The repeal by the State of the act of ratification
releases the citizen from the obligation even of obedience, and
renders it criminal for him to yield it without her permission.
It avails nothing, on the hypothesis of the sovereignty of the
States as distinguished from that of the United States, to appeal
to the language or provisions of the Federal constitution. That
constitutes the government, not the state or the sovereign. It
is ordained by the sovereign, and if the States were severally
independent and sovereign states, that sovereign is the States
severally, not the States united. The constitution is law for
the citizens of a State only so long as the State remains one of
the United States. No matter, then, how clear and express the
language, or stringent the provisions of the constitution, they
bind only the citizens of the States that enact the constitution.
The written constitution is simply a compact, and obliges only
while the compact is continued by the States, each for itself.
The sovereignty of the United States as a single or political
people must be established before any thing in the constitution
can be adduced as denying the right of secession.
That this doctrine would deprive the General government of all
right to enforce the laws of the Union on a State that secedes,
or the citizens thereof, is no doubt true; that it would weaken
the central power and make the Union a simple voluntary
association of states, no better than a rope of sand, is no less
true; but what then? It is simply saying that a confederation is
inferior to a nation, and that a federal government lacks many of
the advantages of a national government.
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