The nation has conquered their bodies, but it is
hardly less important for our statesmen to conquer their minds
and win their hearts.
The right of secession is not claimed as a revolutionary right,
or even as a conventional right. The secessionists disclaim
revolutionary principles, and hold that the right of secession is
anterior to the convention, a right which the convention could
neither give, nor take away, because inherent in the very
conception of a sovereign State. Secession is simply the repeal
by the State of the act of accession to the Union; and as that
act was a free, voluntary act of the State, she must always be
free to repeal it. The Union is a copartnership; a State in the
Union is simply a member of the firm, and has the right to
withdraw when it judges it for its interest to do so. There is
no power in a firm to compel a copartner to remain a member any
longer than be pleases. He is undoubtedly holden for the
obligations contracted by the firm while he remains a member; but
for none contracted after he has withdrawn and given due notice
thereof.
So of a sovereign State in the Union. The Union itself, apart
from the sovereign States that compose it, is a mere abstraction,
a nullity, and binds nobody. All its substance and vitality are
in the agreement by which the States constitute themselves a firm
or copartnership, for certain specific purposes, and for which
they open an office and establish an agency under express
instructions for the management of the general affairs of the
firm.
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