(114-115)...The advocates of secession always understood that it stood as a powerful check on the e xpansive proclivities of the federal government and that even the threat of secession or nullification could modify the federal government's inclination to overstep its constitutional bounds. A case can be made that secession would "destroy" such extra-constitutional abuses of power; perhaps that is what Lincoln had in mind when he used such language. The right to seced is not expressly prohibited by the Constitution. Moreover, at the constitutional convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state, but that propsal was rejected after James Madison said
A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably b e considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.
In defending the individual right to bear arms embodied in the Second Amendment to t he Constitution, Madison invoked the right of armed secession. In warning against the dangers of a standing army controlled by the federal government that might invade a state (or states), Madison believed that with a well-armed populace, the State governments, with the people on their side, would be able to repel the danger
As for the Declaration of Independece, I'm only going to quote part of the passage as it is well over 4 pages long.
That should certianly be enough to discuss for now, enjoy.In the Declaration of Independce Thomas Jefferson listed a "train of abuses" by King George III that the founding fathers believed were so egregious that they justified the colonies' secession from England. Looking over Jefferson's list of abuses, one is hard-pressed to discover any of them that were not also perpetrated by Lincon. Consider the following words of the Declaration:
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He was refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected.
Lincoln imposed military rule on those p arts of the South that became conqured territory during the war, and for twelve years after the war the Southern states were run by military dictatorships appointed by the Republican Party....
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
Myriad new bureaucracies were created to run the occupied states during and after the war. General Benjamin Butler famousl harassed the people of New Orleans during the war by issuing an order that any woman who did not display proper respect for occupying Federal soldiers would be considered a prostitute and treated accordingly. Federal armies pillaged and plundered their way through the Southern state for the duration of the war, and Lincoln supported several confiscation bills that allowed them to plunder private property as they went...
He has affected to render the Military indepedent of and superior to the Civil Power.
This was a consequence of Lincoln's four-year suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.
For depriving us in many cases, of the right of Trial by jury.
Habeas corpus was abandoned in the North; civil rights were even more precarious in the federally occupied South. At times during the war, Wouthern men were executed for refusing to take a loyalty oath to the Lincoln government. Many others were imprisioned.
).