ABSTRACT
Federalism implies states' rights, and states' rights imply a right of secession. The cause of states' rights is the cause of liberty; they rise or fall together. The republican right of self-government and the right of self-determination both necessarily incorporate the right of secession—that a people may withdraw from an imperial power to defend its liberty, property, culture, and faith. The states'-rights interpretation of the Constitution was not, as its enemies have alleged, a mere theoretical rationalization made up for the defense of slavery. It is, rather, a living heritage of great power, absolutely central to the understanding of the American liberty. Lord Acton, the great British historian who devoted his life to the study of liberty and to what was conducive to and inimical to the establishment and preservation of liberty, wrote shortly after the war that the defeat at Appomattox was a greater setback for genuine liberty than Waterloo had been a victory.
