For forty years from the ratification of the Constitution, it was well understood that the American States were united in a political compact in which certain of their powers had been entrusted to a common agent, while their essential sovereignty and its attendant rights were reserved to themselves. One of these rights was that of secession. It was not until 1830 that the theory of a permanently consolidated nation from which withdrawal was unlawful first made an appearance in Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution. Daniel Webster would rely heavily on Story's work in his debates in Congress with South Carolina Senators Robert Hayne and John C. Calhoun. Story and Webster denied that the Constitution was either "a compact between State governments" or that it had been "established by the people of the several States," asserting that it had instead been established by "the people of the United States in the aggregate." As such, the States were creatures of the Union rather than vice versa, rendering secession not only impossible, but treasonous. This book, written in 1840 by a Virginia lawyer who served as Secretary of the Navy in the Tyler Administration, and later re-issued in Philadelphia in 1863 and again in New York in 1868, is a brilliant response to the Story/Webster theory and also serves as a challenge to the modern Leviathan State which is modern America.
About the Author: Abel Parker Upshur was born in Northampton County, Virginia in 1790, one of the twelve children of Littleton Upshur, a member of the Virginia Legislature and Captain in the army during the War of 1812. Young Upshur attended Princeton University, but was expelled for participating in a student rebellion. Not having graduated, he returned to Virginia to study law with a private firm and was admitted to the bar in 1810. Upshur served one term in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1812, was Commonwealth's Attorney for Richmond (1816-1823), ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Congress in 1826, was elected to the Virginia General Court in 1826, and was a delegate to the State Constitutional Convention of 1829-1830. Throughout his political career, Upshur was a staunch advocate of States' Rights. He defended the nullification movement in South Carolina in a series of letters entitled "An Exposition of the Virginia Resolutions of 1798." He was appointed U.S. Secretary of the Navy by President John Tyler in 1841 and succeeded Daniel Webster as Secretary of State in 1843. Upshur was one of several who were killed aboard the USS Princeton when one of the ship's guns exploded while on a Potomac cruise on February 28, 1844. He was buried at the Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.