Contrary to M Westbrook's assertion below, the Virginia instrument of
ratification was obscure on this point.  What it said was that if the
federal government overstepped the bounds of its authority, the people could
reclaim the powers it had been delegated.  This statement is susceptible of
interpretation as a statement consistent with John Marshall's insistence in
_McCulloch v. Maryland_ (1819) that the Constitution had been ratified by
one, American people, and that the states had simply been the places in
which that one people had acted because there was no other place in which
the American people could act.  Marshall, by the way, was a member of the
5-man committee that drafted Virginia's instrument of ratification.
Constantine Gutzman

Prof. K.R. Constantine Gutzman
Department of History
Western Connecticut State University

----- Original Message -----
From: "Maitland Westbrook" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2003 3:45 PM
Subject: Re: Lincoln and the Constitution

> I guess no less a 'rebellion' than in 1776, except that the South was
> ready, able and willing to pay the US for everything.
>
> We can, in our PC haze, forget that seccession was in fact legal (even
> reserved in Virginia's ratifaction of the Constitution, once an option of
> the NE, without a problem from other states) and paint it with the brush
> of the victors words. Even Lincoln said that the people who found one form
> of government repressive, had the right to leave it for a better one,
> which the South did peacefully, until provoked by Mr. Lincoln's
> individual, illegal acts.
>
> M. Westbrook

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