1. There is no mechanism for secession provided for in the Constitution. Therefore, there could be no legal right, even if there were a moral right similar to that claimed in the Declaration of Indepedance.
2. All states subsequent to the original founding were created by the Federal Government. The mechanism of admission was the acceptance of their application, after the meeting of set terms, by the Congress of the United States. By the time of the Civil War, more states had been created by the Federal Government than had ratified the Constitution.
3. As the Declaration of Independence makes clear, the reasons for severing political bonds, especially when the issue is likely to be contested in war, are of great significance.
4. As I have shown repeatedly, by quoting Jefferson Davis, the central issue of the secession was slavery.
5. Thus, the South plunged us into a Civil War, merely upon the election of Abraham Lincoln, who had made clear that he had no immediate plans for abolition, in order to protect the institution of slavery. |
