al associations, implies coming into a
league, treaty, or confederacy, by one hitherto a stranger to
it; and secession implies departing from such league or
confederacy. The people of the United States have used no such
form of expression in establishing the present Government."[55]

Repeating and reiterating in many forms what is substantially the same
idea, and attributing the use of the terms which he attacks to an
ulterior purpose, Mr. Webster says:

"This is the reason, sir, which makes it necessary to abandon
the use of constitutional language for a new vocabulary, and to
substitute, in the place of plain, historical facts, a series of
assumptions. This is the reason why it is necessary to give new
names to things; to speak of the Constitution, not as a
constitution, but as a compact; and of the ratifications by the
people, not as ratifications, but as acts of accession."[56]

In these and similar passages, Mr. Webster virtually concedes that, if
the Constitution _were_ a compact; if the Union _were_ a confederacy; if
the States _had_, as States, severally acceded to it--all which
propositions he denies--then the sovereignty of the States and their
right to secede from the Union would be deducible.

Now, it happens that these very terms--"compact," "confederacy,"
"accede," and the like--were the terms in familiar use by the authors of
the Constitution and their associates with reference to that instrument
and its ratification. Other writers, who have examined the subject since
the late war gave it an interest which it had never commanded before,
have collected such an array of evidence in this behalf that it is
necessary only to cite a few examples.

The following language of Mr. Gerry, of Massachusetts, in the Convention
of 1787, has already been referred to: "If nine out of thirteen States
can dissolve _the compact_, six out of nine will be just as able to
dissolve _the new one_ hereafter."

Mr. Gouverneur Morris, one of the most pronounced advocates of a strong
central government, in the Convention, said: "He came here to form _a
compact_ for the good of Americans. He was ready to do so with all the
States. He hoped and believed they all would enter into such a
_compact_. If they would not, he would be ready to join with any States
that would. But, as the _compact_ was to be voluntary, it is in vain for
the Eastern States to insist on what the Southern States wi