[Non-Sequitur]

Uh, he resigned his commission, and Virginia seceded...there was no way he could have committed treason against the United States when they weren't a part of it.

Only if you accept the southern acts of unilateral secession to be legal.

New England states considered secession and raising an army. Again, why was the discussion of that, and the voting on it, not seditious?

The Sedition Acts had been ruled unconstitutional some time before so merely talking about rebellion wasn't illegal. Too, the Hartford Convention never seriously debated secession. Those attending advocating the breakup of the Union were voted down early. If you read the declaration issued by the convention you would find that nowhere does it threaten secession.

[Gondring]

Only if you accept the southern acts of unilateral secession to be legal.

Yes, I accept the US Constitution, as ratified.

That's why the 1787 proposal to allow Federal suppression of secession was explicitly rejected by Madison during the Constitutional debates. That's why "perpetual union" was dropped from the final version of the Constitution. It was not supposed to be indissoluble.

Too, the Hartford Convention never seriously debated secession.

Interesting that you know that, considering no records were kept of the proceedings, owing to their arguably treasonous nature....or are you saying it wasn't treason?

If you read the declaration issued by the convention you would find that nowhere does it threaten secession.

Of course it doesn't, but that doesn't mean it wasn't discussed. In fact, were not representatives dispatched to Washington to negotiate such, in addition to the declaration/proposed amendments to the Constitution?

Heck, the Federalists were so out of the mainstream they didn't run a presidential candidate in 1820!

Besides, Aaron Burr was part of a secession attempt nearly a decade before Hartford, as a result of the Louisiana Purchase. It wasn't the South...it was New York and New England.

"It is safe to say that there was not a man in the country, from Washington and Hamilton to Clinton and Mason, who did not regard the new system as an experiment from which each and every State had a right to peaceably withdraw."

--Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

"The People of Virginia declare and make known that the 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 and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will." --Virginia's ratification conditions for the Constitution, 1788.