Thanks for posting that; I think I have heard of St. George Tucker before, but I really had to look him up to find out what I might have known.
He certainly was an interesting man. I never knew who had been trying to push for slave emancipation in Virginia back in the early days of the US -- apparently St. George Tucker was a big mover and shaker in that effort. (The emancipation effort in Virginia peaked about 1831 (the year of the Nat Turner slave rebellion -- four years after St. George Tucker.)
Having poked around, I see that he regarded secession as an extreme step and was a very strong believer in Natural Rights. Some writers compare him to Chief Justice Marshall, who Tucker admired. I doubt that his support for a "secession" would be based on written law. It was likely much the same as anyone coming from that angle (like Vattel, very popular in St. George Tucker's time), that he meant "secede" or "secession" simply as "leaving" or "withdrawing", that he justified it based on Natural Law and not the laws of man.
The only thing about the adoption of the Constitution that is a bit squiggly is the ratification section:
Article VII
The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.
That part has, of course, trouble trying to reconcile with Article XIII of the
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union:
ARTICLE XIII. Every state shall abide by the determinations of the united states in congress assembled, on all questions which by this confederation are submitted to them. And the Articles of this confederation shall be inviolably observed by every state, and the union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless such alteration be agreed to in a congress of the united states, and be afterward confirmed by the legislatures of every state.
One of the original thirteen States
could have objected to that nine state qualification, refused to ratify, and there would have been a major legal problem to resolve. Once all thirteen States have ratified the Constitution, this is a moot point. The conditions in Article XIII of the
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union have been met and everything is legal and complete. Article VII of the Constitution has been approved along with the rest of the Constitution. It is no longer possible to object legally to the nine state portion of the Constitution as a violation of the
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.
What that comes down to is this:
- Congress approved the Constitution and sent it on to the States for ratification on September 28, 1787
- the ninth State (New Hampshire) ratified on June 21, 1788
- the thirteenth State (Rhode Island) ratified on May 29, 1791
At any point between September 28, 1787 and May 29, 1791 -- three years and nine months -- any one of the original thirteen States could have protested and brought a case through the judicial system of the existing Union. None did. Rhode Island did not -- and Rhode Island had held up a change to the
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union in 1781 by refusing to ratify (12 States against 1 State).
Granted, the judicial system of the
Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was so weak, convoluted and arcane as to be virtually useless on such a serious issue. I doubt any single State, even one like Virginia or New York, could have actually forced a decision in their favor through it on this issue. The point is that no one even bothered to try.
BTW: I lumped Virginia and New York in with Rhode Island there because those three were regarded as the biggest rocks on the path to ratification and a large part of the reason the nine state condition was written in at the Philadelphia Convention. I don't think it was an accident that neither New York nor Virginia ratified among the first nine.