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Day by Day Journal, Page 6, Right to Secede

"right to secede"

The right to secede and break the Union was a debate that stemmed from the beliefs of the Federalists and anti-Federalists of the Revolutionary period. From the start, some Americans, such as Thomas Jefferson, have seen the Constitution as a contract that required the consent of the individual states and their inhabitants. This thinking eventually led into the discussion of the right to secede leading up to the Civil War. A group, like Woods, did believe that secession was legal but ill-advised, usually quoting the fact that slavery would be better protected from inside the Union than from outside.