[Non-Sequitur]

The Constitution is a compact entered into freely and voluntarily by the States...

For the most part the states didn't enter anything freely or voluntarily. They asked to be admitted. They gained statehood only with the approval of the majority of the other states. In fact, the Constitution does not require any input from a territory at all for Congress to make a state out of it. Since they owed their admission in the first place to the approval of the other states then why shouldn't that permission also be necessary to walk away from the agreement?

[4CJ]

For the most part the states didn't enter anything freely or voluntarily.

VOLUNTARY. Willingly; done with one's consent. FREE. Not bound to servitude; at liberty to act as one pleases. Bouvier's Law Dictionary, Rev. 6th ed. (1856). Which ones were brought in at gunpoint? Which states were forced to join the union? Before 1861 that is.

[archy]

The Constitution is a compact entered into freely and voluntarily by the States...

For the most part the states didn't enter anything freely or voluntarily. They asked to be admitted. They gained statehood only with the approval of the majority of the other states.

Not Texas, which petitioned for admission but which action was never acted upon by the US congress. Then, with the creation of the Confederacy, and against the best counsel of some of the Texian founders and statesmen, Texas instead *jined up* with the Confederacy, and was thereafter occupied by Unionist forces as conquered enemy territory.

Texas was afterward *readmitted* to the Union, though in fact had never previously been admitted as constitutionally prescribed. So if I'm to keep the pledge I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, Texas isn't really a state.

-archy-/-

[Maelstrom]

"Since they owed their admission in the first place to the approval of the other states then why shouldn't that permission also be necessary to walk away from the agreement?"


Welcome to the Hotel California.

The answer of course is simple: When a government becomes destructive to the means for which it was established, they refuse to allow you to walk away. Thus there are no enumerated powers to the government concerning secession AND several of the Founding Fathers often demonstrated this understanding by using the threat of secession as a means of pressuring the government.

[PhilipFreneau]

>> For the most part the states didn't enter anything freely or voluntarily. They asked to be admitted. They gained statehood only with the approval of the majority of the other states. In fact, the Constitution does not require any input from a territory at all for Congress to make a state out of it. Since they owed their admission in the first place to the approval of the other states then why shouldn't that permission also be necessary to walk away from the agreement?

That makes no sense, plus it is loaded with inaccuracies.