Question:
What the Federal Government Resume meant, said, and wrote - The U.S.A ?
The only point I would make with regard to the Bill of Rights is that it
would have been quite easy to include therein an explicit guarantee of a
secession
right, if that's what people in the 1790's wanted. But they didn't
include a guarantee of a secession right, because that's not what they wanted then,
just as they do not want it now.
They did not need to be informed that States whose sovereignty was
allowing them to ratify or not a document that they allow it to resume its
powers after they had explicitly made that assertion themselves. Does the
Constitution say the States may NOT resume these powers? If so, where?
Answer:
-The Constitution delegates certain powers to the
federal government. It also denies certain powers of government to
the states. No single state, on its own authority, can
constitutionally deny the federal government the right to exercise
those powers delegated to the feds, not even deny the feds the power
to exercise those powers within the borders of the state. And no
single state, on its own authority, can constitutionally exercise any
of the powers of government denied to it under the Constitution, not
even within its own borders.
Now, if Virginia had indeed claimed that the state of Virginia had the
right to resume powers of government, delegated to the federal
government, perverted to its injury and oppression, the question would
arise whether that is lawfully permitted given the supremacy clause.
But when Virginia seceded in 1861, it did far more than resume this or
that power of government allegedly perverted to the injury and
oppression of Virginians by the federal government. Almost all of the
powers of government it claimed to resume were powers which had not
been so perverted, and which Virginia did not allege had been so
perverted. For example: The power to grant titles of nobility, denied
to the federal government under Article I, Section 9, but also denied
to the states under Article I, Section 10. Since this power, denied
to the federal government, had never been exercised by the federal
government, there was no basis for any claim by Virginia that it had
been perverted by the feds to the injury and oppression of Virginians,
and no basis for any claim, based on a twisted reading of Virginia's
1788 ratification instrument, that such a power, explicitly denied to
the states, could be "resumed" by the state.
