From questions of this class spring all our constitutional
controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities.
If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the
Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing
the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority
in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent
which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own
will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by
such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new
confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as
portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who
cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper
of doing this.

Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose
a new union as to produce harmony only and prevent renewed secession?

Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A
majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations,
and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions
and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever
rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity
is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is
wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy
or despotism in some form is all that is left.

I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional
questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that
such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit