quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
Geoschmo,
Where is this 'process' for arranging secession that you described given in the Constitution? I'm fairly familiar with it, and I don't recall any such process. I think you are quoting something written AFTER the war by a Northern law scholar. I.O.W., Victor's Justification. 
Baron, there is no "process for arrnging seccesion" given in the constitution. What I was describing in my post was the process for amendment that would have to have been gone through legally to annul the Constitution as laid out in Article V.
Any part of the Constitution, or all of it for that matter, that was originally written can be removed, or rewritten if the process set forth in Article V is followed.
quote:
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Therefore, since the power to GRANT a state the right to secede is not explicitly delegated to the Federal government NOR explicitly forbidden to the states in the Constitution, it is retained by the states themselves.
Wrong. By seceding from the Union, the southern states were actually in violation of Article X, because they were trying to take away all the powers specifically delegated to the United tates by the Constitution, as set forth in all the other Articles before it.
Article X was not an "out clause". It didn't and doesn't give any state the right to leave the Union. It doesn't even mention "rights", because States don't have rights. People have rights. States have powers.
Now, if your argument is that the people of the south have a inalienable human right to stand up and say "You no longer represent me. I am forming a new country." I can't disagree with you. That's outside of the bounds of the Constitution. But if they do that, they don't have the right under the Constitution to take the State with them.
That is part of the United States, unless removed from it by an act of Amendment to the Constitution.
Geoschmo