Certainly, if the
States were, Prior to the Union, sovereign States; but this is
precisely what has been denied and disproved; for prior to the
Union there were no States. Secession restores, or reduces,
rather, the State to the condition it was in before its admission
into the Union; but that condition is that of Territory, or a
Territory subject to the United States, and not that of an
independent sovereign state. The State holds all its political
rights and powers in the Union from the Union, and has none out
of it, or in the condition in which its population and domain
were before being a State in the Union.
State suicide, it has been urged, releases its population and
territory from their allegiance to the Union, and as there is no
rebellion where there is no allegiance, resistance by its
population and territory to the Union, even war against the
Union, would not be rebellion, but the simple assertion of
popular sovereignty. This is only the same objection in another
form. The lapse of the State releases the population and
territory from no allegiance to the Union; for their allegiance
to the Union was not contracted by their becoming a State, and
they have never in their State character owed allegiance to the
United States. A State owes no allegiance to the United States,
for it is one of them, and is jointly sovereign.
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