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To: rustbucket; x
There was nothing in the Constitution prohibiting states from seceding...

And nothing in it implying that they could secede unilaterally.

The rules of Great Britain no longer apply to us -- we seceded from them.

We rebelled from them. We fought for 8 years before we could say we were free from the rules of Great Britain. Our actions in 1775 were no more legal than the Southern actions in 1861.

Mexican rules no longer apply to Texas (yet)

I'd keep checking on that if I were you, gringo.

Texas seceded, and the US accepted that secession.

Again, Texas rebelled and fought a war and achieved its independence only when they won their rebellion and Santa Ana acknowledged it.

1,416 posted on 06/02/2007 11:50:41 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericksburg. Support CVBT.)
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To: Non-Sequitur
And nothing in it implying that they could secede unilaterally.

As Jefferson Davis said on the Senate Floor, January 10, 1861:

...the tenth amendment of the Constitution declared that all which had not been delegated was reserved to the States or to the people. Now, I ask where among the delegated grants to the Federal Government do you find any power to coerce a state; where among the provisions of the Constitution do you find any prohibition on the part of a State to withdraw; and if you find neither one nor the other, must not this power be in that great depository, the reserved rights of the States? How was it ever taken out of that source of all power to the Federal Government? It was not delegated to the Federal Government; it was not prohibited to the States; it necessarily remains, then, among the reserved powers of the States.

1,417 posted on 06/02/2007 1:02:56 PM PDT by rustbucket (Defeat Hillary -- for the common good.)
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To: Non-Sequitur
And nothing in it implying that they could secede unilaterally.

In this article provision was deliberately made for the secession (if necessary) of a part of the States from a union(Articles of Confederation), which, when formed, had been declared "perpetual," and its terms and articles to be "inviolably observed by every State." Opposition was made to the provision on this very ground—that it was virtually a dissolution of the Union,(Articles of Confederation) and that it would furnish a precedent for future secessions. Mr. Gerry, a distinguished member from Massachusetts—afterward Vice-President of the United States—said, "If nine out of thirteen (States) can dissolve the compact,(Articles of Confederation) six out of nine will be just as able to dissolve the future one (The Constitution) hereafter." Mr. Madison, who was one of the leading members of the Convention, advocating afterward, in the "Federalist," the adoption of the new Constitution, asks the question, "On what principle the Confederation, which stands in the solemn form of a compact among the States, can be superseded without the unanimous consent of the parties to it?

" He answers this question "by recurring to the absolute necessity of the case; to the great principle of self-preservation; to the transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed." He proceeds, however, to give other grounds of justification: "It is an established doctrine on the subject of treaties, that all the articles are mutually conditions of each other; that a breach of any one article is a breach of the whole treaty; and that a breach committed by either of the parties absolves the others, and authorizes them, if they please, to pronounce the compact violated and void. .... with a recognition of the right of the recusant minority to withdraw, secede, or stand aloof.The idea of compelling any State or States to enter into or to continue in union with the others by coercion, is as absolutely excluded under the one supposition as under the other—with reference to one State or a minority of States, as well as with regard to a majority. The article declares that "the ratification of the Conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution"—not between all, but—"between the States so ratifying the same."

I think Madison implies it pretty well here.
1,418 posted on 06/02/2007 1:22:12 PM PDT by smug (Free Ramos and Compean:)
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