dismiss you, I should expect the return of my property. The States made
no gifts to the Federal Government for the sake of giving, but only
delegated certain powers for specific purposes. They never could have
delegated the power of coercion, since no one State or number of States
possessed that power as against their sister States."

"But surely, in entering into the bonds of union, they formed a
contract with each other which should be inviolable."

"Then, at the worst, the seceding States are guilty of a breach of
contract with the remaining States, but not with the General Government,
with which they made no contract. They formed a union, it is true. But
of what? Of sovereignties. How can those States be sovereignties which
admit a power above them, possessing the right of coercion? To admit the
right of coercion is to deny the existence of sovereignty."

"You can find nothing in the Constitution to intimate the right of
secession."

"Because its framers considered the right sufficiently established by
the very nature of the confederation. The fears upon the subject that
were expressed by Patrick Henry, and other zealous supporters of State
Rights, were quieted by the assurances of the opposite party, who
ridiculed the idea that a convention, similar to that which in each
State adopted the Constitution, could not thereafter, in representation
of the popular will, withdraw such State from the confederacy. You
have, in proof of this, but to refer to the annals of the occasion."

"I discard the theory as utterly inconsistent with any legislative
power. We have either a government or we have not. If we have one, it