The Right to Secede ...
Secession settled, Garfield declared,
in 'high court of war … there’s no appeal'

By DOUG LIPPMAN
Bugle Staff Writer

Much has been made of the fact that approximately one third of the West Point graduates fought for the Confederacy. Unfortunately, there has been misinformation here which has been manipulated to support one cause or the other. Officers and cadets from West Point took an oath, but it was not to the United States, or the president. Instead, their oath was to the Constitution.

This left a great deal of room for interpretation. Even today, the top legal experts in the U. S. Supreme Court are seldom able to come to a unanimous decision on the constitutionality of controversial issues. In addition, cadets at the military academy studied the Constitution from William Rawle’s text, A View of the Constitution of the United States, which supported the right to secede.

Following the war, there was an outcry from Radical Republics to bring Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee to trial for treason. Of course, trying Lee would have been a direct violation of Grant’s terms of surrender at Appomattox. U. S. Grant even threatened to resign from the army if Lee were brought to trial. Meanwhile, Jefferson Davis was incarcerated for two years, and finally freed when members of the Supreme Court advised President Andrew Johnson that a conviction would require proving that secession was illegal, and they feared this might be impossible. If such proof could not be had, the Northern victory would become hollow, as Southern independence would then be assured.

So what do the experts say on the subject?

Dr. Donald Livingston, one of the leading authorities on the subject, stated that the right to “secede is a timeless principle of all federative politics.” Does it make sense that if a state voluntarily enters into a contract, it must go to war to withdraw? Alexander Hamilton, a staunch Federalist, conceded the right of states to secede from the Union designed in the Philadelphia Convention. James Madison, known widely as “the Father of the Constitution,” stated clearly in the 39th Federalist “that this assent and ratification is to be given by the people, not as individuals composing the entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent states to which they respectively belong.” At the Virginia Convention of 1788, delegate Madison further declared “if we be dissatisfied with the national government, if we choose to renounce it, this is an additional safeguard to our defense.”

Previously, we mentioned that the Revolutionary War was a secession from the British Empire. Making the situation more compelling, the Revolutionary War was, in the truest sense, a civil war, especially in the southern colonies. Brother fought brother, and neighbor fought neighbor as Patriots and Tories met in mortal combat. Here, some of the most savage fighting of the War for Independence took place. Just as many Confederates fled to Latin American after the end of the American Civil War, many Tories fled to Canada in order to continue living under the British crown.

Regardless of one’s viewpoint on secession, the matter has been officially resolved. Ironically, no legal settlement ever emerged, despite the debates on the floor of Congress. The legality of secession became a mute topic. Force of arms left no room for discussion. Gen. James Garfield, who later became president, explained the situation quite clearly. The issue had been settled “in the high court of war by a degree from which there is no appeal.”