A Concurring Opinion For Secession – Part 4

Timothy N. Baldwin, JD.

2/15/2010

Perhaps one of the best sources to determine whether the states voluntarily assented to a federal compact or whether the whole people created a perpetual federal government at the exclusion of the state’s right to secede is the states’ ratification documents themselves. “[T]he publication of the Proceedings and Debates of the states must, at least, be useful [to determine] what the states really intended to grant to the general government.” Elliot, Elliot’s Debates, Preface to the First Edition, vol. 1, iv. Let us see what just a few of the states declared to the world they were doing:

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