powers, whilst the State remains in the
Confederacy, is NATIONAL; and consequently a State remaining in the
Confederacy and enjoying its benefits cannot, by any mode of
procedure, withdraw its citizens from the obligation to obey the
Constitution and the laws passed in pursuance thereof.

But when a State does secede, the Constitution and laws of the
United States cease to operate therein. No power is conferred on
Congress to enforce them. Such authority was denied to the Congress
in the convention which framed the Constitution, because it would be
an act of war of nation against nation--not the exercise of the
legitimate power of a government to enforce its laws on those
subject to its jurisdiction.

The assumption of such a power would be the assertion of a
prerogative claimed by the British Government to legislate for the
Colonies in all cases whatever; it would constitute of itself a
dangerous attack on the rights of the States, and should be promptly
repelled._

There was a great thunder of assent. "That is our doctrine--bred in the
bone--dyed in the weaving! Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Washington,
Henry--further back yet, further back--back to Magna Charta!"

_These principles, resulting from the nature of our system of
confederate States, cannot admit of question in Virginia.

In 1788 our people in convention, by their act of ratification,
declared and made known that the powers granted under the
Constitution, being derived from the people of the United States,
may be resumed by them whenever they shall be perverted to their
injury and oppression.

From what people were these powers derived? Confessedly from the
people of each State, acting for themselves. By whom were they to be
resumed or taken back? By the people of the State who were then
granting them away. Who were to determine whether the powers granted
had been perverted to their injury or oppression? Not the whole
people of the United States, for there could be no oppression of the
whole with their own consent; and it could not have entered into the
conception of the Convention that the powers granted could not be
resumed until the oppressor himself united in such resumption.

They asserted the right to resume in order to guard the people of
Virginia, for whom alone the Convention could act, against the
op