t no government proper ever had a provision in its
organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express
provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure
forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not
provided for in the instrument itself.

Again: If the United States be not a government proper, but an
association of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a
contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it?
One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak--but does
it not require all to lawfully rescind it?

Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition that
in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history
of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution.
It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was
matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was
further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen States expressly
plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of
Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects
for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more
perfect Union."

But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the
States be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the
Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.

It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can
lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that
effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or
States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or
revolutionary, according to circumstances.

I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the
Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care,
as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of
the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem
to be only a simple duty on my part, and I shall perform it so far
as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall
withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the
contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the
declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally defend and
maintain itself.

In doi