Secession - legal... or illegal?
People wonder about the legitimacy of secession, the legality of it, and its actual process. Here is someone who has spoken about this, in depth, Dr. William Carroll, a professor:
"You don’t seriously think that less than 100 years after we won our independence from England the states would have joined something they couldn’t get out of do you? How preposterous!!
Consider the one principle of the Declaration of Independence that Thomas Jefferson is most noted for, the idea that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever governments become destructive of liberty it is the duty of citizens to abolish that government and replace it with a new one.... In a letter to James Madison in 1816 Jefferson reiterated his support of the right of secession by saying, "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation... to a continuance in union... I have no hesitation in saying, let us separate." Jefferson’s close friend Alexis de Tocqueville, whom everyone regards as a brilliant observer and chronicler of the American system of government, wrote in Democracy in America that "The Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States; and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality... If one of the states chooses to withdraw from the compact... the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or right."" Dr. William Carroll, 2002.
