Napoleon is emperor by the will of the French
people, and governs only by the authority of the French nation,
which is as competent to revoke the powers it has conferred on
him, when it judges proper, as it was to confer them. The Union
exists and governs, if the States are sovereign, only by the will
of the State, and she is as competent to revoke the powers she
has delegated as she was to delegate them. The, Union, as far as
she is concerned, is her creation, and what she is competent to
make she is competent to unmake.
In seceding or withdrawing from the Union a State may act very
unwisely, very much against her own interests and the interests
of the other members of the confederacy; but, if sovereign, she
in doing so only exercises her unquestionable right. The other
members may regret her action, both for her sake and their own,
but they cannot accuse her or her citizens of disloyalty in
seceding, nor of rebellion, if in obedience to her authority they
defend their independence by force of arms against the Union.
Neither she nor they, on the supposition, ever owed allegiance to
the Union. Allegiance is due from the citizen to the sovereign
state, but never from a sovereign state or from its citizens to
any other sovereign state. While the State is in the Union the
citizen owes obedience to the United States, but only because his
State has, in ratifying the Federal constitution, enacted that it
and all laws and treaties made under it shall be law within her
territory.
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