--Secession a Peaceable Remedy.--No
Appeal to Arms.--Two Conditions noted.
It would be only adding to a superabundance of testimony to quote
further from the authors of the Constitution in support of the
principle, unquestioned in that generation, that the people who
granted--that is to say, of course, the people of the several
States--might resume their grants. It will require but few words to
dispose of some superficial objections that have been made to the
application of this doctrine in a special case.
It is sometimes said that, whatever weight may attach to principles
founded on the sovereignty and independence of the original thirteen
States, they can not apply to the States of more recent
origin--constituting now a majority of the members of the Union--because
these are but the offspring or creatures of the Union, and must of
course be subordinate and dependent.
This objection would scarcely occur to any instructed mind, though it
may possess a certain degree of specious plausibility for the untaught.
It is enough to answer that the entire equality of the States, in every
particular, is a vital condition of their union. Every new member that
has been admitted into the partnership of States came in, as is
expressly declared in the acts for their admission, on a footing of
perfect equality in every respect with the original members. This
equality is as complete as the equality, before the laws, of the son
with the father, immediately on the attainment by the former of his
legal majority, without regard to the prior condition of dependence and
tutelage.
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