Straight from the horse’s mouth

(Via The Patriot Post)

I’m putting this out there for the crowd that contends on some other blogs that the Southern States had no right to secede from the Union during the War Between the States. It seems to me to refute, once and for all, the position against legal secession. If it was a voluntary act to join, then a State should be equally able to leave, either voluntarily or by expulsion by the remainder of the several States.

Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its own voluntary act. In this relation, then, the new Constitution will, if established, be a FEDERAL, and not a NATIONAL constitution.

James Madison in Federalist No. 39, 1788