Quote:
Originally posted by Taz's Master
This argument is only valid if you endeavor to apply the Constitution as our founding fathers intended. If that is not your position then the argument may not have much footing. But when the Constitution was being considered for ratification by the states, Governor Clinton of New York was against ratification. Clinton was willing to ratify the constitution conditionally, reserving the right to withdraw from the union later. Madison and Himilton argued against this. Madison argued that the Constitution could not contemplate its own overthrow. There could be no such thing as the Constitutional right of secession. Hamilton sided with Madison and argued against Clinton's position. It is difficult to discount the positions of Hamilton and Madison when trying to apply the Constitution as its authors intended.
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That Hamilton wanted a strong, centralizing government is a given; he wanted much more than that, he wanted the creation of a peerage and a King as head of state.
Madison is a bit more difficult. While it's true he affiliated himself with the Federalists; Hamilton, Washington, Jay and others; he dissociated himself from them when it became obvious what they really intended and then backed the Bill of Rights as a method to limit the federal government's powers. It's no surprise that Hamilton vehemently opposed the Bill of Rights.
The lawfullness of the southern states secessions comes from two sources. First, is that although the Articles of Confederation contained a binding clause,
Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. which the states seceded from when they withdrew from the Articles and went into the Constitutional compact. Each state knew that the Constitution was much more centralizing and therefore most of them put language in either their debates at the state constitutional conventions or in the actual language of their ratification documents themselves that they retained the right of secession if the federal government was not to their benefit. Second, the Tenth Amendment reserves the powers not granted to the federal government to the states respectively or to the people of those states as long as there was no language forbidding a power to either the states or to the people. That means that since there is no language in the Constitution forbidding secession of a state, then the states retain that power. To this day, there is no language restricting the secession of a state from the Constitutional compact.