Two strawmen in one breath - congratulations. Most Americans are aware that Colonialists did not "secede" from the crown. After years of effort made to find a platform for their grievances and overt acts of aggression and tyranny the Colonialists unambiguously declared that they were in a state of rebellion against king and crown.
Most Americans also knew that although the Constitution does not speak to an enumerated provision or process for secession, there was a reason for that silence. The reason was that the Republic was assembled in perpetuity and no Founder wished to be the author of its demise.
Reasonable people knew that honorable people would fight out their differences in the proper forum - the Congress or the courts. Too bad that the slavers were neither honorable or reasonable people.
” Most Americans are aware that Colonialists did not “secede” from the crown.”
You may be right since they have managed to elect Obama twice. They are liable to believe anything.
Prior to July 4 1776 Colonials were British subjects and the Colonies belonged to the United Kingdom. Then the colonials announced to the King that they were withdrawing from the UK and taking the colonies to form their own country. Let’s see how that comports with definitions of secession:
“the action of withdrawing formally from membership of a federation or body, especially a political state.”
That definition doesn’t include chaff about aggression and tyranny since the ‘why’ of leaving isn’t what determines secession. It’s the leaving itself that is secession.
“Most Americans also knew that although the Constitution does not speak to an enumerated provision or process for secession, there was a reason for that silence. The reason was that the Republic was assembled in perpetuity and no Founder wished to be the author of its demise.”
That may impress modern readers who know little about what was thought and taught regarding the Constitution prior to the Civil War and Lincoln’s insistence on perpetual union.
But to learn what Americans of that era actually thought all we need do is look at William Rawle’s “A View of the Constitution”, the text used at West Point to teach government to the cadets.
And here we have page 149 of Rawle’s text:
” the United States are authorized to oppose, and if possible, prevent every state in the Union from relinquishing the republican form of government, and as auxiliary means, they are expressly authorized and required to employ their force on the application of the constituted authorities of each state, “to repress domestic violence.”
If a faction should attempt to subvert the government of a state for the purpose of destroying its republican form, the paternal power of the Union could thus be called forth to subdue it.
Yet it is not to be understood, that its interposition would be justifiable, if the people of a state should determine to retire from the Union, whether they adopted another or retained the same form of government, or if they should, with the, express intention of seceding, expunge the representative system from their code, and thereby incapacitate themselves from concurring according to the mode now prescribed, in the choice of certain public officers of the United States.
The principle of representation, although certainly the wisest and best, is not essential to the being of a republic, but to continue a member of the Union, it must be preserved, and therefore the guarantee must be so construed.
It depends on the state itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on 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”