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Originally Posted by TCLGirls
Please cite the passages that say what you are claiming. I am unfamiliar with your assertion.
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The founders were completely in favor of the right to secede. The United States had just seceded from the British Empire, exercising the right of the people to “alter or abolish”, by force, if necessary, a despotic government. The Declaration of Independence is the most famous act of secession in our history, even though now, somehow “secession” sounds different from, and more sinister than, "claiming independence". The fact was that the US colonies had seceded from the British Empire. The states were then known as a "confederation" of states, in which each state retained it's freedom, independence, and sovereignty, and powers of the federal government were granted and delegated by those sovereign states. Three states ratified the Constitution with the provision that they could later secede if they chose; the other ten states accepted this condition as valid with no need to memorialize it.
Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution enumerates the powers granted to the federal government, and the power to prevent secession is not one of them. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments state that the powers not delegated to the United States (federal government) by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. This being the case, there was no legal force to use federal troops to oppose secession.
In the Federalist papers, Hamilton and Madison hoped secession would never happen, but they never denied that it was an acceptable possibility. They envisioned the people taking arms against the federal government if it exceeded its delegated powers (delegated by the sovereign states), or invaded their rights, and they admitted that this would be justified. Secession, including the resort to arms, was the final remedy against tyranny. (This is the one of the points of the Second Amendment).
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