Merrill wrote:Postauthoritarian America wrote:
Please cite the staute or Constitutional provision that allows US States to secede. (Hint: there aren't any.) The Confederacy resorted to force of arms. It lost. States can't secede. Next case.
Virginia reserved the right of secession to herself when she included the following in her ratification on 26 June 1788: “…the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will…” New York reserved the right of secession to herself when she included the following in her ratification on 26 July 1788: “…the Powers of Government may be reassumed by the People, whensoever it shall become necessary to their Happiness…” Rhode Island reserved the right of secession to herself when she included the following in her ratification on 29 May 1790: “…every other power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by the said constitution clearly delegated to the Congress of the United States or to the departments of government thereof, remain to the people of the several states, or their respective State governments to whom they may have granted the same…”
The States are on equal footing with one another. If Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island have the right to secede, so do all the rest.
If secession was treason, surely the Constitution would say so. It does not. If secession was treason, surely the United States government would have been delegated the authority to prevent States from leaving. No such authority was or has been delegated. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.” This is reflected by the Constitution itself – the powers of the federal government are positively delegated and specifically enumerated. It has no powers other than those granted by the Constitution.
I direct you to Texas v White, in which the Supreme Court rather definitively says unilateral succession isn’t allowed.