Those who don’t support the “compact theory” of the Constitution will often argue that the ratifying conventions instead of the legislatures were actually the people as a whole approving the Constitution.
I would think if that is their argument would the fact that Virginia had a convention about withdrawing from the Union be “of the people” as well. Therefore…. even by their rules, Virginia had the right to leave the union since it was the “voice of the people”
No, you are not missing anything. The conventions that voted to leave the Union in 1860-61 had larger majorities in favor of secession than what is assumed were for it in 1776. And, they were elected by the people of their respective states.
People who claim that one American people ratified the Constitution need to consider several bits of pertinent data:
1) That’s not what Article VII of the Constitution says;
2) If that were true, Rhode Island and North Carolina would not have been outside the Union when the First Congress convened;
3) Federalists of the ratification campaign, such as James Madison in The Federalist #39, said that ratification was a federal (not a national) act–that is, that there were plural parties to it;
4) George Nicholas, one of three leading Federalist orators in the Virginia Ratification Convention, explained to his fellow delegates that if they ratified the Constitution, they would be one of thirteen parties to a compact (not one of thirteen parts of one party to … whatever); and
5) Under Article V of the Constitution, it is a certain number of states, not even necessarily a majority of the American people, who can amend the Constitution–just as Article VII did not require a majority of the American people to ratify the Constitution.
And on, and on, and on.
I deal with this question at length in JAMES MADISON AND THE MAKING OF AMERICA. Madison and his confreres–Jefferson, Taylor, Nicholas, Nicholas, Pendleton, and others–insisted consistently that the federal Constitution was a federal one, not a national one.