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The difference came down to this: The Southern States insisted that the United States was, in last analysis, what its name implied -- a Union of States.
To their leaders the Constitution was a compact made by the people of sovereign states, who therefore retained the right to secede from it.
This right of the State, its upholders contended, was essential to maintain the federal balance and protect the liberty of the people from the danger of centralizing power in the Union government.
The champions of the Union maintained that the Constitution had formed, fundamentally, the united people of America, that it was a compact among sovereign citizens rather than states, and that therefore the states had no right to secede, though the citizens could.
Writing to Speed on August 24, 1855, Lincoln made the latter point clear.
In homely terms whose timeliness is startling today, he thus declared his own right to secede.
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