Jefferson on the Right of Nullification

Old MySpace Blogpost (June 6, 2006):

Many Straussians, Lincoln-idolators (many of whom are Straussians), and other statists like to suppress the fact that the states had the right to secede from the “Union” as well as the right to nullify legislative enactments they thought were unconstitutional. As one piece of evidence that these rights were widely recognized prior to Lincoln’s unconstitutional and unjust war on the South, and not just made up by Calhoun in order to protect the institution of slavery:

November 10, 1798

Resolved, that the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principles of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes, delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self Government; and that whansoever the General Goverment assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: That to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming as to itself, the other party: That the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that as in all other cases of compact among parties having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well as of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.