Excerpt from The Union-State: A Letter to Our States-Rights Friend The production of these pages originated in a brief correspondence with a citizen of one of the North-western States, who had, in a recent publication, presented an argument in defense of the States of the Southern Confederacy in asserting a right to secede from the Union. In our discussion, the historical question of the actual political status of the thirteen States, at the time when the Constitution was proposed for ratification by them, seemed, to each of us, the question which required to be settled at the outset, as between ourselves. This question - we were agreed - could be decided only by historical evidence from the record, as distinguished from any assumptions, or any arguments, as to the merits or demerits of imaginable systems of government. On looking up this record-evidence, for use in our private correspondence, it seemed to require more verbal citation and careful reference to the accredited sources of information than could well be arranged in the usually indifferent style of epistolary writing. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.