The Concept of a Perpetual Union

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The Concept of a Perpetual Union
Author(s): Kenneth M. Stampp
Source: The Journal of American History, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Jun., 1978), pp. 5-33
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Organization of American Historians
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1888140
Accessed: 28-11-2017 17:35 UTC

The purpose of this thread is to examine the concept of "Perpetual Union" as it related to secession and the American Civil War. Most of us that run into "Perpetual Union" is via Texas v White in our endless discussion of secession.

4. The Union of the States never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation. It began among the Colonies, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations. It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these, the Union was solemnly declared to "be perpetual." And, when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained "to form a more perfect Union."​

Was the Constitution a compact in a voluntary union or once in the only way out is by violence. Maybe the Constitution could have been more explicit, but as history shows, the explicitness of the Articles of Confederation Article XIII that stipulated:" "shall be inviolably observed by every state, and the Union shall be perpetual. . . ." was abridged. Perhaps if enumerated secession specific delegated powers had been included in the Constitution we would have been spared tedious passionate discourse. Than again....

THE American Civil War, whatever else it may have been, was
unquestionably America's most acute constitutional crisis. Viewed from
this perspective, the fundamental issue of the war was the locus of
sovereignty in the political structure that the Constitution of 1787 had
formed. Did this document create a union of sovereign states, each of
which retained the right to secede at its own discretion? Or did it create
a union from which no state, once having joined, could escape except by
an extra-constitutional act of revolution? In a Constitution remarkable
for its ambiguity on many substantive matters, none was more fateful
than its silence on this crucial question. Even the Articles of Con-
federation, which the nationalists despised, were unequivocal in defining
the Union of the states. Their title was "Articles of Confederation and
Perpetual Union," and Article XIII stipulated that their provisions
"shall be inviolably observed by every state, and the Union shall be
perpetual. . . ." Whether the incorporation of these words in the
Constitution of 1787 would have been sufficient to prevent the crisis of
1861-1865 is problematic, but at the very least we would have
been spared the prolix and convoluted debate over the legality of
secession.
Footnotes
1 In addition to the numerous special studies of these constitutional crises, the evolution of the
state-rights and secessionist arguments can be traced in Jesse T. Carpenter, The South as a
Conscious Minority, 1789-1861: A Study in Political Thought (New York, 1930).
2 For background see Paul C. Nagel, One Nation Indivisible: The Union in American Thought,
1776-1861 (New York, 1964) and Alpheus Thomas Mason, "The Nature of Our Federal Union
Reconsidered," Political Science Quarterly, LXV (Dec. 1950), 502-21.​

Links
The South as a conscious minority, 1789-1861 : a study in political Thought
One Nation Indivisible: The Union in American ... - Google Books
The Nature of Our Federal Union Reconsidered - Political Science
 
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