Your argument is simple: it is also nonsensical. You insist that a State may not leave the union, simply because such action would interfere with federal powers that are applicable only within States that are within the union. If your irrational argument were true, then the very establishment of the United States Constitution was invalid, simply because such action interfered “with the United State's power to operate a postal service.” Or are you unfamiliar with the following clause from the Articles of Confederation?
“The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of ... establishing or regulating post offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States...”
Note the language: “all the United States.” How many States were there – 9 or 13? Establishing a new Constitution between only nine ratifying States would “interfere with the United State's power” to establish “post offices...throughout all [13 of] the United States,” would it not? Will you insist that the establishment of the Constitution in 1788 invalid? Or will you admit that States may ‘formally withdraw’ from a union of States (becoming ex-member States ;>), even if such withdrawal ‘interferes’ with the ability of the central government to exercise its delegated ‘powers’ within member States?
Thank you for the post, by the way – I enjoy highlighting the many contradictions inherent in the ‘secession-is-unconstitutional’ argument...
;>)
As regards your quote from Mr. Rawles (a U.S. Attorney in Pennsylvania) I am not surprised that someone in the 1820's should have such a view. As I mentioned in post 247, the seeds for this notion of a "disunion" or "scission" (later called "secession") were being sowed as early as the 1790's.
“Not surprised?” Let’s review your words:
“...(I)t was the desire to protect slavery that motivated the southern politicians to invent the ‘secession’ argument.”
Congratulations – you have proved you know how to ‘backpedal’...
In that regard, you might look into the Thomas Jefferson (then Vice-President) - John Taylor correspondence in the summer and fall of 1798 regarding what could be done about the excesses of the Federalists then controlling Congress. And look into Jefferson's then secret role in the preparation of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions.
I quote Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Taylor repeatedly, and at length. Their statements do not appear to support your position.
;>)
But the long and the short of it is that none of these writings or conversations serve as a substitute for the terms of the Constitution itself. My understanding is that there were also numerous Northern newspaper editors who found no constitutional problem with secession. And if you're just looking for people who will say that the constitution does not forbid a state from unilaterally seceding from the Union, you don't have to look any further than some of the posts on this thread. The problem is that none of this is a substitution for the Constitution itself.
Actually, I would suggest that your fallacious arguments are no “substitution for the Constitution itself” – which, despite your pleadings, nowhere prohibits secession.
And I say that neither slavery nor "secession" has any current following in this country is because it just doesn't. Not in the north, not in the south, not in the east and not in the west.
I have addressed these points previously, in Post #278. Allow me to refresh your memory:
Those who find themselves unable to prove secession unconstitutional inevitably play the ‘slavery card.’
And:
Are you suggesting that the meaning of the Constitution is determined by popular opinion? Hmm?
;>)
It's really too bad that the southern politicians didn't submit their "secession" theory for consideration to the Congress (like the Consitutional Convention did) or to the Supreme Court. Hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved.
But the southern politicians were desperate. They thought that the institution of slavery was in jeopardy and they erroneously thought that slavery was a vital part of southern culture. (They even had some wonderful "theories" to demonstrate the value of slavery.) So rather than submitting their "secession" theory to any of the other interested parties (the people of the United States, the government of the United States, the other states), the southern politicians decided to gamble all and just issue unilateral declarations of "secession." Slavery was so manifestly vital that these political stewards gambled with (to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence) their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor. And they crapped out. And they even lost the institution of slavery.
And 140 years later, we still have a few among us who insist that these southern politicians were nothing less than unrecognized geniuses, statesmen of the first order, that their magnificent theories were free of any and all doubts, and that it is all because of one evil man (Abraham Lincoln) that we are now forced to live lives of perpetual servitude and misery. It's just downright pitiful, it is.
Well, in view of that fine performance by the southern politicians, I think we can be pretty sure of one thing. If there ever is a next time that any state or community wishes to unilaterally withdraw from the United States, the proponents will find another name for their theory. Any goodwill that ever existed for "secession" has been pretty much all used up.