This is part one of a series I did on the Civil War. I have to split it into 2 parts for this site. Here's part 1a A case for secession The Articles of Confederation were written need the time of the Declaration of Independance. They were our first Constitution & had their problems. Under the Articles of Confederation, artitcle 13 states "The Articles of Confederation shall be inviolably observed by every State, and the union shall be perpetuated; nor shall any alteration, at any time hereafter, be made in any of them, unless such alteration, be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the Legislatures of every State". But article 7 of the Constitution states" The ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the same" Since they did not expect some States, i.e. Rhode Island, who boycotted the Convention, or New York who walked out, something needed to be changed. It was necessary to refer it to an authority higher than that of Congress and the state legislatures- that is, to the people of the states, assembled by their representatives in convention. Since State leglislatures operate under restricted power, this made them suborbanate to the people of the states assembled. In this article (7) provision was made for the secession of a part of the states from a union which, when formed, had been declared perpetual and it's terms and articles to be inviolably observed by every state. Since the Constitution says nothing about being "perpetual", secession from it is less convoluted.
