RE: In other words, Virginia agreed to abide by the Constitution, and if that document did not allow certain actions on the part of the states then those actions were illegal. And the Supreme Court ruled that secession without the consent of the states, as practiced by the Southern states in 1860-61, was not allowed under the Constitution.
Your appeal to the decision of the Supreme Court fails to impress. Supreme Courts can be wrong and their decisions can be overturned.
Let us remember that the Surpeme Court also gave us the Dredd Scott decision. Chief Justice Taney gave us such unconsistutional gems as blacks were “so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”
Taney concluded that blacks could never be citizens of the United States, even if they were born in the country and considered to be citizens of the states in which they lived. This also meant that Dred Scott had no right to sue for his freedom in a federal court.
In fact, Taney’s goal was to finally settle the status of slavery in the territories in favor of the South. Ignoring the plain language of the Constitution, Taney argued that Congress did not have power to pass laws to regulate anything, including slavery, in the territories.
So, to appeal to a Supreme Court decision, makes it legal AT THAT TIME, but it does NOTHING to tell us whether the Surpeme Court was RIGHT in its decision.
I would rather appeal to the ORIGINAL statements made by the framers.
Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address said,
“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.”
Fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in the union .... I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.’”
At Virginia’s ratification convention, the delegates said, “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.”
In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what “the people” meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, “not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong.”
In a word, states were sovereign; the federal government was a creation, an agent, a servant of the states.
Perhaps. But until the decision is overturned, unilateral secession as practiced by the Southern states was and is illegal.
A decision that was later negated by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
So, to appeal to a Supreme Court decision, makes it legal AT THAT TIME, but it does NOTHING to tell us whether the Surpeme Court was RIGHT in its decision.
But they are not wrong merely because you say they are wrong.
“If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it.”
And where in that did Jefferson outline the means to go about seceding?
Fifteen years later, after the New England Federalists attempted to secede, Jefferson said, “If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation ... to a continuance in the union .... I have no hesitation in saying, ‘Let us separate.’”
A complete misquote, but even in that Jefferson is clearly stating that separation is a mutual decision. No one state has the power to merely walk out at a whim.
In Federalist Paper 39, James Madison, the father of the Constitution, cleared up what “the people” meant, saying the proposed Constitution would be subject to ratification by the people, “not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong.”
Madison also said, "...I do not consider the proceedings of Virginia in ’98-’99 as countenancing the doctrine that a state may at will secede from its Constitutional compact with the other States. A rightful secession requires the consent of the others, or an abuse of the compact, absolving the seceding party from the obligations imposed by it."
In a word, states were sovereign; the federal government was a creation, an agent, a servant of the states.
States are also equal. No state can unilateally take any action that impacts the interests and well-beling of another state. Even seceding.
And what was Madison’s view on secession?