Exit Strategy (Part 2 of 2)
	If a rule regarding leaving the union had existed and had been ambiguous they might have used the courts to make their case for secession directly.   In fact, some of the rules in the Constitution describe the process by which the nation’s Supreme Court could be used to settle questions regarding the Constitution.  But with no rule at all, they must have wondered.   How do we do this?   Do we simply make an announcement that we’re leaving?   Would the “club” just let us go?   Should we try to get a law passed that makes departure legal?   Should we try to amend the Constitution to create new rules that describe an orderly process of secession?   Both of the latter two processes would have used the existing rules to make a new one.   They undoubtedly thought of all that.   But as a minority, they also must have recognized that they had no chance of amending the rules (the Constitution) or of passing legislation in their favor.   They were left with little choice other than to essentially announce “we are no longer in your club”.   In essence they made their own version of a declaration of independence.   Of course they did have one other choice.   And that was to stay.   They chose not to. What seems amazing is the reaction to their announcement.   Why shouldn't they have been allowed to go?  When the original thirteen colonies had themselves declared their independence in 1776, the British had responded with violence.  It is not hard to imagine that the leaders of the United States must have agonized over what to do about the states that wanted to leave.   Maybe we should just let them go?   Maybe we should try to convince them to stay?   In the end, unable to convince the rebels to stay, they decided to force them to stay, just as the British had tried to do.   In essence that decision was the making of a new (but still unwritten) rule.  And the new rule was “once you join you may not leave”.   And that decision wasn’t enforced through the courts or through the legislature.   It was enforced through the raw power of a swarming army. Would the people who wrote the Constitution have agreed to that?   And why didn’t they account for a method of leaving in the first place?   Did they overlook the possibility that any state might want to back out later?  Given the attention that they paid to many lesser matters, it is hard to imagine that they overlooked something as important as that.   Did they realize that they would never get all thirteen aspirants to agree to any rule, so they decided to just ignore the matter?   Would they have arrived at the rule that evolved, which was “if you try to leave and resist us, then we will kill you”?    And why didn’t the applicants ask about the rules for leaving?   Were the advantages inherent to being admitted to this new and alluring club so many and so favorable that no member worried about the possibility that they might change their minds later?   As strange as that latter possibility seems, it doesn’t actually seem too unlikely given that sixteen more applicants have agreed to join after the conclusion of the war that decided the matter.   Each member that has applied and been admitted since the end of the war has essentially said “well, you may not have had a rule initially, but we can see that you do now and we can live with it”. How ironic that the framers sought to prevent chaos, coup, and revolt by creating three balanced bodies that made, administered, and decided on laws, intending that the country would be ruled by law and reason, and yet the nation was not held together by any of those three institutions but was instead held together by blunt warfare.   And how fortunate that the example made by resorting to force did not, in the long run, doom the country to perpetual internal violence. Still, when you join that exercise club, maybe it would be a good idea to read the fine print.
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