Robert Lewis Dabney, Life and Commands of Lieutenand- General Thomas J. Jackson

[132] give nor take away this privilege. The same thing appears equally from the manner in which the Colonies first acquired their independence. Their revolution was a secession from the British Empire. They declared themselves to be the only rightful judges of its necessity. So that every shadow of claim which they have to their present position is derived from the doctrine that the people of a commonwealth are entitled to change their form of government whenever they judge it necessary for their welfare. Nothing, therefore, can be more monstrous than the attempt of the States of the North to obstruct the exercise of this right by an inhuman war; when it is only by its exercise that they themselves exist.

Once more; the formation of the United States under their present Constitution, was an act of secession from the confederation previously existing. It was made all the more glaring by the fact, that the articles of Confederation had very recently been perfected, and had been accepted by all the States, with the express injunction-“And the Union shall be perpetual.” That confederation did not dissolve itself: it did not grant its members leave to desert it, and form a new combination; on the contrary, it claimed an immortal existence. Yet one, and another, and another State deserted it to enter the new Union, when it saw fit; and one, Rhode Island, did not transfer itself from the old compact to the new, for three years. Yet neither the new nor the old confederation dreamed of assailing the other: both recognized the sovereign rights of the States, to secede or to accede. Accession to the new could only take place, by means of secession from the old Union; which had precisely the same claims to the adhesion of its members. So that, when Washington and his illustrious associates of the Convention of 1787, proposed a new Constitution to the States they were proposing secession.