[Ditto]

"...but you can't point to anything specific that takes away a state's right to withdraw when union no longer suited it."

And you can't point to anything from the constitutional convention or the debates of ratification that any of the authors or any of the opponents of the constitution say what was intended was anything other than a perpetual union. The Articles of Confederation were specifically intended and described in that document to be a perpetual union of states, and the Constitution was specifically noted in the preamble to be for the intention of forming a "more perfect union" that was possible under the Articles of Confederation. You would have us believe that while both the Federalists and the anti-Federalists were remarkable in their insights and anticipation of future legal conflicts involving constitutional law, but somehow the idea of secession seemed to escape all of their attention? Not a word of a right to secession was mentioned in any of those debates. That is because they all knew and understood perfectly that it was a perpetual contract. The only conceivable way out was through amendment or a new convention, which the south never even attempted.

[Leesylvanian]

Didn't you read any of the 300+ replies in Friday's "Lincoln was not elected" thread of which you were a part? It was accepted by both sides that Virginia, New York, and possibly Rhode Island all had secession clauses in their ratification documents that were never denied by Congress; and, the first serious discussions of secession happened in the northern states.

[dixiepatriot]

Ditto said: "And you can't point to anything from the constitutional convention or the debates of ratification that any of the authors or any of the opponents of the constitution say what was intended was anything other than a perpetual union. The Articles of Confederation were specifically intended and described in that document to be a perpetual union of states, and the Constitution was specifically noted in the preamble to be for the intention of forming a "more perfect union" that was possible under the Articles of Confederation. You would have us believe that while both the Federalists and the anti-Federalists were remarkable in their insights and anticipation of future legal conflicts involving constitutional law, but somehow the idea of secession seemed to escape all of their attention? Not a word of a right to secession was mentioned in any of those debates. That is because they all knew and understood perfectly that it was a perpetual contract. The only conceivable way out was through amendment or a new convention, which the south never even attempted." Complete nonsense. The Declaration of Independence is nothing less than a secessionist document. Furthermore, three states (Rhode Island, New York, and Virginia retained the right of secession in their act approving the Constitution. Our ultimate defense against the federal government is the right of secession. Among the Founding Fathers there was no doubt. The United States had just seceded from the British Empire, exercising the right of the people to "alter or abolish" – by force, if necessary – a despotic government. The Declaration of Independence is the most famous act of secession in our history, though modern rhetoric makes "secession" sound somehow different from, and more sinister than, claiming "independence". The original 13 states formed a "Confederation," under which each state retained its "sovereignty, freedom, and independence." The Constitution didn 't change this; each sovereign state was free to reject the Constitution. The new powers of the federal government were "granted" and "delegated" by the states, which implies that the states were prior and superior to the federal government. Far from being a new-fangled idea in 1861, the right of secession was implicit in the very language of American politics – in the words "state," "sovereign," and "federal" – from the beginning. It was also positively asserted many times, even in the North, before 1861. As a matter of fact, the Hartford Convention in 1814, attended by delegates from Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and parts of Vermont and New Hampshire, opposed the War of 1812 as well as many of the policies of Thomas Jefferson and his successors. Guess what their solution was? That's right, secession. There were secessionist cries from some Northern states over the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, the Whiskey Tax, the War of 1812, the admission of Texas, and the Mexican War. But I doubt you'll read about any of this in the government-approved public school textbooks. It was not secession that was unconstitutional, but the suppression of secession. The North fought the War by allowing its chief executive to exercise dictatorial powers, raising armies and money and suspending civil liberties without consulting Congress, and even arresting the Maryland legislature and installing a puppet government. This was "government of the people, by the people, for the people"? What happened to "the consent of the governed"? Then again, the Northern enemies of secession weren’t always rigid in their principles: they did allow a pro-Union part of Virginia to secede from Virginia. That’s how the United States got West Virginia. Since Virginia never legally ceded that territory, as prescribed by the Constitution (Article 4 Section 3), that was the only real case of unconstitutional secession. To make matters worse, the North never admitted that Virginia had legally left the Union. How, then, could it be split without its legal consent? Of course, after the war, the North forced the seceding states to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment at bayonet point as a condition of re-admission to the Union it insisted they had never legally quit. Yet most of those states had already ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, so they were apparently back in the Union after all. The hypocrisy is dizzying. But wars aren’t necessarily won by the intellectually consistent. dixiepatriot Union by force....Confederate by CHOICE!!!