Raphael Semmes, Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States

[47] United States gave constitutional law to the States, instead of receiving it from them, Northern writers frequently ask, in what part of the Constitution, is the doctrine of secession found? In no part. It was not necessary to put it there. The States who formed the instrument, delegated certain powers to the Federal Government, retaining all others. Did they part, with the right of secession? Could they have parted with it, without consenting to a merger of their sovereignty? And so far from doing this, we have seen with what jealous care they protested against even the implication of such a merger, in the 10th amendment to the Constitution. If the power was not parted with, by explicit grant, did it not remain to them, even before the 10th amendment was adopted, and still more, if possible, after it was adopted?

To make it still more apparent, that the common understanding among the Fathers of the Constitution was, that this right of secession was reserved, it is only necessary to refer to what took place, during the transition from the old to the new government. The thirteen original States seceded, as we have seen, from the Articles of Confederation, not unanimously, or all together, but one by one, each State acting for itself, without consulting the interests, or inclinations of the others. One of the provisions of those Articles was as follows: ‘Every State shall abide by the determination of the United States, in Congress assembled, in all questions, which, by this Confederation, are submitted to them; and the Articles of this Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor shall any alteration, at any time hereafter, be made in any of them, unless such alteration be agreed to, in a Congress of the United States, and be afterward confirmed by the legislature of every State.’

Now, it is a pertinent, and instructive fact, that no similar provision of perpetuity was engrafted in the new Constitution. There must have been a motive for this—it could not have been a mere accidental omission—and the motive probably was, that the Convention of 1787 were ashamed to attempt, a second time, to bind sovereign States, by a rope of sand, which they, themselves, were in the act of pulling asunder. It was in accordance with this understanding, that both New York and