"The advice nearest to my heart and deepest in my convictions is that the Union of the States be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemies to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened; and the disguised one, as the serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into Paradise."
-James Madison, 1834
--"Our Sacred Honor" p. 92, by William Bennett
"This government, the offspring of own own choice uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberatin, completely free in its principals, in the distribution of oits powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and alter their system of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all."
--George Washington, 1796
Ibid, p. 91.
"It is a fatal heresy to suppose that either our State governments are superior to the Federal or the Federal to the States."
--Thomas Jefferson, 1821
"By [the] operations [of public improvement] new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties."
--Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806.
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1060.htm
"And this issue embraces more than the fact of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy--a government of the people, by the same people--can or cannot, maintain its territorial integtrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration, accroding to organic law, in any case, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or arbitrarily, without any pretense, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: "Is there in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness?" "Must a government, of neccessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existance?"
A. Lincoln, 7/4/61
Sez a lot more than me.
The secessionists were bums. Bums and traitors.
Walt
Operative word, "advice".
--"Our Sacred Honor" p. 92, by William Bennett
"This government, the offspring of own own choice uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberatin, completely free in its principals, in the distribution of oits powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. ....The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and alter their system of government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, 'till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all."--George Washington, 1796
Washington got it partly right. What he didn't get right is that the Constitution and its powers flow from the People, not vice versa. The People are Sovereign, and merely use the laws to govern themselves: the laws are not the Sovereign, and the People may unmake them. The bit about "the whole people" meaning all the Peoples of all the States is just GW's opinion -- if he and the Framers really meant that and had agreed to it, those words would have been in the Constitution itself as a necessary clarification -- since it would have represented a fundamental change from the status quo ante in which the Peoples of the several States were Sovereign, and retained Final Power under the Articles of Confederation, as clearly stipulated in Article II of the same. Furthermore, such a change, if agreed to (and it wasn't), would have been written into the document in plain, inescapable language. It wasn't.
"It is a fatal heresy to suppose that either our State governments are superior to the Federal or the Federal to the States." --Thomas Jefferson, 1821
But Thomas Jefferson never met Abraham Lincoln.
And then you quote Lincoln. Beautiful.
"Must a government, of neccessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existance?" A. Lincoln, 7/4/61
Well, I guess he showed us the answer to that question, didn't he?
The secessionists were ....
Yeah, right. Keep mumbling.
But thanks for the link/cite.