“For example, the Virginia Ratification Statement says:
“...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...”” - BJ
So is it your position that under *some* circumstances Virginia has the right to unilaterally secede?
What about the claim that West Virginia is not a legitimate state, if Virginia was part of the USA when it was created?
The Constitution specifically allows for the division of a state, if the state and Congress agree. Doesn't even require a super-majority, or, I believe, the President's signature.
In the case of WV, a "state government" of VA was set up in the small section of VA the Union controlled and it agreed to WV splitting off.
It was pretty much a legal fiction, and recognized as such at the time, but I believe the Supremes decided it was legal.
My mentor on this subject is James Madison, whose words I quoted immediately after the Virginia ratification.
In Madison's formulation, "mutual consent" to disunion is the moral equivalent of "oppression" or "usurpations" which are a "violation of the compact as absolves them from its obligations."
But there were no -- zero, zip, nada, none -- "usurpations" "oppression" or "injuries" in November 1860, just days after Lincoln's election and four months before his inauguration, when South Carolina slave-holders first began organizing to declare their secession.
That made their declarations neither "mutual consent" nor from "violations of the compact" of which Madison approved, but rather disunion "at pleasure" of which he did not.