Madison did not say before or at any time publicly that a state’s ratification was something to be accepted period. He said a conditional ratification was no ratification at all.
Ah so if a conditional ratification was not ratification at all.....and 3 states expressly reserved the right to secede....and he did not claim that their ratifications were defective.....then it was entirely in keeping with the constitution for a state to have the power of unilateral secession.
Otherwise he would have objected and said their ratification was defective and conditional. Yet he did not do so. Ergo.....
The Northern Federalists’ Hartford Convention declared in 1814 that a state had the right to secede in cases of “absolute necessity” (Alan Brinkley, Richard Current, Frank Freidel, and T. Harry Williams, American History: A Survey, Eighth Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991, p. 230).
You were saying?
Try again. A conditional ratification is no ratification. Since the state's intent was to ratify and since they clearly state that they ratified the Constitution as passed and agreed to be bound by it, then their ratification was not conditional and their belief that they could walk out at a whim was in error. Regardless of what you or they may have thought.