I was limiting my responses to comments and published responses before ratification of the BoR. What Madison, Hamilton et al said BEFORE ratification is different in many cases.
Hamilton in Federalist 84 wrote about the lack of need for BoR and the federal government is described as one of limited, ENUMERATED powers. He argued that speech could not be infringed upon because the federal government had never been DELEGATED the power to restrict it.
So to look for an explicit use of the word "secession" or anything similar will not be found in all likelyhood. The Constitution defined the powers the federal government possesed - not what the states retained.
But why enumerate the natural right of revolution? The states could always do that - so the 10th is not a legalization of revolution - its legalization of the right to resume the powers of self government.
FReegards,
4CJ
Under both the 9th and 10th amendment the people also reserve the right to maintain the government.
That is what they have done.
Walt
I don't seek for the words "legal right of secession" or their equivalent in the Constitution, but I do ask for such in public discourse, The Federalist Papers or elsewhere, and I don't think that unreasonable. First because Williams claims to know that it was generally accepted, and second, because we Americans, in 1787-9 argued everything to death, including the benefit of the Union itself, and most certainly whether there was a "Consolidated government" under the new Constitution. It would be nearly incredible that no one, in all that argument, brought up the question of legal secession, unless, as I think, they almost all agreed on revolutionary rights, and were all equally agreed that the notion of legal secession was a political oxymoron.
One very natural way for Hamilton and Madison to have used it, had they believed in it, would have been to defend the somewhat irregular ratification process, discussed in Federalist 43. Nine states enough? Simple, they had all sceeded, and are now forming a new Union! The argument only gets thorny if you think the Union was meant to be perpetual, and the Union of the Articles was, in the main, supportive of the Convention, the draft Constituion, and the ratification. And that thorny path is just the one Publius took in # 43.
Cheers,
Richard F.