All the acts
of these governments have been constitutional. Their entering
into a confederacy for attaining a separate nationality has been
legal, and the debts contracted by the States individually, or by
the confederacy legally formed by them, have been legally
contracted, stand good against them, and perhaps against the
United States. The war against them has been all wrong, and the
confederates killed in battle have been murdered by the United
States. The blockade has been illegal, for no nation can
blockade its own ports, and the captures and seizures under it,
robberies. The Supreme Court has been wrong in declaring the war
a territorial civil war, as well as the government in acting
accordingly. Now, all these conclusions are manifestly false and
absurd, and therefore the assumption that the States in question
have all along been States in the Union cannot be sustained.
It is easy to understand the resistance the Government offers to
the doctrine that a State may commit suicide, or by its own act
abdicate its rights and cease to be a State in the Union. It is
admissible on no theory of the constitution that has been widely
entertained. It is not admissible on Mr. Calhoun's theory of
State sovereignty, for on that theory a State in going out of the
Union does not cease to be a State but simply resumes the powers
it had delegated to the General government.
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