So the United States have held and still hold large territorial
possessions, acquired by the acknowledgment of their independence
by Great Britain, the former sovereign, the cession of particular
states, and purchase from France, Spain, and Mexico. Till
erected into States and admitted into the Union, this territory,
with its population, though subject to the United States, makes
no part of the political or sovereign territory and people of the
United States. It is under the Union, not in it, as is indicated
by the phrase admitting into the Union--a legal phrase, since the
constitution ordains that "new States may be admitted by the
Congress into this Union."
There can be no secession that separates a State from the
national domain, and withdraws it from the territorial
sovereignty or jurisdiction of the United States; yet what
hinders a State from going out of the Union in the sense that it
comes into it, and thus ceasing to belong to the political people
of the United States?
If the view of the constitution taken in the preceding chapters
be correct, and certainly no facts tend to disprove it, the
accession of a Territory as a State in the Union is a free act of
the territorial people. The Territory cannot organize and apply
for admission as a State, without what is called an "enabling act"
of Congress or its equivalent; but that act is permissive, not
mandatory, and nothing obliges the Territory to organize under it
and apply for admission.
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