Virginia, Maryland, and Rhode Island Explicitly Reserved (in the Act of Ratifying the Constitution) their Right to Secede; One Can Easily Deduce a Right to Secession from the Language of the Tenth Amendment

Initially, many northerners conceded the validity of secession. In fact, some abolitionists had been calling for northern secession for years. In Congress, several congressmen from northern states proposed amendments to limit the right of secession, de facto conceding that the right of secession already existed. And, logically, it had to exist, because without such a right, the American colonies/states could not have seceded from the British Empire.

The Federalists always insisted during the ratification debates-knowing they had to in order to win approval for the Constitution-that the states were individual parties to a federal compact. Spelling out the logic of the compact, three states-Virginia, Maryland, and Rhode Island-explicitly reserved (in the act of ratifying the Constitution) their right to secede from the Union. And one can easily deduce a right to secession from the language of the Tenth Amendment: because the Constitution does not prohibit secession, that power, like all the other "powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states," is "reserved to the states."

Yet, in his inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln called secession an impossibility. Representative Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut must have been surprised at this, as he had only weeks before proposed an amendment to the Constitution forbidding secession without the consent of Congress, the president, and the other states. Still, Lincoln said that states could not secede.

--Kevin R. C. Gutzman, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2007), e-book.