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To: Non-Sequitur
States did not have the right to unilaterally join the Union, how could the retain a right to unilaterally leave?

That's not exactly true...each state decided for itself whether to join the Union...Article VII of the Constitution provided that once a sufficient number of states ratified...the government was formed under Constitution with respect to those states that ratified it

No state was forced to join the Union without its express consent

Moreover, it was a basic Lockean concept of politics that any power granted by a sovereign can be reclaimed...those in the state legislatures that ratified the Constitution would certainly have perceived that they were representatives of a sovereign and were voluntarily delegating some of the state's sovereign powers to a new federal government...had any of teh Federalists come out and declared during the ratification process that ratification would forever bind the states to the Union until such time as the other states permitted it to leave...there is not a chance the Constitution would have been ratified

Even an ardent Federalist like Hamilton saw the irony of a Constitutional Republic existing only through the threat of force against unwilling member states...in discussing why the federal government needed a direct power of taxation during the ratification debate in NY, Hamilton mentioned the "aburdity" of a civil war against recalcitrant states

It has been observed, to coerce the states is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to a single state. This being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war?

Suppose Massachusetts, or any large state, should refuse, and Congress should attempt to compel them, would they not have influence to procure assistance, especially from those states which are in the same situation as themselves? What picture does this idea present to our view? A complying state at war with a non-complying state; Congress marching the troops of one state into the bosom of another; this state collecting auxiliaries, and forming, perhaps, a majority against the federal head.

Here is a nation at war with itself. Can any reasonable man be well disposed towards a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself -- a government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. This single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against such a government. But can we believe that one state will ever suffer itself to be used as an instrument of coercion? The thing is a dream; it is impossible.

42 posted on 08/27/2007 2:30:23 PM PDT by uxbridge
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To: uxbridge
That's not exactly true...each state decided for itself whether to join the Union...Article VII of the Constitution provided that once a sufficient number of states ratified...the government was formed under Constitution with respect to those states that ratified it

Article IV says that new states may be admitted only by Congress. It doesn't say that a state may join the Union merely by ratifying the Constitution.

No state was forced to join the Union without its express consent

Constitutionally such a condition could occur, though Congress would be foolish to do so. But I will point out that no state was admitted merely because it asked to be, either. Look at Colorado or Kansas, it took a number of years between the time the territory asked to be admitted and the time Congress admitted it.

Moreover, it was a basic Lockean concept of politics that any power granted by a sovereign can be reclaimed...those in the state legislatures that ratified the Constitution would certainly have perceived that they were representatives of a sovereign and were voluntarily delegating some of the state's sovereign powers to a new federal government...had any of teh Federalists come out and declared during the ratification process that ratification would forever bind the states to the Union until such time as the other states permitted it to leave...there is not a chance the Constitution would have been ratified.

That would depend on one's view of exactly how sovereign the states were in relation to the central government.

53 posted on 08/27/2007 2:53:23 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur (Save Fredericks-burg. Support CVBT.)
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To: uxbridge
No state was forced to join the Union without its express consent

Except for the ex-Confederate states after 1865 anyway, right? It was a "voluntary request" to rejoin only after the Union Army was unleashed on them and allowed to wreak havoc for four years. No coercion at all there. Nope, none.

75 posted on 08/27/2007 4:58:42 PM PDT by FreedomCalls (It's the "Statue of Liberty," not the "Statue of Security.")
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To: uxbridge

And what did Hamilton say during the Shays and Whiskey Rebellions?


100 posted on 08/27/2007 7:15:14 PM PDT by rmlew (Build a wall, attrit the illegals, end the anchor babies, Americanize Immigrants)
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To: uxbridge; Non-Sequitur
the government was formed under Constitution with respect to those states that ratified it

Very true, it only took nine states to form a union of states under the Constitution with or without the other four states. And those states would have come out of the union under the "Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union". Now how perpetual was that; I dare say no more perpetual than the Constitution, for as each state, by vote of it's citizens came in so by the same it could go out. A country as ours was conceived, under the right to self government, to have forbid a state in the Constitution from that same right would have never saw a single state let alone nine confirm it.
119 posted on 08/27/2007 9:33:05 PM PDT by smug (Free Ramos and Compean:)
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