elf. The
sovereignty of the United States as a single or political people must
be established before any thing in the constitution can be adduced as
denying the right of secession.

That this doctrine would deprive the General government of all right to
enforce the laws of the Union on a State that secedes, or the citizens
thereof, is no doubt true; that it would weaken the central power and
make the Union a simple voluntary association of states, no better than
a rope of sand, is no less true; but what then? It is simply saying
that a confederation is inferior to a nation, and that a federal
government lacks many of the advantages of a national government.
Confederacies are always weak in the centre, always lack unity, and are
liable to be dissolved by the influence of local passions, prejudices,
and interests. But if the United States are a confederation of states
or nations, not a single nation or sovereign state, then there is no
remedy.

If the Anglo-American colonies, when their independence of Great
Britain was achieved and acknowledged, were severally sovereign states,
it has never since been in their power to unite and form a single
sovereign state, or to form themselves into one indivisible sovereign
nation. They could unite only by mutual agreement, which gives only a
confederation, in which each retains its own sovereignty, as two
individuals, however closely united, retain each his own individuality.
No sovereignty is of conventional origin, and none can emerge from the
convention that did not enter it. Either the states are one sovereign
people or they are not. If they are not, it is undoubtedly a great
disadvantage; but a disadvantage that must be accepted, and submitted
to without a murmur.

Whether the United States are one sovereign people or only a
confederation is a question of very grave importance. If they are only
a confederation of states--and if they ever were severally sovereign
states, only a confederation they certainly are--state secession is an
inalienable right, and the government has had no right to make war on
the secessionists as rebels, or to treat them, when their military
power is broken, as traitors, or disloyal persons. The honor of the
government, and of the people who have sustained it, is then deeply
compromised.

What then is the fact? Are the United States politically one people,
nation, state, or republic, or are they simply independent sovereign
states united i