William Rawles text was the standard Constitutional Law work at the US Military
Academy from 1829-1860.  Quite a few Virginians graduated from that 
institution you might have heard of...RE Lee, Stonewall Jackson, etc.  So his
teaching had quite an influence on many of the leaders of Virginia.

On the constitutional history of secession, I would suggest A Constitutional
History of Secession by John Remington Graham and One Nation, Indivisible? 
by Robert F. Hawes, Jr.

Constitutionally, there were no good reasons to assume the Union was perpetual.
Virginia did not derive its existence and powers from the Constitution.
Virginia's sovereign existence and powers pre-dated the Constitution and state powers
were the source of Federal power.  The Constitution is clear that Virginia
and the other states possess all the powers that were not specifically
delegated to the Federal government in the Constitution, unless the states were
prohibited from utilizing certain powers.  The Constitution prohibits the 
states from doing specific things.  States can't declare war or make treaties
etc.  It does not prohibit a state from seceding.  

Does the Constitution provide that states cannot secede?  No.  Does the 
Constitution give the Federal government the right to prevent states from 
seceding?  No. Does the Constitution provide that the Union ceases to exist
if one or more states secede from it? No.

JDS





> Date: Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:39:52 -0400
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Secession
> To: [log in to unmask]
> 
> From Kevin Hardwick:
> 
> On to the substance of Mr. Southmayd's email--and ignoring the
> irrelevant asides and digressions he makes to distract us from the
> question at hand.
> 
> In 1860 Virginia voted Constitutional Unionist.  Whatever may be the
> distinguished lineage of secessionist thinkers, including perhaps St.
> George Tucker or William Rawles (was William Rawles a Virginian?  Did he
> teach in Virginia?  If not, who cares what he thought, for our purposes
> here?), the inconvenient fact remains that the fundamental premise of
> Constitutional Unionism, as a political movement, was hostile to
> secession.  Constitutional Unionism rejected the notion that secession
> is constitutional.  Come the point where the rubber hits the road, that
> is, when Virginians cast their votes in 1860, the majority of them voted
> for political parties that were explicitly and fundamentally hostile to
> the idea that secession, or nullification, were constitutional.  In
> 1860, the majority of Virginians opposed secession, and they did so for,
> among others, constitutional reasons.  
> 
> Mr. Southmayd's grasp of Constitutional history is deficient.  There
> were good constitutional reasons for presuming that the Federal Union
> was, and should be, perpetual.  The notion that Lincoln ginned up
> original constitutional theory to bolster his understanding of Union war
> aims in 1861 is just flat out wrong.  One good place to start with this
> would be David Hendrickson's excellent study of the Constitution, PEACE
> PACT.  Hendrickson takes seriously the writings of guys like Alexander
> Hamilton and James Madison, writing under the pseudonym "Publius," in
> the early numbers of the Federalist Papers, that a perpetual union is
> necessary to prevent the formation of regional confederations, with
> seriously negative consequences for the prospect of government
> stability, the rule of law, and social order in all of the states.
> 
> An excellent, and balanced study of precisely this issue is Kenneth
> Stampp's seminal 1978 essay in the Journal of American History, "The
> Concept of Perpetual Union," JAH 65:1 (June 1978), pp. 5-33.
> 
>  
> 
> From J. Douglas Deal:
> 
> Good points all. A few more thoughts: you don't say "legally
> binding"--that was my unfortunate shorthand to describe a politically
> significant ritual. I don't deny that some rituals are politically
> meaningful, but I do wonder about exactly what recitation of the pledge
> signifies or accomplishes. I still think the majority of those who do
> the reciting have little idea what they are saying or why. It would be
> nice if all teachers were as responsible and as committed to civic
> learning as those you describe. Again, I'm not sure who is "normal" and
> who an outlier.
> 
> Finally, did the Civil War answer the  question of (in)divisibility?
> Maybe it did, but that indivisible union proceeded to craft constraints
> that disenfranchised many thousands of workers, divided and conquered
> many others, and generally privileged the wealthy over the poor. The
> divisions of an earlier era were supplanted by a yawning divide of class
> and color that has been awfully difficult to bridge.
> 
>  
>  
> 
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