The natural converse of _accession_ is _secession_; and, therefore, when it is stated that the people of the States acceded to the union, it may be more plausibly argued that they may secede from it. _If in adopting the constitution, nothing was done but acceding to a compact, nothing would seem necessary to break it up, but to secede from the same compact._ But the term is wholly out of place.... The people of the United States have used no such form of expression in establishing the present government. They do not say that they _accede_ to a league, but they declare that they _ordain and establish_ a constitution. Such are the very words of the instrument itself; and in all the States, without exception, the language used by their conventions was, that they '_ratified_ the constitution;' some of them employing the additional words 'assented to' and 'adopted,' but all of them 'ratifying.'" Note that I have italicized in the quotation certain admissions of Webster, which, in case his premises should be disproved, concede the cause to his adversary. And we will now tell you how Calhoun did disprove those premises. He showed that Webster himself had in a senate speech called the constitution a _constitutional compact_; and that President Washington, in his official announcement to congress, described North Carolina as _acceding_ to the union by the ratification she had at last made of the constitution. As to these two points Calhoun further sustained himself with unquestionable authority and also argument inconfutable by one who, like Webster, did not find the true _ratio decidendi_, that is, the effect of evolution to bring forth the nation. The rest of Calhoun's answer will be considered a little later. But what of it has already been given covers the essentials of the controversy. In supporting his proposition that the States were sovereign when they made the constitution, and kept their entire sovereignty intact afterwards, he was too strong for his antagonist. And yet had his knowledge of the facts been fuller, how much better he could have done. He could have quoted from all the great men who made the constitution and secured its ratification language, in which _accede_ is used again and again in the same sense as it is in his resolutions. Likewise, he could have quoted language in which they designated the constitution as a compact or something synonymous. Madison--to mention only one of many instances--advocating ratification in the Virginia convention, called the constitution "a government of _a federal nature_, consisting of _many coequal sovereignties_." What an effective _argumentum ad hominem_ could Calhoun have found in the provision of the constitution of the State of Webster, to wit: that Massachusetts is free, sovereign, and independent, retaining every power which she has not expressly delegated to the United States.[30]