tesmen have overlooked or not duly weighed the facts in
the case, because, holding the origin of government in compact, they
felt no need of looking back of the constitution to find the basis of
that unity of the American people which they assert. Neither Mr.
Madison nor Mr. Webster felt any difficulty in asserting it as created
by the convention of 1787, or in conceding the sovereignty of the
States prior to the Union, and denying its existence after the
ratification of the constitution. If it were not that they held that
the State originates in convention or the social compact, there would
be unpardonable presumption on the part of the present writer in
venturing to hazard an assertion contrary to theirs. But, if their
theory was unsound, their practical doctrine was not; for they
maintained that the American people are one sovereign people, and Mr.
Quincy Adams, an authority inferior to neither, maintained that they
were always one people, and that the States hold from the Union, not
the Union from the States. The States without the Union cease to exist
as political communities: the Union without the States ceases to be a
Union, and becomes a vast centralized and consolidated state, ready to
lapse from a civilized into a barbaric, from a republican to a despotic
nation.

The State, under the American system, as distinguished from Territory,
is not in the domain and population fixed to it, nor yet in its
exterior organization, but solely in the political powers, rights, and
franchises which it holds from the United States, or as one of the
United States. As these are rights, not obligations, the State may
resign or abdicate them and cease to be a State, on the same principle
that any man may abdicate or forego his rights. In doing so, the State
breaks no oath of allegiance, fails to fulfil no obligation she
contracted as a State: she simply forgoes her political rights and
franchises. So far, then, secession is possible, feasible, and not
unconstitutional or unlawful. But it is, as Mr. Sumner and others have
maintained, simply State suicide. Nothing hinders a State from
committing suicide, if she chooses, any more than there was something
which compelled the Territory to become a State in the Union against
its will.

It is objected to, this conclusion that the States were, prior to the
Union, independent sovereign States, and secession would not destroy
the State, but restore it to its original sovereignty an