Can A State Secede? Sovereignty In Its Bearing Upon Secession And State Rights

Cambridge: Dakin & Metcalf, 1865. First Edition. Wraps. very good. Octavo; pp; 36; original printed gray paper wrappers; wrappers browned at the edges. Emory Washburn (1800 - 1877) was a United States lawyer, politician, and historian. He was Governor of Massachusetts for one term (from 1854 to 1855), and served for many years on the faculty of Harvard Law School. His history of the early years of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is still considered a foundational work on the subject. Washburn was a respected legal scholar who wrote this pamphlet in early 1865, just before the end of the War. He makes a close examination of the formation of the Union, with appropriate precedents from American and English law, and concludes that a State has no power to secede. He discusses the implications of that conclusion for a constitutional policy of Reconstruction.