The closing section of the Annual Message of Governor Randall of Wisconsin, January 10, 1861:
The right of a State to secede from the Union can never be admitted. The national government cannot treat with a State while it is in the Union, and particularly while it stands in an attitude hostile to the Union. So long as any State assumes a position, foreign, independent, and hostile to the government, there can be no conciliation. The government of the United States cannot treat with one of its own States as a foreign power. The constitutional laws of the United States extend over every State alike. They are to be enforced in every State alike.
A state cannot come into the Union as it pleases, and go out when it pleases. Once in, it must stay until the Union is destroyed. There is no coercion of a State. But where a faction of a people arrays itself, not against one act, but against alllaws, and against all government, there is but one answer to be made: “The Government must be sustained, and the laws shall be enforced!”
Secession is revolution; revolution is war; war against the government of the United States is treason.
It is time, now, to know whether we have any government, and if so, whether it has any strength. Is our written Constitution more than a sheet of parchment? The nation must be lost or preserved by its own strength. Its strength is in the patriotism of the people. It is time now that politicians become patriots, that men show their love of country by every sacrifice but that of principle, and by unwavering devotion to its interests and integrity.
The hopes of civilization and Christianity are suspended now upon the answer to this question of dissolution. The capacity for, as well as the right of self-government is to pass its ordeal, and speculation to become certainty. Other systems have been tried and have failed, and all along the skeletons of nations have been strewn, as warnings and landmarks upon the great highway of historic government. Wisconsin is true, and her people steadfast. She will not destroy the Union, nor consent that it shall be done. Devised by great, and wise, and good men, in days of sore trial, it must stand. Like some bold mountain, at whose base the great seas break their angry floods, and around whose summit the thunders of a thousand hurricanes have rattled, strong, unmoved, immovable—so may our Union be, while treason surges at its base, and passions rage around it, unmoved, immovable—here let it stand forever.
>>OIFVeteran quoting: The closing section of the Annual Message of Governor Randall of Wisconsin, January 10, 1861: The right of a State to secede from the Union can never be admitted.”
The right of state sovereignty and determination, including the right of secession, was both admitted and demanded, in Convention and during Ratification, by men of far greater stature than Governor Randall.
Mr. Kalamata
Contradicts the Founders claims in the Declaration of Independence. The revolution established the principle that people can leave a Union, and can form another one.