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184 their allegiance to the latter, the levying of war against the United States, whether under individual or state auspices, would amount to treason under the Constitution.

The competency of a state convention to dissolve the connection of South Carolina with the Union was not denied by the Union men; but the power of such a convention to annul a law of Congress, they argued, could not be sustained. Such a convention by assuming judicial functions, as it must do in so far construing the Constitution of the United States as to pronounce an act of Congress contrary to that instrument and therefore not binding on the citizens of South Carolina, would arrogate to itself a right not given to it even by implication or deduced from analogy or true theory; for no convention was competent to release the citizen from his allegiance to the federal laws "in part." It was within the power of such a body to release him from his obligation to obey those laws in toto, as well as the great organic law, the Constitution, by virtue of which they were passed. Was it not preposterous, it was asked, to confound an exercise of judicial power with the exercise of popular supreme