The inability to secede is in the logic and definition of a constitution.
Conditional ratification was never an option for the state ratification conventions. The question was to be answered with a “yes” or a “no” not a “yes, if...” It was explicitly voted down at the NY convention after receipt of the Madison letter.
The states were never truly sovereign most did not even have constitutions as states until the Union was formed. Americans fought for NATIONAL independence and the generation of the Founders thought of themselves as one People.
It was that PEOPLE gathered in conventions in the states (for administrative convenience) which ratified the constitution.
In reality, Congress EXPLICITLY forbid ratification by state legislatures PRECISELY because, if considered as just another state legislative act, it could be revoked by another legislative act.
St. George Tucker quotes don’t change these facts. Nor do they refute what I said. In fact, he specifies how the Union could be CONSTITUTIONALLY changed. A procedure the Slavers never tried.
While I admire Non-Sequitor’s knowledge of the RAT Rebellion I am not him. Thanks for the compliment, though.
Should I call you Stand Watie?
""The Federal Government is the creature of the States. It is not a party to the Constitution, but the result of it the creation of that agreement which was made by the States as parties. It is a mere agent, entrusted with limited powers for certain specific objects; which powers and objects are enumerated in the Constitution. Shall the agent be permitted to judge the extent of its own powers, without reference to his constituent? To a certain extent, he is compelled to do this, in the very act of exercising them, but always in subordination to the authority by whom his powers were conferred. If this were not so, the result would be, that the agent would possess every power which the agent could confer, notwithstanding the plainest and most express terms of the grant. This would be against all principle and all reason. If such a rule would prevail in regard to government, a written constitution would be the idlest thing imaginable. It would afford no barrier against the usurpations of the government, and no security for the rights and liberties of the people. If then the Federal Government has no authority to judge, in the last resort, of the extent of its own powers, with what propriety can it be said that a single department of that government may do so? Nay. It is said that this department may not only judge for itself, but for the other departments also. This is an absurdity as pernicious as it is gross and palpable. If the judiciary may determine the powers of the Federal Government, it may pronounce them either less or more than they really are."
Abel Upshur, The Federal government: Its true nature and character
The supremacy of the Union in all those points that are thus transferred, and the sovereignty of the state in all those which are not transferred, must therefore be considered as two co-ordinate qualities, enabling us to decide on the true mode of giving a construction to the constitution.
A VIEW OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE United States of America.
BY WILLIAM RAWLE, LL.D.
SECOND EDITION.
PHILADELPHIA: PHILIP H. NICKLIN, LAW BOOKSELLER, NO. 175, CHESTNUT STREET. 1829.