I will reply to this post of yours in several individual posts, but thereafter, I may probably just ignore you. It makes no sense to keep answering the same basic assertions over and over. It's a waste of time. I won't convince you, and you won't convince me. Let's just make an honorable truce.
Here is my first reply to part of your post.
4.Further, by implication, states could "withdraw" from Union the same way they entered it: by application to, and approval of, Congress.
I wonder about your thinking processes. Sorry, BJK, I don't buy the "by implication" in your sentence above. You are basically making things up that are not in the Constitution. Hey, you would make a good liberal Justice on today's Supreme Court.
What your "by implication" would do is make a state that wanted to secede a captive of the vote of states (through their representatives and senators) that might be taking advantage of the seceding state or continually violating the Constitution themselves to the detriment of the seceding state.
If your "by implication" interpretation is correct, why did some Republicans in 1860 and 1861 propose amendments to the Constitution that would require something like what you propose? One of those proposed amendments was voted down after most of the Southern senators whose states had already seceded had withdrawn from the Senate.
As I have said before, the Constitution wasn't ratified by NY and VA until those reassume or resume the posers of governance statements were put in their ratification documents. During Virginia's ratification convention, Patrick Henry warned that there were more Northern states than Southern ones and worried what that might portend in the future. From the Richmond Dispatch of March 25, 1861 [Source; my paragraph breaks and my emphasis below]:
Tradition says of the men she elected to the Convention called to pass upon it, a majority were pledged to vote against its adoption. It is certain that a majority of the body did vote against the ratification at one time; and that not until a clause was inserted in the ordinance of ratification, protesting that Virginia would resume the powers granted when they should be perverted to her injury and oppression, was the small vote obtained in its favor, of 89 to 79.
Some of the most illustrious names in Virginia history are recorded in the negative: such as Patrick Henry, George Mason, Monroe, Tyler, and others — men who, with all their desire for the Union, distrusted the instrument which was to form its organic law.
No sooner was the Government organized, than the struggle at once began between the Virginians, under the lead of Jefferson, contending for a strict construction of the instrument, and the Massachusetts and New York politicians, under the lead of Adams and Hamilton, who endeavored to derive from it unlimited powers, or else to ignore it altogether.
For a time, the battle seemed to go against the Virginians; and when the elder Adams was elected to the Presidency, he at once began to exercise, with the aid of Congress, the most alarming powers. It was then that Virginia came forward, not merely through her brilliant statesmen, but in her sovereign person, to protest against the stretches of Executive power which were threatening the liberties of the people [rustbucket: such as the Sedition Act which was used to jail their political opponents and newspaper editors, tec.], and to announce in her celebrated Resolutions and Report of 1798 and '99, her fixed and unalterable views of the powers granted in the Constitution. Then, and since, she has always been able to cause these views to be at least respected by the North, rallying as she did, with few and occasional exceptions, the combined South on her side. But she has never been able to command for them any considerable and permanent support from the opposing section; which, as a section, has ever sternly repudiated her just and salutary doctrines.
Virginia has now lost the aid of her most gallant and efficient allies of the South in this constitutional battle. These have separated from the inflexible North, and have erected a government of their own upon a constitution precisely and minutely fashioned according to the political philosophy taught by Virginia.-- The North, on the other hand, have obtained unlimited control of the old Government, and is free to carry out its own principles of government. It has made haste to signalize its victory, and to give instance of its intentions, by enacting a tariff law odiously protective, odiously in conflict with the political teachings and principles of Virginia, odiously unconstitutional in every aspect in which Virginia has been wont to view the instrument of Federal compact. That section has grown so great in population, and so hostile in purpose, as to have elected a President by its own exclusive vote, pledged to doctrines opposed to those which have ever been cherished by Virginia as the apple of her eye; and that President comes to his capital, proclaiming on his way, as if in derision of Virginia and exultation over her political discomfiture, that a sovereign State of this Confederacy is but as a county in a Commonwealth.
Sorry my excerpt was so long, but hopefully it helps you understand what Virginians were thinking in 1861.
The key point for you to grasp here is that I follow Madison on this subject, and that no other Founder ever seriously contradicted him, qualifying Madison's words as "Founders Original Intent".
So, FRiend, once you've grasped that you are not arguing with BroJoeK, you are arguing with Madison, then we can make some progress, even at this late stage in life... ;-)
What Madison said was there were only two acceptable conditions for disunion and the first of those is "mutual consent".
I merely listed methods by which "mutual consent" can be expressed, including a Constitutional Convention of the states, or simply an act of Congress, similar to an act admitting a new state.
Logically, since Congress authorizes a new state to come in, it should also authorize states to secede.
rustbucket: "If your "by implication" interpretation is correct, why did some Republicans in 1860 and 1861 propose amendments to the Constitution that would require something like what you propose?"
Some of those last minute amendments & bills offered in 1861, in last ditch efforts to reach "compromise" with secessionists, got a little crazy.
I can't justify them as anything else.
But the idea that Congress might approve a state's secession seems entirely reasonable to me, and according to Madison's idea of "mutual consent".
The second valid reason for secession Madison took from our own Declaration of Independence, necessity caused by a material breach of compact, rendering its mutually binding obligations null & void.
Madison's examples were "usurpations" and "abuses of power", just as colonists had experienced under King George.
These are not my new ideas, they are his, and I prefer to be on Madison's side in any such debate.
rustbucket: "...the Constitution wasn't ratified by NY and VA until those reassume or resume the posers of governance statements were put in their ratification documents."
Sure, but even if you assume such statements are legally valid (I don't), then read them carefully.
None of them refer to secession "at pleasure", but only of of necessity, just as the Declaration of Independence does.
Virginia's even spells out the necessity from powers: "perverted to their injury or oppression."
These are not, in the Declaration's words, "light and transient causes", not in Madison's words, "at pleasure" but rather only for the most serious of material breaches of compact.
rustbucket: "During Virginia's ratification convention, Patrick Henry warned that there were more Northern states than Southern ones and worried what that might portend in the future."
Patrick Henry was an anti-Federalist who voted against ratification of the Constitution.
His views were duly considered by the majority and rejected.
So they are not part of Founders' Original Intent.
rustbucket: "Sorry my excerpt was so long, but hopefully it helps you understand what Virginians were thinking in 1861."
But only some Virginians, far from all, and not even a majority before Fort Sumter.
But it absolutely explains why Virginians felt they needed a major excuse to declare secession, something far beyond "at pleasure" or "light and transient causes".
Rather, they needed a major "usurpation" and "abuse of power" to justify secession, and that is what the Confederate military assault on Fort Sumter gave them, the constitutional excuse.
Of course, the original seven Deep South secession states had no such excuse, they did secede "at pleasure" for "light and transient causes", but once Virginia joined them in their declared war against the United States, then all such constitutional niceties became mute & null.
A declared war can be a law unto itself, regardless of other laws.