Goodwin
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Sorry if I am reviving a thread that everyone is done with. I just couldn't let a discussion about the legality of secession pass without contributing what I believe is by far the most compelling argument on the issue, which was offered by the great American orator and Senator Daniel Webster in his famous debate with Hayne:
quote:
This leads us to inquire into the origin of this government and the source of its power. Whose agent is it? Is it the creature of the State legislatures, or the creature of the people? If the government of the United States be the agent of the State governments, then they may control it, provided they can agree in the manner of controlling it; if it be the agent of the people, then the people alone can control it, restrain it, modify, or reform it. It is observable enough, that the doctrine for which the honorable gentleman contends leads him to the necessity of maintaining, not only that this general government is the creature of the States, but that it is the creature of each of the States severally, so that each may assert the power for itself of determining whether it acts whithin the limits of its authority. It is the servant of four-and-twenty masters, of different will and different purposes and yet bound to obey all. This absurdity (for it seems no less) arises from a misconception as to the origin of this government and its true character. It is, Sir, the people's Constitution, the people's government, made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people. The people of the United States have declared that the Constitution shall be the supreme law. We must either admit the proposition, or dispute their authority. The States are, unquestionably, sovereign, so far as their sovereignty is not affected by this supreme law. But the State legislatures, as political bodies, however sovereign, are yet not sovereign over the people. So far as the people have given the power to the general government, so far the grant is unquestionably good, and the government holds of the people, and not of the State governments. We are all agents of the same supreme power, the people. The general government and the State governments derive their authority from the same source. Neither can, in relation to the other, be called primary, though one is definite and restricted, and the other general and residuary. The national government possesses those powers which it will be shown the people have conferred upon it, and no more. All the rest belongs to the State governments, or to the people themselves. So far as the people have restrained State sovereignty, by the expression of their will, in the Constitution of the United States, so far, it must be admitted... We are here to administer a Constitution emanating immediately from the people, and trusted by them to our administration. It is not the creature of the State governments.
Webster points out that the true sovereignty in the American people lies not with the states, but with the people, and therefore the states have no power over the constitution. States cannot secede because the states did not create the Constitution and endow it with its power, the people did that. The people further granted the federal government a certain power over the states, by making the Constitution the supreme law of the land, and extending the constitution to cover their “posterity.” This suggests that the state government do not have the right or power to remove themselves for the Constitution and the United States government.
There are a few more legalistic/textual arguments against secession, but Webster's always seemed the most fundamental to me. Beyond even that, however, the nature of democracy forbids secession. In order for democracy to work, all must agree to accept majority rule. If secession were acceptable, there could be no true democracy, for the minority could always simply leave whenever the majority voted for something they did not like (such as Abraham Lincoln). This is not government, it is anarchy.
Williams Sherman actually argued something along these lines while writing about what it would take for the North to win the war and what that would mean in terms of the principals behind the war:
quote:
Another great and important natural truth is still in contest and can only be solved by war. Numerical majorities by vote is our great arbiter. Heretofore all have submitted to it in questions left open, but numerical majorities are not necessarily physical majorities. The South, though numerically inferior, contend they can whip the Northern superiority of numbers, and therefore by natural law are not bound to submit. This issue is the only real one, and in my judgment all else should be deferred to it. War alone can decide it, and it is the only question left to us as a people. Can we whip the South? If we can, our numerical majority has both the natural and constitutional right to govern. If we cannot whip them, they contend for the natural right to select their own government, and they have the argument. Our armies must prevail over theirs. Our officers, marshals, and courts must penetrate into the innermost recesses of their land before we have the natural right to demand their submission.
To briefly also address the main subject of the thread, I think it is evidence of how successful the later grand strategy employed, primarily, by Grant and Sherman was that there is now so much doubt as to whether the South could have ever won the war. At the beginning of the war, the attitude was much the opposite, with many believing that the North had no chance. Confederate Secretary of War George W. Randolph asserted, “They may overrun our frontier States and plunder our coast, but, as for conquering us, the thing is an impossibility. There is no instance in history of a people as numerous as we are inhabiting a country so extensive as ours being subjected if true to themselves.” And lest he be accused on misjudgment based on Southern pride and the myth that one Southerner could whip ten Northerners, the London Times basically agree with him when they editorialized, “It is one thing to drive the 'rebels' from the bank of the Potomac, or even to occupy Richmond, but another to reduce and hold in permanent subjection a tract of country nearly as large as Russia in Europe and inhabited by Anglo-Saxons. We have never questioned the superiority of the North for the purposes of warfare, but no war of independence ever terminated unsuccessfully, except where the disparity of force was far greater than it is here.” Note that the Times agrees that the North is superior to the South for the purposes of warfare, and still gives the North no chance. I think it is a testament to the men who shaped and enacted the Union war effort that they were able to so drastically change the general perception of the South's chances in the war.
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RE: Did the South have any chance of victory ? - 
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