Side Bar When did Missouri Secede?

NathanTowne · Oct 26, 2017

jgoodguy said:
Indeed you do. I think the secessionists tried to use a political philosophical definition of State that suited their purpose. One thing that panicked them was in Lincoln's Inaugural Address March 4, 1861 which addressed persons rather than States.

It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that 'resolves' and 'ordinances' to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

Looking at the Constitution. "We the People of the United States" means that people not States formed the Union and that people are responsible not something called a 'State'.

This idea is also found in the SOTUS case Texas v White. It is people not geography.

1. The word "State" describes sometimes a people or community of individuals united more or less closely in political relations, inhabiting temporarily or permanently the same country; often it denotes only the country, or territorial region, inhabited by such a community; not unfrequently, it is applied to the government under which the people live; at other times, it represents the combined idea of people, territory, and government.

2. In the Constitution, the term "State" most frequently expresses the combined idea, just noticed, of people, territory, and government. A State, in the ordinary sense of the Constitution, is a political community of free citizens, occupying a territory of defined boundaries and organised under a government sanctioned and limited by a written constitution, and established by the consent of the governed.

3. But the term is also used to express the idea of a people or political community, as distinguished from the government. In this sense, it is used in the clause which provides that the United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion.

The secessionist depended on the Compact Theory political philosophy which depends on natural law not Constitutional law.

In short States cannot secede, people can try.

Well, unilateral secession is illegitimate, but I think that a sober analysis will point to a different conclusion than that as to why.

It is inaccurate to say that the Union and the Constitutional accord were not formed by the states. The states, operating as sovereign entities formed the nation and subsequently the Constitution of the United States. Of course, the people were ultimately supreme, but the nation was formed by the people, through the states, to create the Federal Union. That is why the nation is The United States of America and why the preamble opens with "We the people of the United States..." That is also why the Tenth clarifies that those powers that are not expressly enumerated to the Federal Government are reserved "to the states" and subsequently "to the people." This is basically incontrovertible.

Any action, by a state, can only be illegitimate if it is expressly prohibited in the Constitution because the states, foregoing some of their sovereignty, enumerated powers to the Federal Government via the Constitution.

In the case of unilateral secession by a state, I conclude that it is rendered illegal per Articles III and VI.

jgoodguy · Oct 26, 2017