From
The American Conservative -
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/is-secession-legal/
During the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania outlined “the distinction between a federal and a national supreme government; the former being a mere compact resting on the good faith of the parties, the latter having a complete and compulsive operation.” If the Constitution established a federal government, and it did, then the Constitution did not have a “compulsive operation.” In essence, the people of the states in convention could either interpose their sovereignty to arrest the acts of the general government or withdraw from the Union. Morris, a nationalist, recognized that the states still held sway when he suggested that the Constitution be voted on by state and that the states, not a consolidated people, had to ratify the document. The Constitution as ratified in 1787 and 1788 is “a mere compact resting on the good faith of the parties.” That compact can be unilaterally broken at any point by the same people of the States which ratified it.
The checking and controlling influences which afford safety to public liberty, are not to be found in the government itself. The people cannot always protect themselves against their rulers; if they could, no free government, in past times, would have been overthrown. Power and patronage cannot easily be so limited and defined, as to rob them of their corrupting influences over the public mind. It is truly and wisely remarked by the Federalist, that “a power over a man’s subsistence is a power over his will.” As little as possible of this power should be entrusted to the federal government, and even that little should be watched by a power authorized and competent to arrest its abuses. That power can be found only in the states. In this consists the great superiority of the federative system over every other. In that system, the federal government is responsible, not directly to the people
en masse, but to the people in their character of distinct political corporations. However easy it may be to steal power from the people, governments do not so readily yield it to one another. The confederated states confer on their common government only such power as they themselves cannot separately exercise, or such as can be better exercised by that government. They have, therefore, an equal interest, to give it power enough, and to prevent it from assuming too much. In their hands the power of interposition is attended with no danger; it may be safely lodged where there is no interest to abuse it.
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Though I don't claim to be a U.S. Constitutional scholar, I think the specific powers enumerated by the U.S. Constitution is plain enough. It enumerates only certain specific powers to the Federal Government, and what it does not give to the Federal branches, the rest of powers remains with the individual States.
It was the individual States that were required to ratify the U.S. Constitution, not a Federal controlling central government. The Federal branch and its powers only came in existence through the ratification of the U.S. Constitution by the individual States. That was Governor Morris' distinction at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 when the U.S. Constitution was adopted.
President Abraham Lincoln violated his authority by sending federal troops into Virginia in 1861 to start the American Civil War. The only Constitutional authority the Executive branch (the President) is given to make war is by
invasion of the U.S. Other than that only U.S. Congress is given Constitutional authority to declare war. He could not ask Congress to declare war upon a State in the Union. And because Lincoln proposed that all the States were an indissolvable part of the Union, he violated his Constitutional authority by invading one of them as if it were a foreign invading country. If he had recognized the State's right to seceed, only then could he have claimed his right to make war against a 'foreign' invader. By Lincoln's acts against the U.S. Constitution in 1861, it made him guilty of treason and tyranny. It was after Lincoln composed a federal army to invade the southern states that those same southern states then began to form their own armies and completed their votes to seceed from the Union. By Lincoln's threats to those States, he revealed his tendency towards tyranny, which had a lot more to do with the start of the American Civil War than did the issue of slavery.
But of course that point is often conveniently left out of our public education systems on American History.
Another problem has been the ratifying of foreign treaties by the Executive branch.
Thomas Jefferson quote:
"I say the same as to the opinion of those who consider the grant of the treaty making power as boundless. If it is, then we have no Constitution." (Thomas Jefferson, a Letter to Wilson Carry Nicholas, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Setp.7, 1803.)
Alexander Hamilton declared the same:
"The only constitutional except to the power of making treaties is, that it shall not change the Constitution.... On natural principles, a treaty, which should manifestly betray or sacrifice primary interests of the state, would be null." (Alexander Hamilton, The Works of Alexander Hamilton, 1796.)
President Roosevelt in 1941 had to get U.S. Congress to declare war on Japan and the Axis. Then in 1945 and 1947 U.S. representatives signed onto the United Nations treaty, and Congress has never declared war against a foreign country since then, because the U.N. treaty modified the Executive power of the President to declare war alone (so they think). Same thing with signing onto NATO treaties. As a matter of fact, many in U.S. Congress got upset with President Bill Clinton when he sent U.S. troops to war in Bosnia without Congressional approval.
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles was all for ratification of foreign treaties to supercede our U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, as Dwight Eisenhower was also. Senator John Bricker in the 1950's proposed an ammendment (see Bricker Ammendment) that failed by one vote to end this blatant usurping of power of treaty making over the Constitution and Bill of Rights which those like Dulles, Eisenhower, et al, were guilty of.
U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles said:
"Treaties make international law and also they make domestic law. Under our Constitution, treaties become the supreme law of the land.... Treaty law can override the Constitution. Treaties, for example, ...can cut across the rights given the people by their constitutional Bill of Rights." (John Foster Dulles, speaking before the American Bar Association, Louisville, Kentucky, April 11, 1952)
Allen W. Dulles (ex-CIA Director and member of Warren Commisssion, and brother of John Foster) in 1946:
"There is no indication that American public opinion, for example, would approve the establishment of a super state, or permit American membership in it.
In other words, time - a long time - will be needed before world government is politically feasible... This time element might seemingly be shortened so far as American opinion is concerned by an active propaganda campaign in this country..." (Allen W. Dulles, UN booklet, Headline Series #59, New York: The Foreign Policy Association., Sept.-Oct., 1946, pg 46.) (my emphasis in bold)
We do not have to become political activists to write our Senators and Congressmen to take action towards enforcement of our U.S. Constitution against the modern tyrannts sided with those like the Dulles brothers. But it is important for us to understand what those tyrannts have been doing against our U.S. Constitution and the people of the United States of America.
