In the Shadow of Our Founders: Part Two
Thus, we come full circle. Did the southern states, no matter their motivations, have a legal right to break free from the United States?
Twenty years after the outbreak of the Civil War, Jefferson Davis published The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. To this day, it is regarded as one of the most passionate and comprehensive defenses of the Confederate cause ever written. The opening words of the treatise's preface explain precisely Davis's position as well as that of the Confederacy (including all its supporters and apologists to the present day).
According to Davis, "historical data" conclusively show that the "Southern States had rightfully the power to withdraw from the Union into which they had, as sovereign communities, voluntarily entered." He describes the North's opposition to secession as "a violation of the letter and spirit of the compact between the States." He argues that the federal government's war against the southern states was "in disregard of the limitations of the Constitution, and destructive of the principles of the Declaration of Independence."
Was Jefferson Davis right? Answering this question requires an analysis of the three most basic tenets of Davis's argument in light of how the Founders wrestled with many of these same concepts at the inception of our Republic.
1. The states are sovereign.
At the very heart of the argument for secession is the premise that the states are "sovereign" entities. "[T]he only political community -- the only independent corporate unit -- through which the people can exercise their sovereignty, is the state," writes Davis in Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government. Counties, townships, villages, and other local communities are "merely fractional subdivisions of the state," argues Davis.
The importance of this premise cannot be overstated. If the states are not "sovereign" entities, then the entire argument for secession collapses under the weight of Abraham Lincoln's persistent and mellifluous defense of the perpetual Union.
Let's examine the facts. Before the American Revolution, any assertion of sovereignty on the part of the states (then colonies) is essentially meaningless. At that time, the emphasis was on the rights of individuals or of the colonies collectively. Still, the entities recognized by Great Britain were the individual colonies, and it was as colonies that the Americans ultimately rallied to resist British tyranny.
In 1765, most of the colonies banded together via the Stamp Act Congress to resist what they perceived as unfair tax policies completely
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