[windsorknot]:
...explicitly said they held the right to resume powers delegated should the federal government become abusive of those powers.[BroJoeK]: Right, that was the Founder's definition of the kinds of "necessity" which compelled them in 1776 to issue their Declaration of Independence.
Perhaps BroJoeK forgets what ratifiers of the Constitution said about what was necessary to resume their own governance in their ratification documents [my bold below]:
New York: "That the Powers of Government may be resumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness;..." [Link 1] Rhode Islands: "That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people, whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness:" [Link 2]
windsorknot above refers to the Virginia ratification.
Isn't it odd, BroJoeK, that Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, the three authors of the Federalist Papers that explained the Constitution to the public, voted for their state ratifications of the Constitution that said their state could resume or reassume their own governance.
The New York ratification also included a statement very similar to the Tenth Amendment, an amendment that was later proposed to the Congress by Madison (who said that the Constitution already means this, but it doesn't hurt to add it). The Tenth Amendment was ratified by the states and became part of the Constitution. Here is what New York said in their ratification document (the words below weren't a proposed amendment in their ratification document, it was a statement in that ratification of what the Constitution meant):
"that every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by the said Constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States, or the departments of the Government thereof, remains to the People of the several States, or to their respective State Governments to whom they may have granted the same"
South Carolina cited the Tenth Amendment in their causes for secession in 1860. Virginia cited their ratification document in their 1861 secession.
rustbucket:
"Perhaps BroJoeK forgets what ratifiers of the Constitution said about what was necessary to resume their own governance in their ratification documents..." No, and you quoted exactly what I was referring to, the word "necessary" as in, "When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another..."
Our Declaration of Independence is all about necessity -- the necessity of disunion brought about by a "...long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."
So our Founders listed a parade of horribles, about two dozen items in their Declaration which had made disunion necessary.
And the Virginia ratification statement specifically referred to that list, saying:
"...powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression..."
So our Founders believed in and practiced disunion from
necessity as in 1776.
They also believed in "secession"
at pleasure if, and only if, by mutual consent, as in 1788.
Every other form of disunion, secession or other unilateral breakup they considered nothing but rebellion, insurrection, domestic violence, invasion and/or treason, and any of those they confronted & defeated. ![]()