[WhiskeyPapa]

A perpetual union that the states were not chained to.

The Supreme Court said otherwise well before the war.

Even ol' Buck said so:

"In his final message to Congress, on December 3, 1860, James Buchanan surprised some of his southern allies with a firm denial of the right of secession. The Union was not "a mere voluntary association of states, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties," said Buchanan. "We the People" had adopted the Constitution to form "a more perfect Union" than the one existing under the Articles of Confederation, which had stated that "the Union shall be perpetual." The framers of the National Government "never intended to implant in its bosom the seeds of its own destruction, nor were they guilty of the absurdity of providing for its own dissolution."

State Sovereignty was NOT superior to national sovereignty, Buchanan insisted. The Constitution bestowed the highest attributes of sovereignty exclusively on the federal government: national defense; foreign policy; regulation of foreign and interstate commerece; coinage of money. "This Constitution," stated the document, and the laws of the United States...shall be the supreme law of the land...anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding."

-- Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson, p. 246

Walt

[4CJ]

The Supreme Court said otherwise well before the war.

Please, kind master, grace the uninformed among us where the Supreme Court ruled BEFORE the war that the states WERE chained to the union, that secession was unconstitutional.

[4CJ]

The Constitution bestowed the highest attributes of sovereignty exclusively on the federal government

Walt, anything DELEGATED cannot be more sovereign than those delegating it.

It is interesting that you cite Red McPherson's version of the Supremacy Clause, which CONVENIENTLY omits the phrase "which shall be made in Pursuance thereof".