A House Divided: Was Secession Constitutional? II

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: When the South removed itself from the Union in 1860 and 1861, its partisans asserted that it was perfectly within its constitutional rights to exit from said compact, because states had freely joined the United States by ratifying the constitution. States that had joined could unjoin, therefore any attempt to force them to remain in the Union was an illegitimate enterprise. Secession was clearly constitutional.