So Obama is using Constitutional means? So we should revolt?
Rather than support the Constitution if he is NOT? Which is it?
You will note that Madison references “the powers...being derived from ...the People of the United States...” NOT the people of Virginia or Connecticut.
By 1861 the leadership of Virginia no longer understood what it was quoting. The political leadership of the South by then was pitiful.
The quote trying to justify the Treason of 1861 is wrong. The constitution was ratified by the People of the United States gathered in conventions within the states as Congress ordered. It was NOT allowed to be ratified by state legislatures, the highest state authority. The reason the legislatures were not allowed to ratify was PRECISELY because Congress was not going to allow a legislative act which could be rescinded by a subsequent legislature. Secession would indeed have been legal had that been allowed wrt ratification.
The NY ratification was accepted by Congress not the other states and it was NOT conditional.
The people of Virginia followed what the 1788 Virginia ratification said, although they might have instead gone by the New York ratification and seceded because it was necessary for their happiness. Here's what Virginia said when they seceded. I'll include the entire Virginia Ordinance of Secession (emphasis mine):
AN ORDINANCE
To Repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said Constitution:
The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention, on the 25th day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eight-eight, having declared that the powers granted them under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States.
Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain that the Ordinance adopted by the people of this State in Convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong to a free and independent State. And they do further declare that the said Constitution of the United State of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.
This Ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day when ratified by a majority of the votes of the people of this State, cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.
Done in Convention, in the city of Richmond, on the seventeenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the eighty-fifth year of the Commonwealth of Virginia
JNO. L. EUBANK,
Sec'y of Convention.
Virginia and some other Southern states did not make such ordinances and secession official until secession itself had been directly approved by the voters of the state.
There is no provision under the Constitution for the people of the United States en masse to have a role in government. The lumpen people of the United States acting as one unit did not create the Constitution and have no powers under the Constitution. Here are some comments from Supreme Court cases (emphasis mine; originally posted by 4CJ):
They acted upon it in the only manner in which they can act safely, effectively and wisely, on such a subject — by assembling in convention. It is true, they assembled in their several States — and where else should they have assembled? No political dreamer was ever wild enough to think of breaking down the lines which separate the States, and of compounding the American people into one common mass. Of consequence, when they act, they act in their States. But the measures they adopt do not, on that account, cease to be the measures of the people themselves, or become the measures of the State governments.
[Chief Justice John Marshall, McCullough v Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, (1819)]
When the American people created a national legislature, with certain enumerated powers, it was neither necessary nor proper to define the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, not from the people of America, but from the people of the several States; and remain, after the adoption of the constitution, what they were before, except so far as they may be abridged by that instrument.
[Chief Justice John Marshall, Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122 (1819)]
The ultimate source of the Constitution's authority is the consent of the people of each individual State, not the consent of the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole. The ratification procedure erected by Article VII makes this point clear. The Constitution took effect once it had been ratified by the people gathered in convention in nine different States. But the Constitution went into effect only "between the States so ratifying the same," Art. VII; it did not bind the people of North Carolina until they had accepted it.
[Justice Clarence Thomas, US Term Limits v Thornton, 514 US 779, (1995)]
In addition, it would make no sense to speak of powers as being reserved to the undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole, because the Constitution does not contemplate that those people will either exercise power or delegate it. The Constitution simply does not recognize any mechanism for action by the undifferentiated people of the Nation.
[Justice Clarence Thomas, US Term Limits v Thornton, 514 US 779, (1995)]
Bledsoe made some more very effective arguments (paragraph breaks mine for readability; emphasis mine):
… the evil intended to be remedied shows the true meaning of the words in question. The Virginia people did not fear, that the people of the United States might pervert the powers of the Federal Government for their own oppression. Their fears were for the weak, not for the strong; not for the people of the United States in the aggregate, but for the Southern States in the minority; and especially the State of Virginia.
They feared, as the burning eloquence of Henry, and Mason, and Monroe, and Grayson evinced, that the new Government would "operate as a faction of seven States to oppress six;" that the Northern majority would "operate as a faction of seven States to oppress six;" that the Northern majority would, sooner or later, trample on the Southern minority.
They feared in the language of Grayson, that the new Union would be made "to exchange the poverty of the North for the riches of the South." In the words of Henry, "This Government subjects everything to the Northern majority. Is there not, then, a settled purpose to check the Southern interest? We thus put unbounded power over our property in hands not having a common interest with us. How can the Southern members, prevent the adoption of the most oppressive mode of taxation in the Southern States, as there is a majority in favor of the Northern States? Sir, this is a picture so horrid, so wretched, so dreadful, that I need no longer dwell upon it."*
* Elliot's Debates, Vol. iii, p. 312.
Did the Convention of Virginia, then, seek to quiet these dreadful apprehensions, by declaring, that the people of the United States "as one great society," might resume the powers of the Federal Government whensoever they should be perverted to their oppression? By declaring, that this one great society, or rather the majority of this society, might resume the powers of the Federal Government whensoever they should be pleased to use them for the oppression of the minority? Could any possible interpretation render any legislation more absolutely ridiculous? It puts the remedy in the hands of those from whom the evil is expected to proceed! It gives the shield of defence to the very power which holds the terrible sword of destruction!
The Convention of Virginia spoke "in behalf of the people of Virginia;" and not in behalf of the overbearing majority, by whom it was feared these people might be crushed. They sought to protect, not the people of America, who needed no protection, but the people of Virginia. Hence, as the people of Virginia had delegated powers to the Federal Government, they reserved "in behalf of the people of Virginia," the right to resume those powers whensoever they should be perverted to their injury or oppression.
Now this reservation enures to the benefit of all the parties to the Constitutional compact; for as all such compacts are mutual, so no one party can be under any greater obligation than another. Hence, a condition in favor of one is a condition in favor of all. This well-known principle was asserted by Mr. Calhoun in the great debate of 1833, with the remark that he presumed it would not be denied by Mr. Webster; and it was not denied by him. Hence any State, as well as Virginia, had the express right to resume the powers delegated by her to the Federal Government, in case they should be perverted to her injury or oppression.
But, it may be asked, were the powers of the Federal Government perverted to the injury or oppression of any Southern State? It might be easily shown, that they were indeed perverted to the injury and oppression of more States than one; but this is unnecessary, since the parties to the compact, the sovereign States by whom it was ratified, are the judges of this question.*
* See Virginia Resolutions of *98; Kentucky Resolutions of '98 and ‘99; the Virginia Report of 1800, &c., &c.
It was NOT allowed to be ratified by state legislatures, the highest state authority.
Um, Madison would not agree with you about the state legislatures being the highest state authority. The people of their respective state are the highest sovereign authority of that state, not its legislature. In 1787-91, conventions elected by the people ratified the Constitution, not state legislatures. In 1860-61, the people of the seceding states elected representatives to their secession conventions, and/or voted directly on secession themselves.
Submitting the ratification of the 1787 Constitution directly to the voters of a state only happened in one instance (Rhode Island), and it was rejected by a ten to one margin if memory serves (a small Rhode Island convention later ratified the Constitution). So, the secession ordinances that were voted on and approved directly by the people of a seceding state are a clearer reading of the sovereign voice of the people of that state than a mere convention of elected delegates.
The NY ratification was accepted by Congress not the other states and it was NOT conditional.
You are correct that it was not conditional, nor were the Virginia and Rhode Island ratifications that also reserved the right to resume their governance. They simply stated what the Constitution that they were ratifying meant. Their statements are about as close to original intent as one can get.
NY ratification delegate Lansing had proposed to make NY's ratification conditional on the passage of amendments within a certain number of years. Madison wrote Hamilton that he thought ratifications could not be conditional. Obviously Madison did not think Virginia's ratification, which he had helped write and had already taken place, was conditional. Had those resume powers of governance statements in ratification documents been considered as merely conditional, the NY, VA, and RI ratifications would've been rejected in whole, but they were indeed ratified and accepted with their secession clauses intact.
After the receipt of Madison's letter, which was read on the convention floor by Hamilton, the NY ratification convention then dropped the words "on condition" and replaced them with "in confidence that the Amendments which shall have been proposed to the said Constitution will receive an early and mature Consideration." Following that statement, they listed some amendments, but none of them dealt with the right of resuming the powers of government, which was thought to be consistent with the Constitution as written.