... but there is nothing in the constitution that would allow
succession. In fact, the constitution has a clause for dealing with
rebellion.
Abraham Lincoln said this in his inaugural address ...
"A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now
formidably attempted.
I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the
Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is
implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national
governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a
provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to
execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and
the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it
except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.
Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an
association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a
contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made
it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but
does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition
that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the
history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the
Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association
in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of
Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the
then thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be
perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in
1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the
Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."
But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the
States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the
Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity."
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