The People... or the State.

Mortari

Corporal
Joined
Oct 16, 2018
An interesting point I've read through. Doing a little research of my own, of the 9,103,000 US citizens in the 11 states which attempted secession, there were a grand total of 145,630 cast a vote for secession. That works out if you round up to 1.6% of the future Confederate population that voted for secession.

In 9 of those 11 states it was 883 votes for secession out of 7 million US citizens, so .0013% of the population said "we want secession".

And in there you had for example Georgia, who's vote had major questions on it's validity (just happening that in pro-secessionist areas the voter turnout became larger than the Presidential election turnout, when overall the voter turnout was much lower). In 1972 the Georgia Historical Society performed a recount of those irregularities and determined the people's vote was actually for staying in the Union. And there are states for example like North Carolina which the peoples vote was against secession but then the Governor removed the people from the vote, took over federal properties and let a secession convention decide. Plots to ensure the people's vote didn't count.

So we all know that from Chisolm V Georgia, in the 1700's, the Supreme Courts first major case said the People directly established a Constitution by which it was their will that the State governments should be bound. Supreme or sovereign power was retained by citizens themselves, not by the "artificial person" of the State of Georgia. State Sovereignty didn't exist in the USA any more than the ability to declare a king. The Founding Fathers' Supreme Court made that clear even if people didn't want to listen to it or acknowledge it.

So the Constitution said it's not states or state governments, but people that have sovereignty. State governments however were declaring their states sovereignty when 98% of their people didn't give consent and taking away their abilities to be protected by the US Constitution and represented in the US government. With the President swearing an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States which is of the people not the states, and not having any power to allow states to declare any freedom from that, or take those protections from the people, what should his response be?
 
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