I don't believe for a minute that you are "dead wrong." I think you are mostly correct about the Constitution, and let's face it, by standards of (I shudder to say it) the "mainstream media," we both qualify as "right-wing nut cases." "Nutty" because we think the Constitution actually means what it says, and what the Founders intended by it.
But in the case of secession, I think you are reading words into the Constitution which just are not there.
rustbucket: "Secession was not allowed after the states withdrew from the old Union under the Articles?
Btw, withdrawal from the old Articles of Confederation was done in accordance with lawful procedures spelled out in its Article 13.
"Because you say so in spite of what the people who ratified the Constitution said? If the ratifiers thought secession wasn't allowed or not allowed without approval of the other states, they very probably would not have ratified the Constitution. The Virginia, New York, and Rhode island statements (which you can find on the web) and the 10th Amendment-like statements of four other states attest to that fact."
I notice how you read the words "states unilateral secession" INTO the 10th Ammendment. Is that because you believe the Constitution is a "living document" intended to mean whatever you might wish it had meant? ;-)
And thanks for the advice. Took some doing, but I did find all of those signing statements.
To summarize:
So here we see the actual words of those "signing statements," and note again that NONE include such terms as "states' unilateral secession," or "a states unapproved withdrawal from the Union."
Instead, the political "term of art" is "powers of government may be reassumed by the people." In no place is this term "reassumed" defined as "a state's unilateral secession," or "a state's unapproved withdrawal from the Union."
Again I say, the reason those words are NOT ever used is because that in NO WAY is what the Founders intended them to mean.
Finally, even supposing we grant that an individual state's signing statement including the word "reassumed," (or "resumed") MIGHT be interpreted to mean "unilateral state secession," that could conceivably cover Virginia, if it had suffered some "injury or oppression" -- had it? But how, exactly might that cover the other ten states of the Confederacy? ;-)
… So here we see the actual words of those "signing statements," and note again that NONE include such terms as "states' unilateral secession," or "a states unapproved withdrawal from the Union."
The Constitution did not prohibit states from seceding or place any limitations on their right to do so unilaterally. The "necessary to their happiness" or similar statement of those ratifications does not include a requirement that they have to ask for approval from states that might be oppressing them. Requiring the approval of other states wouldn't be to their happiness, and it would be reading something into the Constitution that wasn’t there.
As I pointed out to you before, attempts were made by Republicans in Congress after states started seceding to amend the Constitution so that approval to secede was needed. They knew that such approval wasn't required by the Constitution.
The powers of the states were many and undefined. The Constitution restricted the power of the federal government, and its restrictions on the power of individual states/people do not include a prohibition or conditions on secession.
Finally, even supposing we grant that an individual state's signing statement including the word "reassumed," (or "resumed") MIGHT be interpreted to mean "unilateral state secession," that could conceivably cover Virginia, if it had suffered some "injury or oppression" -- had it? But how, exactly might that cover the other ten states of the Confederacy? ;-)
Virginia suffered economically over the transfer of Southern wealth to Northern manufacturers under the protective tariff. As the Daily Chicago Times editorialized on December 10, 1860:
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff [the Morrill Tariff] that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
The New Orleans Daily Picayune said something similar (emphasis mine):
Some months ago we said to the Northern party, "You sought sectional aggrandizement, and had no scruples as to the means and agencies by which to attain your unhallowed purposes. You paid no heed to the possible consequences of your insane conduct." The fact was then patent that the condition in the bond by which the Northern protectionist party gave its weight and influence in aid of Black Republicanism was the imposition by the party of a protectionist tariff. The South was to be fleeced that the North might be enriched.
Having driven the South to resistance, instead of adopting a policy of conciliation, it added to the existing exasperation by adopting a tariff as hostile as could be to Southern interests. The estrangement of North and South was not sufficiently marked and intense. New fuel must be added to the fires of strife, new incentives to embittered feelings.
Virginia seceded mainly because of Lincoln’s calls for troops to coerce the South. I would guess they saw through Lincoln’s ploy of getting the South to attack when he sent down a battle fleet to South Carolina’s territorial waters.
Family is here from out of state, and I've got estate work to do the next few days to review with them. I have to be off the boards for a while.