The Honorable B. B. Munford stated the following history of the Right of Secession:
THE RIGHT OF SECESSION.
First and foremost of the States which seceded appealed to the Constitution in justification of their course. The rightfulness of this contention must be determined not by our conceptions of what would have been the best system of government or the best form of constitution, but what, in the light of the admitted facts of history, and the actual terms of the Constitution as adopted, were the relative rights of the States and of the Union, with respect to this great problem. I cannot, upon this occasion, do more than epitomize the facts and reasoning upon which the advocates of secession maintained the justice of their cause. It will help to a clearer understanding if we take one Commonwealth and portray her relations to the Union, and as we are to day to honor the memory of Virginians, I shall select for that purpose our native State.
Virginia was one of the original colonies, having a separate existence from the other colonies, and yet, like the others, forming an integral part of the British Empire. Pending this political relation, the allegiance of her citizens was due the British crown.
On the 15th of May 1776, the people of Virginia met in convention, and acting without association with any of the other colonies, declared her separation from and independence of Great Britain.
BILL OF RIGHTS.
On the 12th of June 1776, she adopted and proclaimed her bill of rights; and on the 29th of June adopted her Constitution. She declared all power of government vested in her own people, who alone succeeded to the rights and territories of the crown. Her governor and State officers were elected, taking an oath of fealty to the Commonwealth of Virginia. All this was accomplished before the 4th of July 1776--before the Declaration of Independence, which declared the colonies free and independent States, had been proposed at her instigation and prepared by her great son.
Thus, the people of Virginia became citizens of the State, and she their sovereign. The Declaration of Independence, so far from changing the allegiance of her citizens or proclaiming the independence of the country as a whole, by its very terms declares that the several colonies are "free and independent States."
The Articles of Confederation were formulated by the Continental Congress in November, 1777, and submitted to the legislatures of the respective States as such, and not to the people, for ratification.
These articles constituted by their very terms a compact between States, naming them, and not the people of the whole, country; and declare that each State retains its sovereignty and every power which is not expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled. While numerous powers were vested in the Federal Congress, yet it had no power, except acting on and through the States as such, even to collect taxes or to enlist troops for the prosecution of the war of the Revolution.
NOT AS A WHOLE.
When, the treaty of peace with Great Britain acknowledged our independence acknowledged, the independence of the people of the United States as a whole was not recognized, but each of the separate Commonwealths, naming them, was declared a free, sovereign and independent State.
Thus stood the government--Federal and State--and the allegiance of the citizen, after the treaty of peace with Great Britain acknowledging our independence.
In 1787 the Constitutional Convention, as it was called--a body authorized by no Federal enactment--assembled at Philadelphia, prepared and proposed to the several States for adoption a new constitution. The old Confederacy was abandoned, and by the express terms of the Constitution it was not to be effective until nine States should have ratified the same.
The adoption of the Constitution was not the act of the people of the whole country, but of each State, as only by the separate acceptance of its terms by each State could it become binding upon her. The States were absolutely free to enter the new Union, or to retain their complete independence. Thus North Carolina and Rhode Island--the latter not being even represented at the Philadelphia convention--refused to enter. The Congress of the United States laid tariff duties upon imports from both of these Commonwealths, as in the case of other foreign States--acts that were not repealed until they entered the Union.
CONSOLIDATED GOVERNMENT.
When Mr. Henry, who was not a member of the Philadelphia convention, charged that the expression, "We, the people of the United States," in terms implied a consolidated government. Mr. Madison, the foremost architect of the Constitution, replied: "Who are the parties to it? (The Constitution). The people. But not the people as composing one great body, but the people as composing thirteen sovereignties. Were it, as the gentlemen asserts, a consolidated government, the consent of a majority of the people would be sufficient for its establishment."
The bare recital of these facts would seem to demonstrate that in the formation of the Constitution, and the resulting Union, the States acted as separate sovereignties, and that the government thus created, was the result of a compact between them, and not the act of the people as a whole.
The powers of the Federal Government, therefore, were delegated and not inherent; and to ascertain them it is only necessary to search the Constitution, where those so delegated are enumerated.
In the conventions of Virginia and New York, the question was raised as to the relative rights and powers of the State and Federal governments, and in order to define more clearly the meaning of the Constitution, and to establish more firmly the rights of the States, the resolution of the Virginia convention, in adopting the Constitution, uses this language:
VIRGINIA CONVENTION.
"We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, do in the name and behalf of the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed whenever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression."
The resolution of adoption by the New York convention is of very much the same import. These two States also proposed amendments to the Constitution, which were quickly ratified and made a part of the instrument itself. The amendment bearing specifically upon the point under consideration was the 10th, which expressly provides "That the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Thus, with the very adoption of the Constitution, the position maintained by the statesmen that the Constitution was a compact between States, was established, as they thought, beyond a question.
If it was a compact between separate sovereignties, and the compact enumerated all the powers surrendered to the federal head, then the parties to the compact could withdraw as an incident to their sovereignty, and because that right had not been surrendered. The citizen, as we know, was the citizen of the State, and not of the Union. If the State had a right to secede, it had the supreme claim upon the allegiance of all its citizens, even in a controversy between the State and the federal head.
POSITION OF THE FOUNDERS.
This was the position of the advocates of the right of secession, and the reasoning upon which they based their claim. The principle so declared, had been frequently asserted by States and statesmen, in the most solemn manner. Thus, upon the passage of the Alien and Sedition laws, the celebrated resolutions of 1798 were adopted by the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia--the first of which was prepared by Jefferson, and the second by Madison. These resolutions, thus prepared by the author of the Declaration of Independence and the father of the Constitution, asserted in the most solemn form that the government was a compact between States; that its powers were limited to those specifically delegated in the Constitution; and that the States had the right to determine for themselves when the Federal government exceeded its authority.
These declarations became the subject of assault and defense, but so far from the principles annunciated being repudiated, at the very next election, Mr. Jefferson was elected President of the United States, and after a service of eight years, was succeeded by Mr. Madison, who filled the office for a like period.
CAUSE OF DISSOLUTION.
In 1804, the legislature of Massachusetts passed an act declaring that the purchase and annexation of the territory of Louisiana by the general government was a sufficient cause for the dissolution of the Union.
In 1814 the representatives from the six New England States assembled in the celebrated Hartford convention, and, because of their opposition to the war with England, declared that unless the policy of the administration in prosecuting this war was changed, they would be forced to adopt measures for withdrawing from the Union. The convention adjourned to meet the following June, when the timely ending of the war prevented the necessity of its reassembling.
Josiah Quincy, of Massachusetts, in a speech delivered in the House of Representatives upon a bill for the admission of the first State from the Louisiana purchase, declared: "It is my deliberate opinion that if this bill passes, the bonds of the Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which oppose it are morally free from their obligations, and that as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation."
In 1839 John Quincy Adams, in an address before the New York Historical Association, declared: "We may admit the same right has vested in the people of every State of the Union with reference to the general government, which was exercised by the people of the united colonies with reference to the supreme head of the British Empire, of which they formed a part, and under these limitations have the people of each State in the Union a right to secede from the Confederate Union itself."
NO BINDING FORCE.
In 1845 the legislature of Massachusetts, in view of its opposition to the proposed annexation of Texas, passed a series of resolutions in which, after declaring that there was no precedent for the admission of a foreign State or territory into the Union, and as the powers granted in the Constitution do not provide for such legislation, so "an act of admission would have no binding force whatever upon the people of Massachusetts."
These various resolutions and enactments of State authorities, and declarations of statesmen both of the Revolutionary and later periods, were accepted as avowals of constitutional rights, implying no lack of loyalty or patriotism.
If the States had the right under the Constitution to secede, then the Federal government had no constitutional right to coerce them. The inability of the Federal government to coerce States had been frequently illustrated by the refusal of governors to honor requisitions made upon them by governors of other States for the rendition of fugitive slaves, though Congress passed the statute under which the requisitions were made, and the government stood pledged to enforce its execution.
Thus stood the historical and legal features of the great controversy. To say that the people of Virginia, or of any other State, acting under the forms of law, could not withdraw from the Union without a violation of the Constitution, was to contest what was an accepted theory of the government, held by leaders of thought in every section, from the day of its foundation.
We are not discussing either the wisdom of exercising the right of secession or the wisdom of the fathers in the formation of such a government, but we are considering the actual terms of the Constitution and the truths of history. And in the light of these conditions, that man is indeed reckless of inexorable facts that avow that men who died in the maintenance of rights so time-honored and so widely accepted were guilty of treason.
THE RIGHT OF REVOLUTION.
The statesmen of the seceding States founded their action, as we have seen, upon their rights under the Constitution. They never admitted that it was necessary to have recourse to the right of revolution. Mixed, however, in the popular mind with the right of secession was the conviction that the right of revolution was one that could not be denied. They had never learned to admit that George Washington was a traitor, only saved from the scaffold by the adventitious fortunes of war. Less than one hundred years before, their fathers had decided for themselves the great question of their political destiny, with no higher warrant than the brave avowal of the declaration that governments are instituted among men, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
The people felt that they had walked the path blazed out by the fathers, and asserted rights which had been vindicated in the heroic days from Lexington to Yorktown. If thirteen colonies, with a population of less than three million of free men had the right to determine for themselves their form of government, and secede from the mother country, how much more should this new nation, possessing a territory twice as great, with a population of over six million of free men, exercise the same prerogative?
SOUTH NOT ALONE.
And not alone was this the conviction of the people of the seceding States, but the same sentiment was widespread among leading statesmen, journalists and the people of the North. Thus, the New York Tribune, foremost among the organs which had supported Mr. Lincoln, declared: "If the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of three million of subjects in 1776, it was not seen why it would not justify the secession of five millions of Southerners from the Union in 1861."
At a great meeting held in New York on the 31st of January 1861, after the Cotton States had seceded, addresses were delivered by ex-Governor Seymour, Chancellor Walworth, and other leading citizens. Governor Seymour asked whether "successful coercion by the North is less revolutionary than successful secession by the South? Shall we prevent revolution by being foremost in overthrowing the principles of our government and all that makes it valuable to our people, and distinguishes it among the nations of the earth?"
Chancellor Walworth declared: "There were laws that were to be enforced in the time of the American Revolution. Did Lord Chatham go for enforcing those laws? No, he gloried in the defense of the liberties of America."--Hon. B. B. Munford
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