very conception of a sovereign State.
Secession is simply the repeal by the State of the act of accession to
the Union; and as that act was a free, voluntary act of the State, she
must always be free to repeal it. The Union is a copartnership; a
State in the Union is simply a member of the firm, and has the right to
withdraw when it judges it for its interest to do so. There is no
power in a firm to compel a copartner to remain a member any longer
than be pleases. He is undoubtedly holden for the obligations
contracted by the firm while he remains a member; but for none
contracted after he has withdrawn and given due notice thereof.

So of a sovereign State in the Union. The Union itself, apart from the
sovereign States that compose it, is a mere abstraction, a nullity, and
binds nobody. All its substance and vitality are in the agreement by
which the States constitute themselves a firm or copartnership, for
certain specific purposes, and for which they open an office and
establish an agency under express instructions for the management of
the general affairs of the firm. The State is held jointly and
severally for all the legal obligations of the Union, contracted while
she is in it but no further; and is free to withdraw when she pleases,
precisely as an individual may withdraw from an ordinary business firm.
The remaining copartners have no right of compulsion or coercion
against the seceding member, for he, saving the obligations already
contracted, is as free to withdraw as they are to remain.

The population is fixed to the domain and goes with it; the domain is
attached to the State, and secedes in the secession of the State.
Secession, then, carries the entire State government, people, and
domain out of the Union, and restores ipso facto the State to its
original position of a sovereign State, foreign to the United States.
Being an independent sovereign State, she may enter into a new
confederacy, form a new copartnership, or merge herself in some other
foreign state, as she judges proper or finds opportunity. The States
that seceded formed among themselves a new confederacy, more to their
mind than the one formed in 1787, as they had a perfect right to do,
and in the war just ended they were not rebels nor revolutionists, but
a people fighting for the right of self-government, loyal citizens and
true patriots defending the independence and inviolability of their
country against foreign invaders. They