"However strong a government may be, it cannot easily escape from the consequences of a principle which it has once admitted as the foundation of its constitution. The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the states; and these, in uniting together, have not forfeited their sovereignty, nor have they been reduced to the condition of one and the same people. If one of the states chose to withdraw its name from the contract, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so, and "
I'm glad you brought up Tocqueville, since he's my favorite political analyst. As perceptive as he was, however, he was not infallible, and clearly he was wrong in assuming that "the Federal government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right". And of course, the U.S. never had to disprove the Confederate states' right to withdraw from the Union, since the seceding states never attempted to prove any right under the Constitution to secede.
But if you're truly enamored with Tocqueville, I take it that you'd agree with some of his other assertions in Democracy in America, such as the following:
"The legislation of the Southern states with regard to slaves presents at the present day such unparalleled atrocities as suffice to show that the laws of humanity have been totally perverted...In antiquity precautions were taken to prevent the slave from breaking his chains; at the present day measures are adopted to deprive him of even the desire for freedom...the Americans of the South, who do not admit that the Negroes can ever be commingled with themselves, have forbidden them, under severe penalties, to be taught to read or write; and as they will not raise them to their own level, they sink them as nearly as possible to that of the brutes." Democracy in America (Vintage Books Ed. 1990), Vol. 2, pp. 379-380.
"The Americans have ... much more ... to fear from the states than from the Union." DIA, p. 385.
"In the South there are no families so poor as to not have slaves. The citizen of the Southern states becomes a sort of domestic dictator from infancy; the first notion he acquires in life is that he is born to command, and the fist habit which he contracts is that of ruling without resistance. His education tends, then, to give him the character of a haughty and hasty man, irascible, violent, ardent in his desires, impatient of obstacles, but easily discouraged if he cannot succeed upon his first attempt." DIA, Vol. 2, p. 394.
"The inhabitants of the Southern states are, of all Americans, those who ... would assuredly suffer most from being left to themselves; and yet they are the only ones who threaten to break the tie of confederation." DIA, Vol. 2, p. 401.
"If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United States; that is to say, they will owe their origin, not to the equality, but to the inequality of condition." DIA, Vol. 1, p. 256.
And let me guess. The "fallable" parts of Tocqueville also happen to be the ones you disagree with. After all, is that not how it always goes when historical writings conflict with preset yankee opinions?
and clearly he was wrong in assuming that "the Federal government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly, either by force or by right".
I would dispute you on that, and direct your attention to the passages that followed that excerpt. By right, he was correct, as to counter secession would entail the violation of the principles that created the union and also, according to Tocqueville, permitted that union to be left. By force, he was talking in the immediate contemporary sense. His argument was that around 1830, several factors would prevent the federal government from stopping secession. Most prominently, this was due to the land size making it difficult, and what he saw as an absence of interests that would prompt the other states to resist the withdrawal of another. Granted, this could be debated but Tocqueville's position could legitimately be taken.
He continued his argument by suggesting that resistence to the secession of certain states could potentially emerge, BUT doing so would both (1) require the rise of a substantial interest to be gained by certain states over others in the existence of the union and (2) an action violating the principles upon which that union was formed.
And of course, the U.S. never had to disprove the Confederate states' right to withdraw from the Union, since the seceding states never attempted to prove any right under the Constitution to secede.
To the contrary, as such a right had been thoroughly asserted and argued for decades prior to the war, just as secession itself had been threatened regularly by all segments of the country as a potential political recourse dating back to the Constitution's adoption itself. Or, to use Tocqueville's argument, withdrawal as a right was readily inherent to the principles that formed the union to begin with.
But if you're truly enamored with Tocqueville, I take it that you'd agree with some of his other assertions in Democracy in America
Only insofar as you are willing to agree with his other assertions in that same text...
"I see that in a certain portion of the territory of the United States at the present day the legal barrier which separated the two races is falling away, but not that which exists in the manners of the country, slavery recedes, but the prejudice to which it has given birth is immovable. Whoever has inhabited the United States must have perceived that in those parts of the Union in which the Negroes are no longer slaves they have in no wise drawn nearer to the whites. On the contrary, the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known."
" It is true that in the North of the Union marriages may be legally contracted between Negroes and whites; but public opinion would stigmatize as infamous a man who should connect himself with a Negress, and it would be difficult to cite a single instance of such a union. The electoral franchise has been conferred upon the Negroes in almost all the states in which slavery has been abolished, but if they come forward to vote, their lives are in danger. If oppressed, they may bring an action at law, but they will find none but whites among their judges; and although they may legally serve as jurors, prejudice repels them from that office. The same schools do not receive the children of the black and of the European. In the theaters gold cannot procure a seat for the servile race beside their former masters; in the hospitals they lie apart; and although they are allowed to invoke the same God as the whites, it must be at a different altar and in their own churches, with their own clergy. The gates of heaven are not closed against them, but their inferiority is continued to the very confines of the other world. When the Negro dies, his bones are cast aside, and the distinction of condition prevails even in the equality of death. Thus the Negro is free, but he can share neither the rights, nor the pleasures, nor the labor, nor the afflictions, nor the tomb of him whose equal he has been declared to be; and he cannot meet him upon fair terms in life or in death."
" In the South, where slavery still exists, the Negroes are less carefully kept apart; they sometimes share the labors and the recreations of the whites; the whites consent to intermix with them to a certain extent, and although legislation treats them more harshly, the habits of the people are more tolerant and compassionate. In the South the master is not afraid to raise his slave to his own standing, because he knows that he can in a moment reduce him to the dust at pleasure. In the North the white no longer distinctly perceives the barrier that separates him from the degraded race, and he shuns the Negro with the more pertinacity since he fears lest they should some day be confounded together."
"Among the Americans of the South, Nature sometimes reasserts her rights and restores a transient equality between the blacks and the whites; but in the North pride restrains the most imperious of human passions."
" Thus it is in the United States that the prejudice which repels the Negroes seems to increase in proportion as they are emancipated, and inequality is sanctioned by the manners while it is effaced from the laws of the country. But if the relative position of the two races that inhabit the United States is such as I have described, why have the Americans abolished slavery in the North of the Union, why do they maintain it in the South, and why do they aggravate its hardships? The answer is easily given. It is not for the good of the Negroes, but for that of the whites, that measures are taken to abolish slavery in the United States."
"Although the Americans abolish the principle of slavery, they do not set their slaves free. To illustrate this remark, I will quote the example of the state of New York. In 1788 this state prohibited the sale of slaves within its limits, which was an indirect method of prohibiting the importation of them. Thenceforward the number of Negroes could only increase according to the ratio of the natural increase of population. But eight years later, a more decisive measure was taken, and it was enacted that all children born of slave parents after the 4th of July 1799 should be free. No increase could then take place, and although slaves still existed, slavery might be said to be abolished."
"One can understand slavery, but how allow several millions of citizens to exist under a load of eternal infamy and hereditary wretchedness? In the North the population of freed Negroes feels these hardships and indignities"