Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/17

Rh But again, Webster denies that the States acceded to the constitution; and mark well his daring and all-important admission, that "the natural converse of accession is secession."

Now, it so happens that this word accede, or its derivative accession, which he thus spurns, is found, in the very sense which he denies to it, over and over again in the debates of those who framed and adopted the constitution, and at least once in the course of the official documents pertaining to its adoption; over and over again, I say, or some forty times, by actual count, either certainly or probably in this sense, and more than twenty times unquestionably so. To give but three instances here:

James Madison said, in the Virginian convention of 1788 that debated and, by a close majority, ratified the system for Virginia: (20) "Suppose eight States only should ratify, and Virginia should propose certain alterations as the previous condition of her accession." In the North Carolina State convention Governor Johnston said: (21) "We are not to form a constitution, but to say whether we [i. e., the people of North Carolina] shall adopt a constitution to which ten States have already acceded." And the ratifying convention of New York (of which Alexander Hamilton was a member) prepared by unanimous order a circular letter containing this language: (22) "Our attachment to our sister States, and the confidence we repose in them can not be more forcibly demonstrated than by acceding to a government which many of us think very imperfect."

Webster was right; "secession is the converse of accession." Moreover, as we have seen above, (23) at least three States, Virginia, Rhode Island and New York, in their formal acts of ratification of the federal constitution, expressly and explicitly reserved this right of secession or peaceable withdrawal; a fact now well known and now generally acknowledged, by South and North alike.

But, another question asked in those debates of the early thirties was, as stated above, How shall disputed questions of constitutional rights and powers be decided? By the federal Supreme Court, said Webster, so as to bind even sovereign States, and in all cases.