e Confederacy;
that as each became parties to the Union by the vote of its own people
assembled in convention, so any one of them may retire from the Union
in a similar manner by the vote of such a convention.

In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must
be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere voluntary
association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the
contracting parties. If this be so, the Confederacy is a rope of sand,
to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public
opinion in any of the States. In this manner our thirty-three States
may, resolve themselves into as many petty, jarring, and hostile
republics, each one retiring from the Union without responsibility
whenever any sudden excitement might impel them to such a course.
By this process a Union might be entirely broken into fragments in
a few weeks which cost our forefathers many years of toil, privation,
and blood to establish.

Such a principle is wholly inconsistent with the history as well as the
character of the Federal Constitution. After it was framed with the
greatest deliberation and care it was submitted to conventions of the
people of the several States for ratification. Its provisions were
discussed at length in these bodies, composed of the first men of the
country. Its opponents contended that it conferred powers upon the
Federal Government dangerous to the rights of the States, whilst its
advocates maintained that under a fair construction of the instrument
there was no foundation for such apprehensions. In that mighty struggle
between the first intellects of this or any other country it never
occurred to any individual, either among its opponents or advocates,
to assert or even to intimate that their efforts were all vain labor,
because the moment that any State felt herself aggrieved she might
secede from the Union. What a crushing argument would this have proved
against those who dreaded that the rights of the States would be
endangered by the Constitution! The truth is that it was not until many
years after the origin of the Federal Government that such a proposition
was first advanced. It was then met and refuted by the conclusive
arguments of General Jackson, who in his message of the 16th of January,
1833, transmitting the nullifying ordinance of South Carolina to
Congress, employs the following language:

The right of the people of a single State to absolv