The State is held jointly and severally for all the legal
obligations of the Union, contracted while she is in it but no
further; and is free to withdraw when she pleases, precisely as
an individual may withdraw from an ordinary business firm. The
remaining copartners have no right of compulsion or coercion
against the seceding member, for he, saving the obligations
already contracted, is as free to withdraw as they are to remain.
The population is fixed to the domain and goes with it; the
domain is attached to the State, and secedes in the secession of
the State. Secession, then, carries the entire State government,
people, and domain out of the Union, and restores ipso facto the
State to its original position of a sovereign State, foreign to
the United States. Being an independent sovereign State, she may
enter into a new confederacy, form a new copartnership, or merge
herself in some other foreign state, as she judges proper or
finds opportunity. The States that seceded formed among
themselves a new confederacy, more to their mind than the one
formed in 1787, as they had a perfect right to do, and in the war
just ended they were not rebels nor revolutionists, but a people
fighting for the right of self-government, loyal citizens and
true patriots de fending the independence and inviolability of
their country against foreign invaders.
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