed:
It depends on the state itself... whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed.
As Mr. Rawle noted, the foundation of our union is this:
THE PEOPLE HAVE IN ALL CASES, A RIGHT TO DETERMINE HOW THEY WILL BE GOVERNED.
As for your post, once a State had retired from the Union, it was no longer bound by Article 1, Section 10, or any other article of the Constitution.
Thanks for the reply...
I agree. However, the Constitution as it existed in 1860-1861 nowhere prohibited State secession. You seem to be the one who is refering to "what the Constitution [doesn't say]," as a basis for your argument...