Here is Lincoln's bizarre view of sovereignty, in connection with the concept of secession:
"...What is sovereignty in the political sense of the term? Would it be far wrong to define it "a political community without a political superior"? Tested by this, no one of our states, except Texas, ever was a sovereignty. And even Texas gave up the character on coming into the union… The states have their status in the union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law and by revolution.… The union is older than any of the states, and in fact it created them as states… Unquestionably the states have the power and rights reserved to them in and by the national Constitution; but among these surely are not included all conceivable powers, however mischievous or destructive, but, at most, such only as were known in the world at the time as governmental powers; and certainly a power to destroy the government itself had never been known as a governmental… Power… Whatever concerns the whole should be confided to the whole Dash to the general government; while whatever concerns only the state should be left exclusively to the state… Whether the national Constitution in defining boundaries between the two has as applied the principle with exact accuracy is not to be question we are all bound by that defining… What is now combated is the position that secession is consistent with the constitution Dash is lawful and peaceful… The principal… Is one of disintegration, and upon which no government can possibly endure...." Lincoln, Message to Congress, July 4, 1861.
Lincoln's views here are at the extreme fringe of scholarship in his time, and are not borne out by later scholars such as Bailyn, Palmer, etc., themselves liberals of a misguided Whiggish stamp, according to J C D Clark whom I consider canonical.
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