Here we can read that James Madison says that you are wrong. According to Madison the Federal Government has sovereignty.
The Constitution of the U. S. divides the sovereignty; the portions surrendered by the States, composing the Federal sovereignty over specified subjects; the portions retained forming the sovereignty of each over the residuary subjects within its sphere. If sovereignty cannot be thus divided, the Political System of the United States is a chimaera, mocking the vain pretensions of human wisdom. If it can be so divided, the system ought to have a fair opportunity of fulfilling the wishes & expectations which cling to the experiment.
And now Madison again proves you wrong. A State has no authority to remove itself from the compact. Now I know that you expressed your fear of reading text before calling a "text dump" but read this text and understand exactly what this founder was saying. Madison is clearly asserting that a single State cannot secede because it is not the greater good of the situation. What he is geting at is that by allowing the States to secede at will for whatever reason that it would create the same unsustainable attributes of the other governments that they considered unusable as a model of Government.
Its time for you to admit that you are not concerned with Constitutional law nor what the founders wanted. Just admit that society today is not what you want and that the Constitution stands in your way. You want change but "We the people" stands in your way.
You can read the entire letter at the link.
Union: James Madison to Nicholas P. Trist
It is the nature & essence of a compact that it is equally obligatory on the parties to it, and of course that no one of them can be liberated therefrom without the consent of the others, or such a violation or abuse of it by the others, as will amount to a dissolution of the compact.
Applying this view of the subject to a single community, it results, that the compact being between the individuals composing it, no individual or set of individuals can at pleasure, break off and set up for themselves, without such a violation of the compact as absolves them from its obligations. It follows at the same time that, in the event of such a violation, the suffering party rather than longer yield a passive obedience may justly shake off the yoke, and can only be restrained from the attempt by a want of physical strength for the purpose. The case of individuals expatriating themselves, that is leaving their country in its territorial as well as its social & political sense, may well be deemed a reasonable privilege, or rather as a right impliedly reserved. And even in this case equitable conditions have been annexed to the right which qualify the exercise of it.
Applying a like view of the subject to the case of the U. S. it results, that the compact being among individuals as imbodied into States, no State can at pleasure release itself therefrom, and set up for itself. The compact can only be dissolved by the consent of the other parties, or by usurpations or abuses of power justly having that effect. It will hardly be contended that there is anything in the terms or nature of the compact, authorizing a party to dissolve it at pleasure.
It is indeed inseparable from the nature of a compact, that there is as much right on one side to expound it & to insist on its fulfilment according to that exposition, as there is on the other so to expound it as to furnish a release from it; and that an attempt to annul it by one of the parties, may present to the other, an option of acquiescing in the annulment, or of preventing it as the one or the other course may be deemed the lesser evil. This is a consideration which ought deeply to impress itself on every patriotic mind, as the strongest dissuasion from unnecessary approaches to such a crisis. What would be the condition of the States attached to the Union & its Govt. and regarding both as essential to their well-being, if a State placed in the midst of them were to renounce its Federal obligations, and erect itself into an independent and alien nation?
What we have, once again, is Madison still expanding his idea of a sovereign government, something he continued from his rejected Virginia Plan, on through the ratification of the Constitution.
The fact that Madison is speaking from his own opinion only, and no authority whatsoever, can be recognized by Madison being forced to acknowledge the "if" of such a dual sovereignty being unable to exist, "
If sovereignty cannot be thus divided", then it is a "chimera", a mythical beast of Madison's own fabrication. Madison has inherently recognized that what he postulates here, is not the founding principle of this country, or else he would not be saying "if" a full FORTY-PLUS years after this nation's formation.
Madison is doing nothing but advancing his pre-constitutonal belief in the need of a sovereign national government, which is not what we got. Sovereignty by definiton is not something that can be divided, it is an entity with singular authority. If the federal government were sovereign, then the states would not be declaring the limits to its authority.
This is expressed by the portion of this letter that you cut off immediately before what you quote:
No other Government can furnish a key to its true character. Other Governments present an individual & indivisible sovereignty. The Constitution of the U. S. divides the sovereignty; the portions surrendered by the States,
Sovereignty is either there and held by an entity, or it is not. Sovereignty cannot be passed by one entity to another. In such cases, there is no sovereignty pass on to another at all, but only the latter party acting with a fiduciary duty to the sovereign authority, wherein the federal government acts as the trustee of the sovereign states, and with their authority, but only within certain terms. As with any fiduciary agreement of trust, the the trustee's duties can be denied by the authority, and particularly so when that trustee has violated its trust. While a sovereign state may withdraw its trust agreement with the federal government, it cannot withdraw or alter that of the other several states, and this is true by definition.
This recognition has been further supported by the Supreme Court in Pollard's Lessee, which stated:
"To Alabama belong the navigable waters and soils under them, in controversy in this case, subject to the rights surrendered by the Constitution to the United States; and no compact that might be made between her and the United States could diminish or enlarge these rights."
"Alabama is, therefore, entitled to the sovereignty and jurisdiction over all the territory within her limits ... to maintain any other doctrine, is to deny that Alabama has been admitted into the union on an equal footing with the original states ... to Alabama belong the navigable waters and soils under them."
Just as the states have no sovereign authority over any other states, they have no authority to prohibit another state from choosing its own course. Similarly, as per Pollard's Lessee, no state may forfeit that sovereignty even by its own previous agreement to do so to the federal government!
Think about that. The states cannot forfeit their sovereignty to a federal government, not even over territory in its boundaries which it agreed to pass to the federal government, and therefore cannot forfeit any sovereignty to a federal government, not even in part, as argued by Madison.
This interpretation is further supported by the previously discussed letter from Thomas Jefferson to William B. Giles, December 26, 1825, in which Jefferson discusses the "choice" between two evils, but says there can be "no hesitation" in this choice. Were not the states the sole possessors of sovereignty, the states would not be making the choice, but rather the federal government would be doing so. Jefferson makes no mention of any "choice" on the part of that federal government at all, as it has no sovereignty of its own upon which to found that choice.
Madison is not a federalist from the perspective of federalism creating a limited federal government, but rather a nationalist, with this form of nationalist sovereign government never being adopted by the Constitutional Convention, and never being any portion of what was agreed to by the sovereign states.
In brief, yes, it is possible for the founders to utter complete and total ********, totally in conflict with the Constitution, and Madison here is prime example of just that.
