You're in good company.
"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it."
Thomas Jefferson, 1st inaugural address, 1801.
Read the entire Declaration of Secession Independence, and Amendment 10 of our Constitution.
If that's not enough follow that by the ratification debates of the states (especially New York and Virginia). Add The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Which state(s) threatened secession repeatedly long before the South left the Union?
For bonus points, read the Texas v White decision, and the argument for indissolvable nation. Justice Chase based his decision against secession on the word "perpetual" in the Articles of Confederation, so for extra credit, in Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation, how many states had to agree to dissolve the union (hint: last line of first paragraph)? Compare that with Article VII of the Constitution (remember, there were 13 states at the time), "The ratification of the conventions of nine states, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the states so ratifying the same." Was nine more or less that the number agreed to in the AoC?
The D of I is not the law of the land; the Constitution is. And by any reading of the 10th amendment under which the states retain a right to secession, the people retain a right to maintain the Union in perpetuity.
If that's not enough follow that by the ratification debates of the states (especially New York and Virginia). Add The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Which state(s) threatened secession repeatedly long before the South left the Union?
That won't get you much.
In Dec., 1832, James Madison wrote to Nicholas P. Trist as follows;
"The essential difference between a free Government and Governments that are not free, is that the former is founded in compact, the parties to which are mutually and equally bound by it. Neither of them therefore can have a greater right to break off from the bargain, than the other or others have to hold them to it. And certainly there is nothing in the Virginia resolutions of 1898, adverse to this principle, which is that of common sense and common justice."
(James Madison, Writings; Rakove, Jack N., editor; The Library of America; 1999; p. 862)
For bonus points, read the Texas v White decision, and the argument for indissolvable nation. Justice Chase based his decision against secession on the word "perpetual" in the Articles of Confederation,
No, he bases it upon the idea that our Union is a a perpetual Union beind made -more- perfect by the Constitution.
so for extra credit, in Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation, how many states had to agree to dissolve the union (hint: last line of first paragraph)?
The Articles are expressly pledged to be perpetual, and the Preamble to the Constitution pledges that Union to be made more perfect.
The historical record does nt support a right to legal, unilateral state secession, and you can't make it do so.
Walt