Re: Was Secession Legal? Part 13
>No one, prior to 1861, denied any State the right to withdraw from the compact of union. New England States threatened to do so many times, usually for economic or political reasons. They did not like the Louisiana Purchase, Texas Republic becoming a State, Louisiana becoming a State, but then never acted upon the threats. The Southern States did act. I guess they had bigger gonads. – Johnny Reb 1865
That there was a right to secede had been denied many times prior to 1861. For example, it had been denied by Andrew Jackson in 1832: “To say that any state may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States are not a nation, because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offense. Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right is confounding the meaning of terms, and can only be done through gross error or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution or incur the penalties consequent on a failure…. Disunion by armed force is treason.” Jackson was of course a Southerner. I suspect that he was also a man whose gonads were of acceptable size.
The earliest denials that the Constitution would allow states to secede from the Union go back to 1787 and the very drafting of the document. – Gary Charbonneau
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