...and that is where Madison comes in. Madison, the "father of the constitution," provided Jefferson's voice at the convention as he related many of Jefferson's positions in his own. In addition, constitutional delegates Clymer, Franklin, Gerry, Robert Morris, Read, Sherman, Wilson, and Wythe had all signed the Declaration of Independence.
...and that is where Madison comes in. Madison, the "father of the constitution," provided Jefferson's voice at the convention as he related many of Jefferson's positions in his own. In addition, constitutional delegates Clymer, Franklin, Gerry, Robert Morris, Read, Sherman, Wilson, and Wythe had all signed the Declaration of Independence.
That is the -lamest- crap I ever heard in my life. Jefferson was a utpoian, a dreamer, and not one given to seeing things the way they are. Madison, on the other hand, was very pragmatic.
Well, maybe this is the voice of Jefferson:
"The [constitutional] convention was slow to tackle the problem of an army, defense, and internal police. The Virginia Plan said nothing about a standing army, but it did say that the national government could 'call forth the force of the union against any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof.' The delegates had expected to discuss something like this clause, for one of the great problems had been the inability of the old Congress to enforce its laws. Surely it should be able to march troops into states when necessary to get state governments to obey.
But in the days before the convention opened Madison had been thinking it over, and he had concluded that the idea was a mistake. You might well march your troops into Georgia or Connecticut, but then what? Could you really force a legislature to disgorge money at bayonet point? 'The use of force against a state,' Madison said, as the debate started on May 31, 'would be more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.' Although he did not say so at the moment, he had another way of enforcing national law, which not only would be more effective, but also philosophically sounder. As the government was to derive its power from the people, it ought to act on the people directly. Instead of trying to punish a state, which was, after all, an abstraction, for failure to obey the law, the U.S. government could punish individuals directly. Some person -- a governor, a tax collector, a state treasurer -- would be held responsible for failure to deliver the taxes. Similarly, the national government would not punish a state government for allowing say, illegal deals with Indians over western lands, but would directly punish the people making the deals. All of this seemed eminently sensible to the convention and early in the debate on the Virginia Plan the power of the national government to 'call forth the power of the Union' was dropped. And so was the idea that the government should be able to compell the states disappeared from the convention. It is rather surprising, in view of the fact that the convention had been called mainly to curb the independence of the states, that the concept went out so easily. The explanation is, in part, that the states' righters were glad to see it go; and in part that Madison's logic was persuasive: it is hard to arrest an abstraction."
"Decision in Philadelphia" by Collier annd Collier
There is no right to unilateral state secession in the record. It is drawn from whole cloth--a fabric of lies.
Walt