Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/341

 The Southern Cause Vindicated. 335

lei him do so unmolested. That was a base and hypocritic row that was raised at Southern dictation about the ears of John Quincy Adams, because he presented a petition for the dissolution of the Union. The petitioner had a right to make the request, it was the member's duty to present it, and now if the Cotton States consider the value of the Union debatable, we maintain their perfect right to discuss it. Nay, we hold with Jefferson to the inalienable right of communities to alter or abolish forms of government that have be- come oppressive or injurious, and if the Cotton States decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on telling them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless, and we do not see how one party has a right to do what another party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist the asserted right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or defy the laws thereof. To withdraw from the Union is quite another matter. And whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a Re- public whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets. ' Let the people reflect, deliberate, then vote, and let the act of secession be the echo of an unmistakable popular fiat. A judg- ment thus rendered, a demand for separation so backed, would either be acquiesced in without the effusion of blood, or those who rushed upon the carnage to defy and defeat it would place themselves clearly in the wrong."

Judge Story, in his commentaries on the Constitution, says : " The obvious deductions which may be, and indeed have been drawn from considering the Constitution as a compact between the States, are that it operates as a mere treaty or convention between them, and has an obligatory force upon each State no longer than it suits its pleasure or its consent continues ; that each State has a right to judge for itself in relation to the nature, extent and obligations of this instru- ment, without being at all bound by the interpretation of the Federal government or by that of any other State, and that each retains the power to withdraw from the confederacy and dissolve the connection, when such shall be its choice, and may suspend the operations of the Federal government and nullify its acts within its own territorial limits whenever, in its own opinion, the exigency of the case may require. These conclusions may not always be avowed, but they flow naturally from the doctrines which we have under considera- tion."