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To: arrogantsob

Oddly, Neither Madison nor Hamilton ever claimed states did not have the right to unilaterally secede anywhere in the Federalist Papers. For that matter, neither objected when New York, Virginia and Rhode Island passed express provisos reserving their right to secede when they ratified the constitution - nor did either claim the ratifications of those states were thereby defective. Unilateral secession was entirely consistent with the Constitution. Both Madison and Hamilton went on at length to assure states that they were not surrendering their sovereignty to the newly created federal government and that it would not become some all powerful leviathan........which is what it has become today after usurping all sorts of powers the states never agreed to give it.

In fact, in the NY Ratification Convention, Hamilton expressly said that the federal government had no right to force states to remain in via the sword.

If you want to play the card that the elected political leaders in the South did not have the votes of all White voters (or of Blacks or of Women) OK.....but then by that logic nobody was truly democratically elected until well into the 20th century. They were democratically elected in 1860 just as surely as they were in 1790.

All states are equal under the Comity Principle. To claim a state does not have the right to secede because it was not one of the original 13 states is a nonstarter.


96 posted on 08/15/2018 12:05:01 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: FLT-bird

Hamilton never said any such thing. The idea was inconceivable. There was never any person more willing to protect the Union than Hamilton. He spent most of his adult life bringing it into being.

The discussion in the Federalist of the difference between a Confederation and a federal Union shows that it was extra-legal and to be avoided. Washington explicitly warned of the danger of secession in his Farewell Address eight years after Ratification.


124 posted on 08/15/2018 12:39:27 PM PDT by arrogantsob (See "Chaos and Mayhem" at Amazon.com)
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