Madison said in Federalist 39, ” In relation, then, the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignty over all other objects.”

Madison in Federalist 39 said, ” Each state, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a federal, and not a national constitution.”

The CC created a federal not a national government. Madison and Hamilton got a more powerful central government but not as powerful as they wanted. They were outvoted and in that sense they lost.

If we put the burden on the central government the question is different. If the Constitution doesn’t say a state can secede does that give the central government the right to prevent it?
As Madison said at the CC, the use of force would be construed as an act of war, and was unconstitutional. Buchanan in his last State of the Union message, while declaring secession unconstitutional, also declared the use of force against a state unconstitutional.
Is the Constitution, itself, a secessionist document? For the Constitution to take effect nine states had to agree to secede from the other four. When nine agreed the old “perpetual” union under the Articles of Confederation was no more in respect to them. Perhaps the remaining four could have remained in the old union. As it turned out all joined the new union, but Washington was president before Rhode Island and North Carolina came in. The states were prepared to live in peaceful disunion.

Ironically, the failed secession was the end of state sovereignty as a viable counterweight to the power of the government. Ironic, that is, because, in effect, state rights theory committed suicide. From the Civil War, the federal government emerged ascendant. No one would ever argue that the states were co-equal seats of authority again. No one would ever entertain the notion that secession was a possibility again.

The Tenth Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

What about this old question? If the Constitution doesn’t say a state cannot secede–does that give the state the implicit right to secede?

Madison & Hamilton won. Maybe they did not win a complete victory. The Constitution is the product of many minds and many ideas (which is why there are so many contradictions). But Madison and Hamilton won the great victory.

The Bill of Rights (which neither Ham or Mad wanted much) moved the ball back a bit–but the Constitution provided the foundation for the government Hamilton envisioned.

Waco, the Constitution did not form a national government(consolidated according to Patrick Henry), but a federal one. Hamilton said in the “Federalist Papers” they were not forming a national government. He certainly tried. According to Calhoun, Hamilton’s side lost at the convention. Were the “Federalist Papers”,the great commentary on the Constitution, written by the losers?

Doug and All,
Why is the burden of proof on the state to show the right to secede? Since the states delegated powers to the central government, the burden should be on it to show it has the power to prevent secession, or in other words, hold a state captive.The argument should have been about federal government rights and the lack thereof.

With all due respect, I have addressed your other two points:

1. The Election of 1860 was much bigger than you seem to understand. The relatively new party ran the table in the North. They won 18 out of 18 free states. The South was relegated to minority status, which, for several decades, a vast majority of Southerners had all agreed would be the end of “liberty” as they knew it. The new regional party, unlike the national parties that had come before, was so far removed from Southern sensibilities that it was not even on the ballot in most Southern states in 1860.

Comparing the election of Lincoln to the election of Bush in 2004 is extremely unhelpful.

2. The promise of slavery undisturbed in the South was not accepted. The South asked for assurances, and instead they got Lincoln. The man who saw slavery as a great evil that must eventually be extinguished. “A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand.” The Party of “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men” was now ascendant, and “Spot Resolution” Lincoln was at the crest of the wave.

The first secession crisis in the South happened in the midst of the turmoil that resulted in the Compromise of 1850. If the South had bolted then, many believe that the North could not have stopped them. But the Northern states were growing progressively more populous and powerful. They were much stronger than they were a decade earlier. How strong would they be a decade later? Now or never.

In re the state rights argument: Slavery was the reason for secession. The right the Southern states desired to protect was the right to hold slaves.

As for Kip Esquire’s comment: it is curious. As someone else pointed out early on, the federal government was up to its eyeballs in slavery. That the feds could suddenly deny rights to the South for withholding republican government to slaves is absolutely bizarre. What about women? What about non property holders in some states? What about Native Americans?

Finally, you state:

Quite honestly, only a belief in subjective standards of morality could assert that there was ever a time in history when human enslavement was morally acceptable. I believe otherwise.

Once again, this is a modern perspective with which there is no disagreement. If you are arguing that the South was wrong because they fought to maintain slavery, you are, of course, right. If you argue that the government of the United States, which condoned slavery for much of the war was immoral, I suppose you are correct as well. But you don’t shed much light on the issue with that kind of blankeet moral statement.

You seem to ignore the slaves in the North who stayed such until December of 1865, eight month’s after Lee’s surrender.

In essence, my argument is that the South did not have a morally legitamite justification for rebellion. Slavery is only part of the reason that is the case. Read the post again, and my comments.

And also, read KipEsquire’s point in the very first comment to this post.

Of course, you are imposing present standards on the past, which always makes historians wince, but that is another issue.

Quite honestly, only a belief in subjective standards of morality could assert that there was ever a time in history when human enslavement was morally acceptable. I believe otherwise.

In essence, your argument boils down to secession was in defense of the morally indefensible; therefore, it was an immoral and shameful rebellion.

Okay. I finally get it.

Of course, you are imposing present standards on the past, which always makes historians wince, but that is another issue.

I was being sarcastic in my reaction to those poor Texas slaveholders who saw their “peculiar institution” threatened.

Frankly, if they were losing slaves because the North was refusing to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, too darn bad. They didn’t have the right to hold human beings as property to begin with. And if they were seceding from the Union to protect that so-called right, that just makes the secession even less legitimate.

“If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation . . . to a continuance in union . . . I have no hesitation in saying, let us separate.”
Jefferson

“any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. . . . Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.”
Lincoln

Are you saying that slavery was not a big deal? Your thesis is that revolutions should not be entered into for “light and transient causes.” Agreed. You seem to forget that slavery was the biggest issue of the day.

We all agree (on the 78th anniversary of the birth of MLK) that slavery was an egregiously immoral institution; it has rightly been dubbed our original sin. From our presentist perspective, we hold slaveholders in complete contempt.

However, it is not rational to look back into the 1850s and call slavery a trivial concern.