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.
At least you are honest enough to admit that it happened. Contrary to the requirement for unanimous consent. It underscores the belief of the founders to control their own destiny. I cannot imagine the men that had fought a revolution for the right of self-government would deprive themselves of that right a decade later. Nor can I comprehend that the same men that abandoned the "perpetual" Articles considered the Constitution to be permanent. In Federalist No. 14 Madison opined, "[b]ut why is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected merely because it may comprise what is new?"
Again in Federalist No. 39 he writes, "[i]t is evident that no other form would be reconcilable with the genius of the people of America; with the fundamental principles of the Revolution; or with that honorable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self-government."
Or consider the comments of Hamilton in Federalist No. 85:
I answer in the next place, that I should esteem it the extreme of imprudence to prolong the precarious state of our national affairs, and to expose the Union to the jeopardy of successive experiments, in the chimerical pursuit of a perfect plan. I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect man. The result of the deliberations of all collective bodies must necessarily be a compound, as well of the errors and prejudices, as of the good sense and wisdom, of the individuals of whom they are composed. The compacts which are to embrace thirteen distinct States in a common bond of amity and union, must as necessarily be a compromise of as many dissimilar interests and inclinations. How can perfection spring from such materials?In fact, the word "experiment" is used in 34 of the 85 Federalist Papers, describing ancient governments, state governments, the Articles, and the proposed new government.