It
will be a question of course for the Federal Government or the remaining
States to decide for themselves, whether they will permit a State to
go out of the Union, and remain as a separate and independent State, or
whether they will attempt to force her back at the point of the bayonet.
That is a question, I presume, of policy and expediency, which will be
considered by the remaining States composing the Federal Government,
through their organ, the Federal Government, whenever the contingency
arises.
But, sir, while a State has no power, under the Constitution, conferred
upon it to secede from the Federal Government or from the Union, each
State has the right of revolution, which all admit. Whenever the burdens
of the government under which it acts become so onerous that it cannot
bear them, or if anticipated evil shall be so great that the
State believes it would be better off--even risking the perils of
secession--out of the Union than in it, then that State, in my
opinion, like all people upon earth has the right to exercise the
great fundamental principle of self-preservation, and go out of the
Union--though, of course, at its own peril--and bear the risk of the
consequences. And while no State may have the constitutional right to
secede from the Union, the President may not be wrong when he says the
Federal Government has no power under the Constitution to compel the
State to come back into the Union.
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