“[The U.S.] Constitution is as much the Constitution of Ohio as the State Constitution, and because of the will of the people of Ohio, and not of the will of any other people. On that will of Ohio, and the conjoint wills of her sister States, the Federal Constitution becomes the common bond of union. It is not the Constitution of Ohio because it is the Constitution of the Union, but vice versa. And the Federal Constitution is within its sphere the law of both States and Territories …
“The State of Ohio will perceive how much of her own dignity and character are involved in this doctrine of the Federal system. She will shudder at the danger in which the contrary doctrine [that of the States being creatures of the Federal Government] involves herself as much as the other States. The moment she abandons her sacred duty, under her own social compact, of defending her citizens and herself from encroachment upon undelegated rights, or from interference with the sovereignty of the States, she consents to sink to the condition of a dependent corporation. The framers of our system resisted at every stage all such attempts in the [Constitutional] Convention [in 1787]. Edmund Randolph proposed it; Patterson proposed it. They wanted to give the Federal government the power to annul acts of the States which it thought repugnant to the Constitution, and the corresponding power of coercing obedience; but their efforts were made in vain, because the States never intended to allow their agent that power…
“The compact by its own terms furnishes the limit of Federal powers, and CONSENT is the only foundation of the system; the consent, each for herself, of the States, and as of course, no matter what other States may choose to do, or leave undone. We cannot say that the powers of the general government are unlimited, nor can we say that force can ever be substituted for consent. It follows that each of the parties, the States, must, in their last resort, decide on the question, whether an undelegated power [a power not delegated to the Federal Government by Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution] has been exercised; and also, that an one of the States, may if she please, withdraw from the association. To keep her there by force, is to fly in the face of the system…
“Mr. Lincoln [and now Mr. Bush] and his advisers are proceeding upon an opposite theory of the Constitution. They hold that the Federal Union stands on a social compact of the whole American people, as the State of Ohio stands upon a social compact of the people of Ohio. It is not, they say, the agreement of thirty-odd States, but of thirty millions of people; and the States, [relative to] the general government, are not States, but counties only… The principal reliance of the nationalists is upon the language of the preamble to the Constitution: “We, the people of the United States… do ordain, and establish this Constitution for the United States of America,” which they say means a single community – the American people. But that language was not originally used. It was: “We, the people of Massachusetts, Virginia, New York,” etc., etc., “do ordain,” etc. “But … as it could not be known which States it would be, who made the first nine [the ratifications of nine states being necessary to enact the Constitution], the present phrase was substituted. In fact the non-approving States kept out of the Union for some years [Government under the Constitution began March 4, 1789. North Carolina did not ratify until November 1789, Rhode Island in July 1790, and Vermont in March 1791]… The States are sovereigns, and sovereigns may, of legal right, do what they please, where they have not specifically bound themselves either to time or place, which is not pretended, as a man may retire from any association, no matter how numerous or powerful, under similar circumstances.”
To my knowledge, the only contract voluntarily entered that cannot in any way be exited from in this life, is that of joining the Mafia. It is inconceivable and ridiculous to think that our Founding Fathers had any such idea.
Interestingly, it is Vermont which appears closest to becoming the first State to leave the Union. Here is a new paper from the Middlebury Institute offering a justification for Vermont’s secession.
Happy Secession Day!
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