THE FIRST SECESSION | 2006-05-14
It has been said that the US Constitution did not address the question of secession.
It COULDN'T.
The Article of Confederation, agreed to by all thirteen states, began by stating that this was a "Perpetual Union."
It also stated that any change in the Articles required a UNANIMOUS vote of ALL thirteen states.
The Constitution decalred that if nine states ratified the new Constitution, the Perpetual Union would end, and those nine states would be the new Union.
On April 30, 1789, when President Washington took the oath of office in New York City and the new Constitution went into operation, there were exactly eleven states in the Union, the same number as the Old Confederacy.
The new Federal Government was in no position to say that eleven states could not seced and form a new Union if they wanted to.
North Carolina joined the Union in 1790. Rhode Island would never have joined it if Congress had not threatened to treat Rhode Island, which depended on the Perpetual Union, as a foreign state.
No, the question of secession from "one Nation, Indivisibe" never came up in the framing of the United States Constitution.
If it had, the Union would have been aborted at birth.