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Secession in the United States

In the context of the United States, secession primarily refers to the voluntary withdrawal of one or more states from the Union that constitutes the United States; but may loosely refer to leaving a state or territory to form a separate territory or new state, or to the severing of an area from a city or county within a state. Advocates for secession are called disunionists by their contemporaries in various historical documents.

A New Hampshire man holds a sign advocating for secession during the 2012 presidential campaign

Threats and aspirations to secede from the United States, or arguments justifying secession, have been a feature of the country's politics almost since its birth. Some have argued for secession as a constitutional right and others as from a natural right of revolution. In Texas v. White (1869), the Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional, while commenting that revolution or consent of the states could lead to a successful secession.

The most serious attempt at secession was advanced in the years 1860 and 1861 as 11 Southern states each declared secession from the United States, and joined to form the Confederate States of America, a procedure and body that the government of the United States refused to accept. The movement collapsed in 1865 with the defeat of Confederate forces by Union armies in the American Civil War.[1]

In the history of the United States, the only territories to have been withdrawn from the country are the small portions of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 49th parallel north, established as the U.S.–British (now Canadian) border by the Treaty of 1818; and the territory of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, which became independent after the Treaty of Manila. The former is today part of Canada, while the latter corresponds to the Republic of the Philippines.

Boundaries of U.S. territories, such as the Nebraska Territory, were not defined precisely. The boundaries of each new state are set in the document admitting the former territory to the Union as a state, which Congress must approve. There are three instances in U.S. history in which a portion of a state successfully seceded to create a new state: Kentucky which separated from Virginia in 1792, Maine separating from Massachusetts in 1820, and West Virginia, which also separated from Virginia, in 1863. [2][3]

American Revolution edit

The Declaration of Independence states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.[4]

Historian Pauline Maier argues that this narrative asserted "the right of revolution, which was, after all, the right Americans were exercising in 1776"; and notes that Thomas Jefferson's language incorporated ideas explained at length by a long list of 17th-century writers, including John Milton, Algernon Sidney, John Locke, and other English and Scottish commentators, all of whom had contributed to the development of the Whig tradition in 18th-century Britain.[4]

The right of revolution expressed in the Declaration was immediately followed with the observation that long-practiced injustice is tolerated until sustained assaults on the rights of the entire people have accumulated enough force to oppress them;[5] then they may defend themselves.[6][7] This reasoning was not original to the Declaration, but can be found in many prior political writings: Locke's Two Treatises of Government (1690); the Fairfax Resolves of 1774; Jefferson's own Summary View of the Rights of British America; the first Constitution of Virginia, which was enacted five days prior to the Declaration;[8] and Thomas Paine's Common Sense (1776):

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; ...mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms ("of Government", editor's addition) to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing...a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.[9]

Gordon S. Wood quotes President John Adams: "Only repeated, multiplied oppressions placing it beyond all doubt that their rulers had formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties, could warrant the concerted resistance of the people against their government".[10]

Pre-Civil War political and legal views on secession edit

Overview edit

With origins in the question of states' rights, the issue of secession was argued in many forums and advocated from time to time in both the North and South in the decades after adopting the Constitution and before the American Civil War. Historian Maury Klein described the contemporary debate: "Was the Republic a unified nation in which the individual states had merged their sovereign rights and identities forever, or was it a federation of sovereign states joined together for specific purposes from which they could withdraw at any time?"[11] He observed that "the case can be made that no result of the [American Civil] war was more important than the destruction, once and for all...of the idea of secession".[12]

Historian Forrest McDonald argued that after adopting the Constitution, "there were no guidelines, either in theory or in history, as to whether the compact could be dissolved and, if so, on what conditions". However, during "the founding era, many a public figure...declared that the states could interpose their powers between their citizens and the power of the federal government, and talk of secession was not unknown". But according to McDonald, to avoid resorting to the violence that had accompanied the Revolution, the Constitution established "legitimate means for constitutional change in the future". In effect, the Constitution "completed and perfected the Revolution".[13]

Whatever the intentions of the Founders, threats of secession and disunion were a constant in the political discourse of Americans preceding the Civil War. Historian Elizabeth R. Varon wrote:

[O]ne word ("disunion") contained, and stimulated, their (Americans') fears of extreme political factionalism, tyranny, regionalism, economic decline, foreign intervention, class conflict, gender disorder, racial strife, widespread violence and anarchy, and civil war, all of which could be interpreted as God's retribution for America's moral failings. Disunion connoted the dissolution of the republic—the failure of the Founders' efforts to establish a stable and lasting representative government. For many Americans in the North and the South, disunion was a nightmare, a tragic cataclysm that would reduce them to the kind of fear and misery that seemed to pervade the rest of the world. And yet, for many other Americans, disunion served as the main instrument by which they could achieve their political goals.[14]

Abandoning the Articles of Confederation edit

In late 1777, the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, approved the Articles of Confederation for ratification by the individual states. The Confederation government was administered de facto by the Congress under the provisions of the approved (final) draft of the Articles until they achieved ratification—and de jure status—in early 1781. In 1786 delegates of five states (the Annapolis Convention) called for a convention of delegates in Philadelphia to amend the Articles, which would require the unanimous consent of all thirteen states.

The delegates to the Philadelphia Convention convened and deliberated from May to September 1787. Instead of pursuing their official charge they returned a draft (new) Constitution, proposed for constructing and administering a new federal—later also known as "national"—government. They further proposed that the draft Constitution not be submitted to the Congress (where it would require unanimous approval of the states); instead that it be presented directly to the states for ratification in special ratification conventions, and that approval by a minimum of nine state conventions would suffice to adopt the new Constitution and initiate the new federal government; and that only those states ratifying the Constitution would be included in the new government. (For a time, eleven of the original states operated under the Constitution without two non-ratifying states, Rhode Island and North Carolina.) In effect, the delegates proposed to abandon and replace the Articles of Confederation rather than amend them.[a]

Because the Articles had specified a "perpetual union", various arguments have been offered to explain the apparent contradiction (and presumed illegality) of abandoning one form of government and creating another that did not include the members of the original.[b] One explanation was that the Articles of Confederation simply failed to protect the vital interests of the individual states. Necessity then, rather than legality, was the practical factor in abandoning the Articles.[16]

According to historian John Ferling, by 1786 the Union under the Articles was falling apart. James Madison of Virginia and Alexander Hamilton of New York—they who joined to vigorously promote a new Constitution—urged that renewed stability of the Union government was critically needed to protect property and commerce. Both founders were strong advocates for a more powerful central government; they published The Federalist Papers to advocate their cause and became known as the federalists. (Because of his powerful advocacy Madison was later accorded the honorific "Father of the Constitution".)[c] Ferling wrote:

Rumors of likely secessionist movements were unleashed. There was buzz as well that some states planned to abandon the American Union and form a regional confederacy. America, it was said, would go the way of Europe, and ultimately three or four, or more confederacies would spring up. ... Not only would these confederations be capable of taking steps that were beyond the ability of Congress under the articles, but in private some portrayed such a step in a positive light, in as much as the regional union could adopt constitutions that secured property rights and maintained order.[d]

Other arguments that justified abandoning the Articles of Confederation pictured the Articles as an international compact between unconsolidated, sovereign states, any one of which was empowered to renounce the compact at will. (This as opposed to a consolidated union that "totally annihilated, without any power of revival" the sovereign states.)[19] The Articles required that all states were obliged to comply with all requirements of the agreement; thus, permanence was linked to compliance.

'Compliance' was typically perceived as a matter of interpretation by each individual state. Emerich de Vattel, a recognized authority on international law, wrote at the time that "Treaties contain promises that are perfect and reciprocal. If one of the allies fails in his engagements, the other may ... disengage himself in his promises, and ... break the treaty."[19] Thus, each state could unilaterally 'secede' from the Articles of Confederation at will; this argument for abandoning the Articles—for its weakness in the face of secession—was used by advocates for the new Constitution and was featured by James Madison in Federalist No. 43.[e]

St. George Tucker, an influential jurist in the early republic era, and especially in the South, argued that abandoning the Articles of Confederation was the same as seceding from the Articles government. In 1803, he wrote that the unanimous dissolution of the Articles Confederation in 1789 by Act of Congress was legal precedent for future secession(s) from the Constitution one state at a time by state legislatures.

And since the seceding states, by establishing a new constitution and form of federal government among themselves, without the consent of the rest, have shown that they consider the right to do so whenever the occasion may, in their opinion require it, we may infer that the right has not been diminished by any new compact which they may since have entered into, since none could be more solemn or explicit than the first, nor more binding upon the contracting partie[s].[21]

Others, such as Chief Justice John Marshall who had been a Virginia delegate to its Ratification (Federal) Convention, denied that ratifying the Constitution was a precedent for a future one-off dissolution of the Union by an isolated state or states. Writing in 1824, exactly midway between the fall of the Articles of Confederation and the rise of a second self-described American Confederacy, Marshal summarized the issue thusly: "Reference has been made to the political situation of these states, anterior to [the Constitution's] formation. It has been said that they were sovereign, were completely independent, and were connected with each other only by a league. This is true. But, when these allied sovereigns converted their league into a government, when they converted their congress of ambassadors, deputed to deliberate on their common concerns, and to recommend measures of general utility, into a legislature, empowered to enact laws on the most interesting subjects, the whole character in which the states appear underwent a change."[22]

Nationalists for Union in the antebellum America argued the opposite of secession; that indeed the new Constitution inherited perpetuity from the language in the Articles and from other actions done prior to the Constitution. Historian Kenneth Stampp explains their view:

Lacking an explicit clause in the Constitution with which to establish the Union's perpetuity, the nationalists made their case, first, with a unique interpretation of the history of the country prior to the Philadelphia Convention; second, with inferences drawn from certain passages of the Constitution; and third, with careful selections from the speeches and writings of the Founding Fathers. The historical case begins with the postulate that the Union is older than the states. It quotes the reference in the Declaration of Independence to "these united colonies", contends that the Second Continental Congress actually called the states into being [i.e., "colonies" no longer], notes the provision for a perpetual Union in the Articles of Confederation, and ends with the reminder that the preamble to the new Constitution gives as one of its purposes the formation of "a more perfect Union".[23]

Adopting the Constitution edit

Constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar argues that the permanence of the Union of the states changed significantly when the U.S. Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation. This action "signaled its decisive break with the Articles' regime of state sovereignty".[24] By adopting a constitution—rather than a treaty, or a compact, or an instrument of confederacy, etc.—that created a new body of government designed to be senior to the several states, and by approving the particular language and provisions of that new Constitution, the framers and voters made it clear that the fates of the individual states were (severely) changed; and that the new United States was:

Not a "league", however firm; not a "confederacy" or a "confederation"; not a compact on among "sovereign' states"—all these high profile and legally freighted words from the Articles were conspicuously absent from the Preamble and every other operative part of the Constitution. The new text proposed a fundamentally different legal framework.[25]

Patrick Henry adamantly opposed adopting the Constitution because he interpreted its language to replace the sovereignty of the individual states, including that of his own Virginia. He gave his strong voice to the anti-federalist cause in opposition to the federalists led by Madison and Hamilton. Questioning the nature of the proposed new federal government, Henry asked:

The fate ... of America may depend on this. ... Have they made a proposal of a compact between the states? If they had, this would be a confederation. It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government. The question turns, sir, on that poor little thing—the expression, We, the people, instead of the states, of America. ...[26]

The federalists acknowledged that national sovereignty would be transferred by the new Constitution to the whole of the American people—indeed, regard the expression, "We the people ...". They argued, however, that Henry exaggerated the extent to which a consolidated government was being created and that the states would serve a vital role within the new republic even though their national sovereignty was ending. Tellingly, on the matter of whether states retained a right to unilaterally secede from the United States, the federalists made it clear that no such right would exist under the Constitution.[27]

Amar specifically cites the example of New York's ratification as suggestive that the Constitution did not countenance secession. Anti-federalists dominated the Poughkeepsie Convention that would ratify the Constitution. Concerned that the new compact might not sufficiently safeguard states' rights, the anti-federalists sought to insert into the New York ratification message language to the effect that "there should be reserved to the state of New York a right to withdraw herself from the union after a certain number of years."[28] The Madison federalists opposed this, with Hamilton, a delegate at the Convention, reading aloud in response a letter from James Madison stating: "the Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever" [emphasis added]. Hamilton and John Jay then told the Convention that in their view, reserving "a right to withdraw [was] inconsistent with the Constitution, and was no ratification".[28] The New York convention ultimately ratified the Constitution without including the "right to withdraw" language proposed by the anti-federalists.

Amar explains how the Constitution impacted on state sovereignty:

In dramatic contrast to Article VII–whose unanimity rule that no state can bind another confirms the sovereignty of each state prior to 1787 – Article V does not permit a single state convention to modify the federal Constitution for itself. Moreover, it makes clear that a state may be bound by a federal constitutional amendment even if that state votes against the amendment in a properly convened state convention. And this rule is flatly inconsistent with the idea that states remain sovereign after joining the Constitution, even if they were sovereign before joining it. Thus, ratification of the Constitution itself marked the moment when previously sovereign states gave up their sovereignty and legal independence.[29]

Natural right of revolution versus right of secession edit

Debates on the legality of secession often looked back to the example of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Law professor Daniel Farber defined what he considered the borders of this debate:

What about the original understanding? The debates contain scattered statements about the permanence or impermanence of the Union. The occasional references to the impermanency of the Constitution are hard to interpret. They might have referred to a legal right to revoke ratification. But they equally could have referred to an extraconstitutional right of revolution, or to the possibility that a new national convention would rewrite the Constitution, or simply to the factual possibility that the national government might break down. Similarly, references to the permanency of the Union could have referred to the practical unlikelihood of withdrawal rather than any lack of legal power. The public debates seemingly do not speak specifically to whether ratification under Article VII was revocable.[30]

In the public debate over the Nullification Crisis the separate issue of secession was also discussed. James Madison, often referred to as "The Father of the Constitution", strongly opposed the argument that secession was permitted by the Constitution.[31] In a March 15, 1833, letter to Daniel Webster (congratulating him on a speech opposing nullification), Madison discussed "revolution" versus "secession":

I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession". But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy.[32]

Thus Madison affirms an extraconstitutional right to revolt against conditions of "intolerable oppression"; but if the case cannot be made (that such conditions exist), then he rejects secession—as a violation of the Constitution.

During the crisis, President Andrew Jackson, published his Proclamation to the People of South Carolina, which made a case for the perpetuity of the Union; plus, he provided his views re the questions of "revolution" and "secession":[33]

But each State having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute jointly with the other States a single nation, cannot from that period possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation, and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would result from the contravention of a compact, but it is an offense against the whole Union. [emphasis added] To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a nation because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any offense. Secession, like any other revolutionary act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning of terms, and can only be done through gross error, or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties consequent upon a failure.[34]

Some twenty-eight years after Jackson spoke, President James Buchanan gave a different voice—one much more accommodating to the views of the secessionists and the slave states—in the midst of the pre-War secession crisis. In his final State of the Union address to Congress, on December 3, 1860, he stated his view that the South, "after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the Government of the Union"; but he also drew his apocalyptic vision of the results to be expected from secession:[35]

In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties. If this be so, the Confederacy [here referring to the existing Union] is a rope of sand, to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States. In this manner our thirty-three States may resolve themselves into as many petty, jarring, and hostile republics, each one retiring from the Union without responsibility whenever any sudden excitement might impel them to such a course. By this process a Union might be entirely broken into fragments in a few weeks which cost our forefathers many years of toil, privation, and blood to establish.[35]

Alien and Sedition Acts edit

In response to the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts—advanced by the Federalist Party—John Taylor of the Virginia House of Delegates spoke out, urging Virginia to secede from the United States. He argued—as one of many vociferous responses by the Jeffersonian Republicans—the sense of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, adopted in 1798 and 1799, which reserved to those States the rights of secession and interposition (nullification).[36]

Thomas Jefferson, while sitting as Vice President of the United States in 1799, wrote to James Madison of his conviction in "a reservation of th[ose] rights resulting to us from these palpable violations [the Alien and Sedition Acts]" and, if the federal government did not return to

"the true principles of our federal compact, [he was determined to] sever ourselves from that union we so much value, rather than give up the rights of self government which we have reserved, and in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness."[emphasis added][37]

Here Jefferson is arguing in a radical voice (and in a private letter) that he would lead a movement for secession; but it is unclear whether he is arguing for "secession at will" or for "revolution" on account of "intolerable oppression" (see above), or neither. Jefferson secretly wrote (one of) the Kentucky Resolutions, which was done—again—while he was holding the office of Vice President. His biographer Dumas Malone argued that, had his actions become known at the time, Jefferson's participation might have gotten him impeached for (charged with) treason.[38] In writing the first Kentucky Resolution, Jefferson warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold", the Alien and Sedition Acts would "necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood". Historian Ron Chernow says of this "he wasn't calling for peaceful protests or civil disobedience: he was calling for outright rebellion, if needed, against the federal government of which he was vice president." Jefferson "thus set forth a radical doctrine of states' rights that effectively undermined the constitution".[39]

Jeffersonian Republicans were not alone in claiming "reserved rights" against the federal government. Contributing to the rancorous debates during the War of 1812, Founding Father Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania and New York—a Federalist, a Hamilton ally and a primary author of the Constitution who advanced the concept that Americans were citizens of a single Union of the states—was persuaded to claim that "secession, under certain circumstances, was entirely constitutional."[40]

New England Federalists and the Hartford Convention edit

The election of 1800 showed Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party to be on the rise and the Federalists to be declining, and the Federalists felt threatened by initiatives taken by their opponents. They viewed Jefferson's unilateral purchase of the Louisiana territory as violating foundational agreements between the original 13 states; Jefferson transacted the purchase in secret and refused to seek the approval of Congress. The new lands anticipated several future western states which the Federalists feared would be dominated by the Democratic-Republicans. Other things added to the Federalists' alarm, such as the impeachment of Federalist district judge John Pickering by the Jeffersonian-dominated Congress, and similar attacks on Pennsylvania state officials by the Democratic-Republican legislature. By 1804, their national leadership was decimated and their viable base was reduced to the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware.[41]

Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts and a few Federalists envisioned creating a separate New England confederation, possibly combining with lower Canada to form a new pro-British nation. The Embargo Act of 1807 was seen as a threat to the economy of Massachusetts, and the state legislature debated in May 1808 how the state should respond. These debates generated isolated references to secession, but no definite plot materialized.[42] Historian Richard Buell Jr. suggests that "the secessionist movement of 1804 was more of a confession of despair about the future than a realistic proposal for action."[43]

Federalist party members convened the Hartford Convention on December 15, 1814, and they addressed their opposition to the continuing war with Britain and the domination of the federal government by the "Virginia dynasty". Twenty six delegates attended; Massachusetts sent 12, Connecticut seven, and Rhode Island four. New Hampshire and Vermont declined, but two counties each from those states sent delegates.[44] Historian Donald R. Hickey notes:

Despite pleas in the New England press for secession and a separate peace, most of the delegates taking part in the Hartford Convention were determined to pursue a moderate course. Only Timothy Bigelow of Massachusetts apparently favored extreme measures, and he did not play a major role in the proceedings.[44]

The final report addressed issues related to the war and state defense, and it recommended several amendments to the Constitution.[45][46] Massachusetts and Connecticut endorsed it, but the war ended as the delegates were returning to Washington, effectively quashing any impact that it might have had. The Jeffersonians described the convention as "a synonym for disloyalty and treason", and it became a major factor in the sharp decline of the Federalist Party.[47]

Abolitionists for secession by the North edit

 
William Lloyd Garrison: "Henceforth, the watchword of every uncompromising abolitionist, of every friend of God and liberty, must be, both in a religious and political sense — 'NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS'"[48]

It is not often remembered today, as it was the South that actually attempted to secede. However, there was a movement to have the North secede, thereby escaping the slave power that dominated the Federal government.

Tensions began to rise between North and South by the late 1830s over slavery and related issues. Many Northerners, especially New Englanders, saw themselves as political victims of conspiracies between slave owners and Western expansionists. They viewed the movements to annex Texas and to make war on Mexico as fomented by slaveholders bent on dominating Western expansion and thereby the national destiny. New England abolitionist Benjamin Lundy argued that the annexation of Texas was "a long-premeditated crusade—set on foot by slaveholders, land speculators, etc., with the view of reestablishing, extending, and perpetuating the system of slavery and the slave trade".[49]

The first petition asking for dissolution of the Union, from the citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, was presented to the U.S. Congress by Massachusetts representative John Quincy Adams in January 1842.[50]

Newspaper editors began demanding separation from the South. William Lloyd Garrison called for secession in The Liberator of May 1844 with his "Address to the Friends of Freedom and Emancipation in the United States". The Constitution was created, he wrote, "at the expense of the colored population of the country", and Southerners were dominating the nation because of the Three-fifths Compromise; now it was time "to set the captive free by the potency of truth" and to "secede from the government".[51] Coincidentally, the New England Anti-Slavery Convention endorsed the principles of disunion by a vote of 250–24.[52]

In 1846, the following volume by Henry Clarke Wright was published in London: The dissolution of the American union: demanded by justice and humanity, as the incurable enemy of liberty.

Southern members of Congress walked out in the 1830s in protest over support for slaves' right to petition, and "were with difficulty persuaded to return".[50] The enslaved did not have the right to petition the government. Support of secession really began to shift to Southern states from 1846, after introduction into the public debate of the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prohibited slavery in the new territories acquired from Mexico. Southern leaders increasingly felt helpless against a powerful political group that was attacking their interests (slavery), reminiscent of Federalist alarms at the beginning of the century.

Nashville Convention of 1850 edit

The Nashville Convention was a political meeting held in Nashville, Tennessee, on June 3–11, 1850. Delegates from nine slave states met to consider secession, if the United States Congress decided to ban slavery in the new territories being added to the country as a result of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession. The compromises worked out in Nashville paved the way for the Compromise of 1850, including the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and, for a time, preserved the union of the United States.

In 1851 Frederick Barnard found that, for the South, "the Union [was the] only security for Southern rights [slavery]".[53]

Northern "No Union with Slaveholders" conventions of 1856–57 edit

Called by David Garrison, a convention to discuss "the dissolution of the American Union, and the formation of a Northern, non-slave-holding Confederacy," was held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in January 1857.[54] It is known as the Worcester Disunion Convention.

Similar conventions were held in Angola, Indiana, Adrian, Michigan,[54] and Oswego, New York (at the latter of which Susan B. Anthony spoke).[55]

South Carolina's secession edit

During the presidential term of Andrew Jackson, South Carolina had its own semi-secession movement due to the so-called 1828 Tariff of Abominations, which threatened South Carolina's economy, and South Carolina, in turn, threatened to secede from the United States (the Union). Jackson also threatened to send federal troops to put down the movement and to hang the leader of the secessionists from the highest tree in South Carolina. Also due to this, Jackson's vice president, John C. Calhoun, who supported the movement and wrote the essay "The South Carolina Exposition and Protest", became the first US vice president to resign. On May 1, 1833, Jackson wrote of nullification, "the tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and Southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question."[56] South Carolina also threatened to secede in 1850 over the issue of California's statehood. It became the first state to declare its secession from the Union on December 20, 1860, with the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, and it later joined with the other Southern states to form the Confederacy.

Seceded states form the Confederate States of America edit

 
  States under CSA control
  States and territories represented in the governments of the USA and CSA
See main articles Origins of the American Civil War, Confederate States of America and American Civil War.

The most famous secession movement was the case of the Southern states of the United States. Secession from the United States was accepted in eleven states (and failed in two others). The seceding states joined to form the Confederate States of America (CSA).

The eleven states of the CSA, in order of their secession dates (listed in parentheses), were: South Carolina (December 20, 1860), Mississippi (January 9, 1861), Florida (January 10, 1861), Alabama (January 11, 1861), Georgia (January 19, 1861), Louisiana (January 26, 1861), Texas (February 1, 1861), Virginia (April 17, 1861), Arkansas (May 6, 1861), North Carolina (May 20, 1861), and Tennessee (June 8, 1861).

Secession was also declared by pro-Confederate governments in Missouri and Kentucky (see Confederate government of Missouri and Confederate government of Kentucky), early in the war the Confederacy controlled the southern portion of Missouri and more than half of Kentucky till 1862, but it never became effective as it was opposed by pro-Union governments that in both states retained actual control of the territory after 1862. In Virginia, Unionists in the northwestern part of the state quickly succeeded in forming a functioning government in Wheeling that opposed the pro-Confederate government in Virginia. By 1863 Unionists convinced Congress to admit fifty Virginia counties as the State of West Virginia and the "Restored Government of Virginia" relocated to Union-occupied Alexandria until the Confederacy's dissolution.

This secession movement brought about the American Civil War. The position of the Union was that the Confederacy was not a sovereign nation—and never had been, but that "the Union" was always a single nation by intent of the states themselves, from 1776 onward—and thus that a rebellion had been initiated by individuals. Historian Bruce Catton described President Abraham Lincoln's April 15, 1861, proclamation after the attack on Fort Sumter, which defined the Union's position on the hostilities:

After reciting the obvious fact that "combinations too powerful to be suppressed" by ordinary law courts and marshalls had taken charge of affairs in the seven secessionist states, it announced that the several states of the Union were called on to contribute 75,000 militia "...to suppress said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed." ... "And I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid to disperse, and retire peacefully to their respective abodes within twenty days from this date.[57]

Political effects of their secession edit

With the departure of the Representatives and Senators from the seceding states—most voluntarily, but some were expelled—the makeup and organization of the 36th United States Congress changed dramatically. Vice President and Senate President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky remained until he was replaced by Hannibal Hamlin, and then expelled, but gone was the President pro tempore (Benjamin Fitzpatrick of Alabama) and the heads of the Senate committees on Claims (Alfred Iverson Sr. of Georgia), Commerce (Clement Claiborne Clay of Alabama), the District of Columbia (Albert G. Brown of Mississippi), Finance (Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, expelled), Foreign Relations (James M. Mason of Virginia, expelled), Military Affairs (Jefferson Davis of Mississippi), Naval Affairs (Stephen Mallory of Florida), and Public Lands (Robert Ward Johnson of Arkansas).

Within days, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state, an issue at the time similar to the 20th and 21st-century debate over statehood for the District of Columbia. Within a month Colorado, Nevada, and Dakota Territory followed. The end of slavery in the District of Columbia had been a goal of abolitionists since the slavery gag rule crisis of the 1830s. The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act passed in 1862, as did the Homestead Act and the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, other measures the slave states had blocked.

Disputed legality of unilateral secession edit

The Constitution does not directly mention secession.[58] The legality of secession was hotly debated in the 19th century. Although the Federalist Party briefly explored New England secession during the War of 1812, secession became associated with Southern states as the North's industrial power increased.[59] The Supreme Court has consistently interpreted the Constitution to be an "indestructible" union.[58] The Articles of Confederation explicitly state the Union is "perpetual"; the U.S. Constitution declares its purpose is to form a "more perfect union" than the Articles of Confederation.[60] Other scholars, while not necessarily disagreeing that the secession was illegal, point out that sovereignty is often de facto an "extralegal" question. Had the Confederacy won, any illegality of its actions under U.S. law would have been rendered irrelevant, just as the undisputed illegality of American rebellion under the British law of 1775 was rendered irrelevant. Thus, these scholars argue, the illegality of unilateral secession was not firmly de facto established until the Union won the Civil War; in this view, the legal question was resolved at Appomattox.[59][61]

Supreme Court rulings edit

Texas v. White[60] was argued before the United States Supreme Court during the December 1868 term. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase read the Court's decision, on April 15, 1869.[62] Australian Professors Peter Radan and Aleksandar Pavkovic write:

Chase [Chief Justice] ruled in favor of Texas on the ground that the Confederate state government in Texas had no legal existence on the basis that the secession of Texas from the United States was illegal. The critical finding underpinning the ruling that Texas could not secede from the United States was that, following its admission to the United States in 1845, Texas had become part of "an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible States".... In practical terms, this meant that Texas had never seceded from the United States.[63]

Chase, however, "recognized that a state could cease to be part of the union 'through revolution, or through consent of the States'".[63][64]

In 1877, the Williams v. Bruffy[65] decision was rendered, pertaining to Civil War debts. The Court wrote regarding acts establishing an independent government that "The validity of its acts, both against the parent state and the citizens or subjects thereof, depends entirely upon its ultimate success; if it fail to establish itself permanently, all such acts perish with it; if it succeed and become recognized, its acts from the commencement of its existence are upheld as those of an independent nation."[63][66]

The Union as a sovereign state edit

Historian Kenneth Stampp notes that a historical argument against secession was that "the Union is older than the states" and that "the provision for a perpetual Union in the Articles of Confederation" was carried over into the Constitution by the "reminder that the preamble to the new Constitution gives us one of its purposes the formation of 'a more perfect Union'".[23] Concerning the White decision Stampp wrote:

In 1869, when the Supreme Court, in Texas v. White, finally rejected as untenable the case for a constitutional right of secession, it stressed this historical argument. The Union, the Court said, "never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation". Rather, "It began among the Colonies.... It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form, and character, and sanction from the Articles of Confederation."[23]

Texas secession from Mexico edit

The Republic of Texas successfully seceded from Mexico in 1836 (this, however took the form of outright rebellion against Mexico, and claimed no warrant under the Mexican Constitution to do so). Mexico refused to recognize its revolted province as an independent country, and the Texas Republic did not have significant international recognition. In 1845, Congress admitted Texas as a state. The documents governing Texas's accession to the United States of America do not mention any right of secession—although they did raise the possibility of dividing Texas into multiple states inside the Union. Mexico warned that annexation meant war, and the Mexican–American War followed in 1846.[67]

Partition of a state edit

Article IV, Section. 3, Clause 1 of the United States Constitutions provides:

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The separation referred to is not secession but partition. Some of the movements to partition states have identified themselves as "secessionist" movements.

Of the new states admitted to the Union by Congress, three were set off from already existing states,[68] while one was established upon land claimed by an existing state after existing for several years as a de facto independent republic. They are:

  • Vermont was admitted as a new state in 1791[69] after the legislature of New York ceded its claim to the region in 1790. New York's claim that Vermont (also known as the New Hampshire Grants) was legally a part of New York was and remains a matter of disagreement. King George III ruled in 1764 that the region belonged to the Province of New York.
  • Kentucky was a part of Virginia until it was admitted as a new state in 1792[70] with the consent of the legislature of Virginia in 1789.[71]
  • Maine was a part of Massachusetts until it was admitted as a new state in 1820[72] after the legislature of Massachusetts consented in 1819.[71]
  • West Virginia was a part of Virginia until it was admitted as a new state in 1863[73] after the General Assembly of the Restored Government of Virginia consented in 1862.[74] The question of whether the legislature of Virginia consented is controversial, as Virginia was one of the Confederate states. However, antisecessionist Virginians formed a government in exile, which was recognized by the United States and approved the state's partition. Later, by its ruling in Virginia v. West Virginia (1871), the Supreme Court implicitly affirmed that the breakaway Virginia counties did have the proper consents required to become a separate state.[75]

Many unsuccessful proposals to partition U.S. states have been drawn.

Efforts since the 1980s edit

The late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen examples of local and state secession movements. All such movements to create new states have failed. The formation in 1971 of the Libertarian Party and its national platform affirmed the right of states to secede on three vital principles: "We shall support recognition of the right to secede. Political units or areas which do secede should be recognized by the United States as independent political entities where: (1) secession is supported by a majority within the political unit, (2) the majority does not attempt suppression of the dissenting minority, and (3) the government of the new entity is at least as compatible with human freedom as that from which it seceded."[76]

City secession edit

There was an attempt by Staten Island to break away from New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s, leading to a 1993 referendum, in which 65% voted to secede. Implementation was blocked in the State Assembly by assertions that the state's constitution required a "home rule message" from New York City.[77]

The San Fernando Valley lost a vote to separate from Los Angeles in 2002. Despite the majority (55%) of the valley within the L.A. city limits voting for secession, the city council unanimously voted to block the partition of the valley north of Mulholland Drive.

Other attempted city secession drives include Killington, Vermont, which has voted twice (2005 and 2006) to join New Hampshire; the community of Miller Beach, Indiana, originally a separate incorporated community, to split from the city of Gary in 2007 and Northeast Philadelphia to split from the city of Philadelphia in the 1980s.

A portion of the town of Calabash, North Carolina, voted to secede from the town in 1998 after receiving permission for a referendum on the issue from the state of North Carolina. Following secession, the area incorporated itself as the town of Carolina Shores. Despite the split, the towns continue to share fire and emergency services.[78]

The town of Rough and Ready, California declared its secession from the Union as The Great Republic of Rough and Ready on 7 April 1850, largely to avoid mining taxes, but voted to rejoin the Union less than three months later on 4 July.[79]

The Northwest Angle is a small exclave of Minnesota that juts north into Canada due to a quirk in the definitions of the US-Canada border. Because of laws restricting fishing, some residents of the Northwest Angle suggested leaving the United States and joining Canada in 1997. The following year, U.S. Representative Collin Peterson of Minnesota proposed legislation to allow the residents of the Northwest Angle, part of his district, to vote on seceding from the United States and joining Canada.[80][81] The action did not lead to secession, but did succeed in getting fishing regulations synchronized across international (fresh) waters.[82]

State secession edit

Some state movements seek secession from the United States itself and the formation of a nation from one or more states.

  • Alaska: In November 2006, the Alaska Supreme Court held in the case Kohlhaas v. State that secession was illegal and refused to permit an initiative to be presented to the people of Alaska for a vote. The Alaskan Independence Party remains a factor in state politics, and Walter Hickel, a member of the party, was Governor from 1990 to 1994.[83]
  • California: California secession, known as "Calexit", was discussed by grassroots movement parties and small activist groups calling for the state to secede from the union in a pro-secessionist meeting in Sacramento on April 15, 2010.[84] In 2015, a political action committee called Yes California Independence Committee formed to advocate California's independence from the United States.[85] On January 8, 2016, the California Secretary of State's office confirmed that a political body called the California National Party filed the appropriate paperwork to begin qualifying as a political party.[86][87] The California National Party, whose primary objective is California independence, ran a candidate for State Assembly in the June 7, 2016 primary.[88] On November 9, 2016, after Donald Trump won the presidential election, residents of the state caused the hashtag #calexit to trend on Twitter, wanting out of the country due to his win; they argue that they have the 6th largest economy in the world, and more residents than any other state in the union.[89] 32% of Californians, and 44% of California Democrats were in favor of California secession in a March 2017 poll.[90] The Attorney General of California approved applications by the California Freedom Coalition and others to gather signatures to put Calexit on the 2018 ballot.[91][92] In July 2018, the objectives of the Calexit initiative were expanded upon by including a plan to carve out an "autonomous Native American nation"[93] that would take up the eastern part of California, and "postponing its ballot referendum approach in favor of convincing Republican states to support their breakaway efforts."[93]
  • Florida: The mock 1982 secessionist protest[94] by the Conch Republic in the Florida Keys resulted in an ongoing source of local pride and tourist amusement.
  • Georgia: On April 1, 2009, the Georgia State Senate passed a resolution, 43–1, that asserted the right of states to nullify federal laws under some circumstances. The resolution also asserted that if Congress, the president, or the federal judiciary took certain steps, such as establishing martial law without state consent, requiring some types of involuntary servitude, taking any action regarding religion or restricting freedom of political speech, or establishing further prohibitions of types or quantities of firearms or ammunition, the constitution establishing the United States government would be considered nullified and the union would be dissolved.[95]
  • Hawaii: The Hawaiian sovereignty movement has a number of active groups that have won some concessions from the state of Hawaii, including the offering of H.R. 258 in March 2011, which removes the words "Treaty of Annexation" from a statute. As of 2011, it had passed a committee recommendation 6–0.[96]
  • Montana: With the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to hear District of Columbia v. Heller in late 2007, an early 2008 movement began in Montana involving at least 60 elected officials addressing potential secession if the Second Amendment were interpreted not to grant an individual right, citing its compact with the United States of America.[97]
  • New Hampshire: On September 1, 2012, "The New Hampshire Liberty Party was formed to promote independence from the federal government and for the individual."[98] The Free State Project is another NH based movement that has considered secession to increase liberty. On July 23, 2001, founder of the FSP, Jason Sorens, published "Announcement: The Free State Project", in The Libertarian Enterprise, stating, "Even if we don't actually secede, we can force the federal government to compromise with us and grant us substantial liberties. Scotland and Quebec have both used the threat of secession to get large subsidies and concessions from their respective national governments. We could use our leverage for liberty."[99]
  • Oregon: Following the 2016 presidential election, Portland residents Christian Trejbal and Jennifer Rollins submitted a petition for a ballot measure relating to secession from the United States; the petitioners withdrew the measure shortly afterward, citing recent riots and death threats.[100][101]
  • South Carolina: In May 2010 a group formed that called itself the Third Palmetto Republic, a reference to the fact that the state claimed to be an independent republic twice before: once in 1776 and again in 1860. The group models itself after the Second Vermont Republic, and says its aims are for a free and independent South Carolina, and to abstain from any further federations.[citation needed]
  • Texas: The group Republic of Texas generated national publicity for its controversial actions in the late 1990s.[102] A small group still meets.[103] In April 2009, Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas, raised the issue of secession in disputed comments during a speech at a Tea Party protest saying "Texas is a unique place. When we came into the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that ... My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what may come of that."[104][105][106][107] Another group, the Texas Nationalist Movement, also seeks Texas' independence from the United States, but its methodology is to have the Texas Legislature call for a statewide referendum[108] on the issue (similar to the Scottish Independence vote of 2014). In 2022, the Republican Party of Texas platform called for the legislature to introduce a referendum on secession.[109] In March 2023, state representative Bryan Slaton introduced a bill that would add a referendum on independence to the 2024 election ballot.[110]
  • Vermont: The Second Vermont Republic, founded in 2003, is a loose network of several groups that describes itself as "a nonviolent citizens' network and think tank opposed to the tyranny of Corporate America and the U.S. government, and committed to the peaceful return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic and more broadly the dissolution of the Union".[111] Its "primary objective is to extricate Vermont peacefully from the United States as soon as possible".[112] They have worked closely with the Middlebury Institute created from a meeting sponsored in Vermont in 2004.[113][114] On October 28, 2005, activists held the Vermont Independence Conference, "the first statewide convention on secession in the United States since North Carolina voted to secede from the Union on May 20, 1861".[112] They also participated in the 2006 and 2007 Middlebury-organized national secessionist meetings that brought delegates from over a dozen groups.[115][116][117][118]
  • After Barack Obama won the 2012 presidential election, secession petitions pertaining to all fifty states were filed through the White House We the People petition website.[119]
  • After the Supreme Court of the United States rejected Texas v. Pennsylvania, Texas' attempt to invalidate 2020 election results from four states, Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, Allen West said "Perhaps law-abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the Constitution." Some have interpreted this as an encouragement of secession from the United States.[120][121]

Regional secession edit

 
Proposed State of Jefferson
 
A map that shows the boundaries of the American Redoubt

Polling edit

A September 2017 Zogby International poll found that 68% of Americans were open to states of the USA seceding.[145] A 2014 Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 24% of Americans supported their state seceding from the union if necessary; 53% opposed the idea. Republicans were somewhat more supportive than Democrats. Respondents cited issues like gridlock, governmental overreach, the possible unconstitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and a loss of faith in the federal government as reasons for desiring secession.[146]

A 2021 poll found that 52% of Trump voters and 41% of Biden voters support partitioning the United States into multiple countries based on political party lines.[147][148][149] A different poll that same year grouped the United States into five geographic regions, and found that 37% of Americans favored secession of their own region. 44% of Americans in the South favored secession, with Republican support at 66%; while Democratic support was 47% in the Pacific states.[150][151][152]

See also edit

References edit

Informational notes

  1. ^ St. George Tucker wrote "The dissolution of these systems [any confederacy of states] happens, when all the confederates by mutual consent, or some of them, voluntarily abandon the confederacy, and govern their own states apart; or a part of them form a different league and confederacy among each other, and withdraw themselves from the confederacy with the rest. Such was the proceeding on the part of those of the American states which first adopted the present constitution of the United States . . . leaving the states of Rhode Island and North Carolina, both of which, at first, rejected the new constitution, to themselves."[15]
  2. ^ Tucker wrote that this was an evident breach of the Articles of Confederation; because they stipulated that "those 'articles should be inviolably observed by every state, and that union should be perpetual; nor should any alteration at any time thereafter be made in any of them, unless such alterations be agreed to in the congress of the United States, and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every state.'" (Tucker quoting from the Articles of Confederation). "Yet the seceding states, as they may not be improperly termed, did not hesitate, as soon as nine states had ratified the new constitution, to supersede the former federal government and establish a new form, more consonant to their opinion of what was necessary to the preservation and prosperity of the federal union."[15]
  3. ^ Of Madison, Ferling wrote that he was "resolute about protecting the propertied class from what he believed were the democratic excesses of the American Revolution and, at the same time, guarding Southern interests, which to a considerable extent meant preserving the well being of slaveholders against a Northern majority". Of Hamilton, Ferling wrote, "His principal aim, according to his biographer Forrest McDonald, was to lay groundwork for enhanced Congressional authority over commerce."[17]
  4. ^ Ferling notes that John Jay wrote to George Washington that "Errors in our national Government ... threaten the Fruit we expected from our 'Tree of Liberty'. Ferling wrote of Henry Lee that he spoke of the "contempt with which America was held in Europe" (Ferling's words) and the dangers that the country's "degrading supiness" (Lee's words) presented to preservation of the nation.[18]
  5. ^ From Federalist 43: A compact between independent sovereigns, founded on ordinary acts of Legislative authority, can pretend to no higher validity than a league or treaty between the parties. It is an established doctrine on the subject of treaties, that all the Articles are mutually conditions of each other; that a breach of any one Article is a breach of the whole treaty; and that a breach, committed by either of the parties, absolves the others, and authorizes them, if they please, to pronounce the compact violated and void. Should it unhappily be necessary to appeal to these delicate truths for a justification for dispensing with the consent of particular States to a dissolution of the federal pact, will not the complaining parties find it a difficult task to answer the multiplied and important infractions with which they may be confronted?[20]

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Further reading

External links edit

secession, united, states, this, article, long, read, navigate, comfortably, please, consider, splitting, content, into, articles, condensing, adding, subheadings, please, discuss, this, issue, article, talk, page, january, 2022, been, suggested, that, this, a. This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably Please consider splitting content into sub articles condensing it or adding subheadings Please discuss this issue on the article s talk page January 2022 It has been suggested that this article should be split into multiple articles discuss December 2022 In the context of the United States secession primarily refers to the voluntary withdrawal of one or more states from the Union that constitutes the United States but may loosely refer to leaving a state or territory to form a separate territory or new state or to the severing of an area from a city or county within a state Advocates for secession are called disunionists by their contemporaries in various historical documents A New Hampshire man holds a sign advocating for secession during the 2012 presidential campaignThreats and aspirations to secede from the United States or arguments justifying secession have been a feature of the country s politics almost since its birth Some have argued for secession as a constitutional right and others as from a natural right of revolution In Texas v White 1869 the Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional while commenting that revolution or consent of the states could lead to a successful secession The most serious attempt at secession was advanced in the years 1860 and 1861 as 11 Southern states each declared secession from the United States and joined to form the Confederate States of America a procedure and body that the government of the United States refused to accept The movement collapsed in 1865 with the defeat of Confederate forces by Union armies in the American Civil War 1 In the history of the United States the only territories to have been withdrawn from the country are the small portions of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 49th parallel north established as the U S British now Canadian border by the Treaty of 1818 and the territory of the Commonwealth of the Philippines which became independent after the Treaty of Manila The former is today part of Canada while the latter corresponds to the Republic of the Philippines Boundaries of U S territories such as the Nebraska Territory were not defined precisely The boundaries of each new state are set in the document admitting the former territory to the Union as a state which Congress must approve There are three instances in U S history in which a portion of a state successfully seceded to create a new state Kentucky which separated from Virginia in 1792 Maine separating from Massachusetts in 1820 and West Virginia which also separated from Virginia in 1863 2 3 Contents 1 American Revolution 2 Pre Civil War political and legal views on secession 2 1 Overview 2 2 Abandoning the Articles of Confederation 2 3 Adopting the Constitution 2 4 Natural right of revolution versus right of secession 2 5 Alien and Sedition Acts 2 6 New England Federalists and the Hartford Convention 2 7 Abolitionists for secession by the North 2 8 Nashville Convention of 1850 2 9 Northern No Union with Slaveholders conventions of 1856 57 2 10 South Carolina s secession 3 Seceded states form the Confederate States of America 4 Political effects of their secession 5 Disputed legality of unilateral secession 5 1 Supreme Court rulings 5 2 The Union as a sovereign state 6 Texas secession from Mexico 7 Partition of a state 8 Efforts since the 1980s 8 1 City secession 8 2 State secession 8 3 Regional secession 9 Polling 10 See also 11 References 12 External linksAmerican Revolution editFurther information American Revolution and American Revolutionary War The Declaration of Independence states We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights that among these are Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness That to secure these rights Governments are instituted among Men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it and to institute new Government laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness 4 Historian Pauline Maier argues that this narrative asserted the right of revolution which was after all the right Americans were exercising in 1776 and notes that Thomas Jefferson s language incorporated ideas explained at length by a long list of 17th century writers including John Milton Algernon Sidney John Locke and other English and Scottish commentators all of whom had contributed to the development of the Whig tradition in 18th century Britain 4 The right of revolution expressed in the Declaration was immediately followed with the observation that long practiced injustice is tolerated until sustained assaults on the rights of the entire people have accumulated enough force to oppress them 5 then they may defend themselves 6 7 This reasoning was not original to the Declaration but can be found in many prior political writings Locke s Two Treatises of Government 1690 the Fairfax Resolves of 1774 Jefferson s own Summary View of the Rights of British America the first Constitution of Virginia which was enacted five days prior to the Declaration 8 and Thomas Paine s Common Sense 1776 Prudence indeed will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes mankind are more disposed to suffer while Evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms of Government editor s addition to which they are accustomed But when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism it is their right it is their duty to throw off such Government and to provide new Guards for their future security 9 Gordon S Wood quotes President John Adams Only repeated multiplied oppressions placing it beyond all doubt that their rulers had formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties could warrant the concerted resistance of the people against their government 10 Pre Civil War political and legal views on secession editOverview edit With origins in the question of states rights the issue of secession was argued in many forums and advocated from time to time in both the North and South in the decades after adopting the Constitution and before the American Civil War Historian Maury Klein described the contemporary debate Was the Republic a unified nation in which the individual states had merged their sovereign rights and identities forever or was it a federation of sovereign states joined together for specific purposes from which they could withdraw at any time 11 He observed that the case can be made that no result of the American Civil war was more important than the destruction once and for all of the idea of secession 12 Historian Forrest McDonald argued that after adopting the Constitution there were no guidelines either in theory or in history as to whether the compact could be dissolved and if so on what conditions However during the founding era many a public figure declared that the states could interpose their powers between their citizens and the power of the federal government and talk of secession was not unknown But according to McDonald to avoid resorting to the violence that had accompanied the Revolution the Constitution established legitimate means for constitutional change in the future In effect the Constitution completed and perfected the Revolution 13 Whatever the intentions of the Founders threats of secession and disunion were a constant in the political discourse of Americans preceding the Civil War Historian Elizabeth R Varon wrote O ne word disunion contained and stimulated their Americans fears of extreme political factionalism tyranny regionalism economic decline foreign intervention class conflict gender disorder racial strife widespread violence and anarchy and civil war all of which could be interpreted as God s retribution for America s moral failings Disunion connoted the dissolution of the republic the failure of the Founders efforts to establish a stable and lasting representative government For many Americans in the North and the South disunion was a nightmare a tragic cataclysm that would reduce them to the kind of fear and misery that seemed to pervade the rest of the world And yet for many other Americans disunion served as the main instrument by which they could achieve their political goals 14 Abandoning the Articles of Confederation edit In late 1777 the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia approved the Articles of Confederation for ratification by the individual states The Confederation government was administered de facto by the Congress under the provisions of the approved final draft of the Articles until they achieved ratification and de jure status in early 1781 In 1786 delegates of five states the Annapolis Convention called for a convention of delegates in Philadelphia to amend the Articles which would require the unanimous consent of all thirteen states The delegates to the Philadelphia Convention convened and deliberated from May to September 1787 Instead of pursuing their official charge they returned a draft new Constitution proposed for constructing and administering a new federal later also known as national government They further proposed that the draft Constitution not be submitted to the Congress where it would require unanimous approval of the states instead that it be presented directly to the states for ratification in special ratification conventions and that approval by a minimum of nine state conventions would suffice to adopt the new Constitution and initiate the new federal government and that only those states ratifying the Constitution would be included in the new government For a time eleven of the original states operated under the Constitution without two non ratifying states Rhode Island and North Carolina In effect the delegates proposed to abandon and replace the Articles of Confederation rather than amend them a Because the Articles had specified a perpetual union various arguments have been offered to explain the apparent contradiction and presumed illegality of abandoning one form of government and creating another that did not include the members of the original b One explanation was that the Articles of Confederation simply failed to protect the vital interests of the individual states Necessity then rather than legality was the practical factor in abandoning the Articles 16 According to historian John Ferling by 1786 the Union under the Articles was falling apart James Madison of Virginia and Alexander Hamilton of New York they who joined to vigorously promote a new Constitution urged that renewed stability of the Union government was critically needed to protect property and commerce Both founders were strong advocates for a more powerful central government they published The Federalist Papers to advocate their cause and became known as the federalists Because of his powerful advocacy Madison was later accorded the honorific Father of the Constitution c Ferling wrote Rumors of likely secessionist movements were unleashed There was buzz as well that some states planned to abandon the American Union and form a regional confederacy America it was said would go the way of Europe and ultimately three or four or more confederacies would spring up Not only would these confederations be capable of taking steps that were beyond the ability of Congress under the articles but in private some portrayed such a step in a positive light in as much as the regional union could adopt constitutions that secured property rights and maintained order d Other arguments that justified abandoning the Articles of Confederation pictured the Articles as an international compact between unconsolidated sovereign states any one of which was empowered to renounce the compact at will This as opposed to a consolidated union that totally annihilated without any power of revival the sovereign states 19 The Articles required that all states were obliged to comply with all requirements of the agreement thus permanence was linked to compliance Compliance was typically perceived as a matter of interpretation by each individual state Emerich de Vattel a recognized authority on international law wrote at the time that Treaties contain promises that are perfect and reciprocal If one of the allies fails in his engagements the other may disengage himself in his promises and break the treaty 19 Thus each state could unilaterally secede from the Articles of Confederation at will this argument for abandoning the Articles for its weakness in the face of secession was used by advocates for the new Constitution and was featured by James Madison in Federalist No 43 e St George Tucker an influential jurist in the early republic era and especially in the South argued that abandoning the Articles of Confederation was the same as seceding from the Articles government In 1803 he wrote that the unanimous dissolution of the Articles Confederation in 1789 by Act of Congress was legal precedent for future secession s from the Constitution one state at a time by state legislatures And since the seceding states by establishing a new constitution and form of federal government among themselves without the consent of the rest have shown that they consider the right to do so whenever the occasion may in their opinion require it we may infer that the right has not been diminished by any new compact which they may since have entered into since none could be more solemn or explicit than the first nor more binding upon the contracting partie s 21 Others such as Chief Justice John Marshall who had been a Virginia delegate to its Ratification Federal Convention denied that ratifying the Constitution was a precedent for a future one off dissolution of the Union by an isolated state or states Writing in 1824 exactly midway between the fall of the Articles of Confederation and the rise of a second self described American Confederacy Marshal summarized the issue thusly Reference has been made to the political situation of these states anterior to the Constitution s formation It has been said that they were sovereign were completely independent and were connected with each other only by a league This is true But when these allied sovereigns converted their league into a government when they converted their congress of ambassadors deputed to deliberate on their common concerns and to recommend measures of general utility into a legislature empowered to enact laws on the most interesting subjects the whole character in which the states appear underwent a change 22 Nationalists for Union in the antebellum America argued the opposite of secession that indeed the new Constitution inherited perpetuity from the language in the Articles and from other actions done prior to the Constitution Historian Kenneth Stampp explains their view Lacking an explicit clause in the Constitution with which to establish the Union s perpetuity the nationalists made their case first with a unique interpretation of the history of the country prior to the Philadelphia Convention second with inferences drawn from certain passages of the Constitution and third with careful selections from the speeches and writings of the Founding Fathers The historical case begins with the postulate that the Union is older than the states It quotes the reference in the Declaration of Independence to these united colonies contends that the Second Continental Congress actually called the states into being i e colonies no longer notes the provision for a perpetual Union in the Articles of Confederation and ends with the reminder that the preamble to the new Constitution gives as one of its purposes the formation of a more perfect Union 23 Adopting the Constitution edit This section is written like a debate Please help improve the section by writing in encyclopedic style and discuss the issue on the talk page February 2017 Learn how and when to remove this template message Constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar argues that the permanence of the Union of the states changed significantly when the U S Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation This action signaled its decisive break with the Articles regime of state sovereignty 24 By adopting a constitution rather than a treaty or a compact or an instrument of confederacy etc that created a new body of government designed to be senior to the several states and by approving the particular language and provisions of that new Constitution the framers and voters made it clear that the fates of the individual states were severely changed and that the new United States was Not a league however firm not a confederacy or a confederation not a compact on among sovereign states all these high profile and legally freighted words from the Articles were conspicuously absent from the Preamble and every other operative part of the Constitution The new text proposed a fundamentally different legal framework 25 Patrick Henry adamantly opposed adopting the Constitution because he interpreted its language to replace the sovereignty of the individual states including that of his own Virginia He gave his strong voice to the anti federalist cause in opposition to the federalists led by Madison and Hamilton Questioning the nature of the proposed new federal government Henry asked The fate of America may depend on this Have they made a proposal of a compact between the states If they had this would be a confederation It is otherwise most clearly a consolidated government The question turns sir on that poor little thing the expression We the people instead of the states of America 26 The federalists acknowledged that national sovereignty would be transferred by the new Constitution to the whole of the American people indeed regard the expression We the people They argued however that Henry exaggerated the extent to which a consolidated government was being created and that the states would serve a vital role within the new republic even though their national sovereignty was ending Tellingly on the matter of whether states retained a right to unilaterally secede from the United States the federalists made it clear that no such right would exist under the Constitution 27 Amar specifically cites the example of New York s ratification as suggestive that the Constitution did not countenance secession Anti federalists dominated the Poughkeepsie Convention that would ratify the Constitution Concerned that the new compact might not sufficiently safeguard states rights the anti federalists sought to insert into the New York ratification message language to the effect that there should be reserved to the state of New York a right to withdraw herself from the union after a certain number of years 28 The Madison federalists opposed this with Hamilton a delegate at the Convention reading aloud in response a letter from James Madison stating the Constitution requires an adoption in toto and for ever emphasis added Hamilton and John Jay then told the Convention that in their view reserving a right to withdraw was inconsistent with the Constitution and was no ratification 28 The New York convention ultimately ratified the Constitution without including the right to withdraw language proposed by the anti federalists Amar explains how the Constitution impacted on state sovereignty In dramatic contrast to Article VII whose unanimity rule that no state can bind another confirms the sovereignty of each state prior to 1787 Article V does not permit a single state convention to modify the federal Constitution for itself Moreover it makes clear that a state may be bound by a federal constitutional amendment even if that state votes against the amendment in a properly convened state convention And this rule is flatly inconsistent with the idea that states remain sovereign after joining the Constitution even if they were sovereign before joining it Thus ratification of the Constitution itself marked the moment when previously sovereign states gave up their sovereignty and legal independence 29 Natural right of revolution versus right of secession edit Debates on the legality of secession often looked back to the example of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence Law professor Daniel Farber defined what he considered the borders of this debate What about the original understanding The debates contain scattered statements about the permanence or impermanence of the Union The occasional references to the impermanency of the Constitution are hard to interpret They might have referred to a legal right to revoke ratification But they equally could have referred to an extraconstitutional right of revolution or to the possibility that a new national convention would rewrite the Constitution or simply to the factual possibility that the national government might break down Similarly references to the permanency of the Union could have referred to the practical unlikelihood of withdrawal rather than any lack of legal power The public debates seemingly do not speak specifically to whether ratification under Article VII was revocable 30 In the public debate over the Nullification Crisis the separate issue of secession was also discussed James Madison often referred to as The Father of the Constitution strongly opposed the argument that secession was permitted by the Constitution 31 In a March 15 1833 letter to Daniel Webster congratulating him on a speech opposing nullification Madison discussed revolution versus secession I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S It crushes nullification and must hasten the abandonment of Secession But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression The former answers itself being a violation without cause of a faith solemnly pledged The latter is another name only for revolution about which there is no theoretic controversy 32 Thus Madison affirms an extraconstitutional right to revolt against conditions of intolerable oppression but if the case cannot be made that such conditions exist then he rejects secession as a violation of the Constitution During the crisis President Andrew Jackson published his Proclamation to the People of South Carolina which made a case for the perpetuity of the Union plus he provided his views re the questions of revolution and secession 33 But each State having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute jointly with the other States a single nation cannot from that period possess any right to secede because such secession does not break a league but destroys the unity of a nation and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would result from the contravention of a compact but it is an offense against the whole Union emphasis added To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States are not a nation because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts to their injury or ruin without committing any offense Secession like any other revolutionary act may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression but to call it a constitutional right is confounding the meaning of terms and can only be done through gross error or to deceive those who are willing to assert a right but would pause before they made a revolution or incur the penalties consequent upon a failure 34 Some twenty eight years after Jackson spoke President James Buchanan gave a different voice one much more accommodating to the views of the secessionists and the slave states in the midst of the pre War secession crisis In his final State of the Union address to Congress on December 3 1860 he stated his view that the South after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the Government of the Union but he also drew his apocalyptic vision of the results to be expected from secession 35 In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere voluntary association of States to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties If this be so the Confederacy here referring to the existing Union is a rope of sand to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States In this manner our thirty three States may resolve themselves into as many petty jarring and hostile republics each one retiring from the Union without responsibility whenever any sudden excitement might impel them to such a course By this process a Union might be entirely broken into fragments in a few weeks which cost our forefathers many years of toil privation and blood to establish 35 Alien and Sedition Acts edit In response to the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts advanced by the Federalist Party John Taylor of the Virginia House of Delegates spoke out urging Virginia to secede from the United States He argued as one of many vociferous responses by the Jeffersonian Republicans the sense of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions adopted in 1798 and 1799 which reserved to those States the rights of secession and interposition nullification 36 Thomas Jefferson while sitting as Vice President of the United States in 1799 wrote to James Madison of his conviction in a reservation of th ose rights resulting to us from these palpable violations the Alien and Sedition Acts and if the federal government did not return to the true principles of our federal compact he was determined to sever ourselves from that union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self government which we have reserved and in which alone we see liberty safety and happiness emphasis added 37 Here Jefferson is arguing in a radical voice and in a private letter that he would lead a movement for secession but it is unclear whether he is arguing for secession at will or for revolution on account of intolerable oppression see above or neither Jefferson secretly wrote one of the Kentucky Resolutions which was done again while he was holding the office of Vice President His biographer Dumas Malone argued that had his actions become known at the time Jefferson s participation might have gotten him impeached for charged with treason 38 In writing the first Kentucky Resolution Jefferson warned that unless arrested at the threshold the Alien and Sedition Acts would necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood Historian Ron Chernow says of this he wasn t calling for peaceful protests or civil disobedience he was calling for outright rebellion if needed against the federal government of which he was vice president Jefferson thus set forth a radical doctrine of states rights that effectively undermined the constitution 39 Jeffersonian Republicans were not alone in claiming reserved rights against the federal government Contributing to the rancorous debates during the War of 1812 Founding Father Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania and New York a Federalist a Hamilton ally and a primary author of the Constitution who advanced the concept that Americans were citizens of a single Union of the states was persuaded to claim that secession under certain circumstances was entirely constitutional 40 New England Federalists and the Hartford Convention edit The election of 1800 showed Jefferson s Democratic Republican Party to be on the rise and the Federalists to be declining and the Federalists felt threatened by initiatives taken by their opponents They viewed Jefferson s unilateral purchase of the Louisiana territory as violating foundational agreements between the original 13 states Jefferson transacted the purchase in secret and refused to seek the approval of Congress The new lands anticipated several future western states which the Federalists feared would be dominated by the Democratic Republicans Other things added to the Federalists alarm such as the impeachment of Federalist district judge John Pickering by the Jeffersonian dominated Congress and similar attacks on Pennsylvania state officials by the Democratic Republican legislature By 1804 their national leadership was decimated and their viable base was reduced to the states of Massachusetts Connecticut and Delaware 41 Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts and a few Federalists envisioned creating a separate New England confederation possibly combining with lower Canada to form a new pro British nation The Embargo Act of 1807 was seen as a threat to the economy of Massachusetts and the state legislature debated in May 1808 how the state should respond These debates generated isolated references to secession but no definite plot materialized 42 Historian Richard Buell Jr suggests that the secessionist movement of 1804 was more of a confession of despair about the future than a realistic proposal for action 43 Federalist party members convened the Hartford Convention on December 15 1814 and they addressed their opposition to the continuing war with Britain and the domination of the federal government by the Virginia dynasty Twenty six delegates attended Massachusetts sent 12 Connecticut seven and Rhode Island four New Hampshire and Vermont declined but two counties each from those states sent delegates 44 Historian Donald R Hickey notes Despite pleas in the New England press for secession and a separate peace most of the delegates taking part in the Hartford Convention were determined to pursue a moderate course Only Timothy Bigelow of Massachusetts apparently favored extreme measures and he did not play a major role in the proceedings 44 The final report addressed issues related to the war and state defense and it recommended several amendments to the Constitution 45 46 Massachusetts and Connecticut endorsed it but the war ended as the delegates were returning to Washington effectively quashing any impact that it might have had The Jeffersonians described the convention as a synonym for disloyalty and treason and it became a major factor in the sharp decline of the Federalist Party 47 Abolitionists for secession by the North edit nbsp William Lloyd Garrison Henceforth the watchword of every uncompromising abolitionist of every friend of God and liberty must be both in a religious and political sense NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS 48 It is not often remembered today as it was the South that actually attempted to secede However there was a movement to have the North secede thereby escaping the slave power that dominated the Federal government Tensions began to rise between North and South by the late 1830s over slavery and related issues Many Northerners especially New Englanders saw themselves as political victims of conspiracies between slave owners and Western expansionists They viewed the movements to annex Texas and to make war on Mexico as fomented by slaveholders bent on dominating Western expansion and thereby the national destiny New England abolitionist Benjamin Lundy argued that the annexation of Texas was a long premeditated crusade set on foot by slaveholders land speculators etc with the view of reestablishing extending and perpetuating the system of slavery and the slave trade 49 The first petition asking for dissolution of the Union from the citizens of Haverhill Massachusetts was presented to the U S Congress by Massachusetts representative John Quincy Adams in January 1842 50 Newspaper editors began demanding separation from the South William Lloyd Garrison called for secession in The Liberator of May 1844 with his Address to the Friends of Freedom and Emancipation in the United States The Constitution was created he wrote at the expense of the colored population of the country and Southerners were dominating the nation because of the Three fifths Compromise now it was time to set the captive free by the potency of truth and to secede from the government 51 Coincidentally the New England Anti Slavery Convention endorsed the principles of disunion by a vote of 250 24 52 In 1846 the following volume by Henry Clarke Wright was published in London The dissolution of the American union demanded by justice and humanity as the incurable enemy of liberty Southern members of Congress walked out in the 1830s in protest over support for slaves right to petition and were with difficulty persuaded to return 50 The enslaved did not have the right to petition the government Support of secession really began to shift to Southern states from 1846 after introduction into the public debate of the Wilmot Proviso which would have prohibited slavery in the new territories acquired from Mexico Southern leaders increasingly felt helpless against a powerful political group that was attacking their interests slavery reminiscent of Federalist alarms at the beginning of the century Nashville Convention of 1850 edit Main article Nashville Convention The Nashville Convention was a political meeting held in Nashville Tennessee on June 3 11 1850 Delegates from nine slave states met to consider secession if the United States Congress decided to ban slavery in the new territories being added to the country as a result of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession The compromises worked out in Nashville paved the way for the Compromise of 1850 including the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and for a time preserved the union of the United States In 1851 Frederick Barnard found that for the South the Union was the only security for Southern rights slavery 53 Northern No Union with Slaveholders conventions of 1856 57 edit Called by David Garrison a convention to discuss the dissolution of the American Union and the formation of a Northern non slave holding Confederacy was held in Worcester Massachusetts in January 1857 54 It is known as the Worcester Disunion Convention Similar conventions were held in Angola Indiana Adrian Michigan 54 and Oswego New York at the latter of which Susan B Anthony spoke 55 South Carolina s secession edit See also South Carolina Declaration of Secession During the presidential term of Andrew Jackson South Carolina had its own semi secession movement due to the so called 1828 Tariff of Abominations which threatened South Carolina s economy and South Carolina in turn threatened to secede from the United States the Union Jackson also threatened to send federal troops to put down the movement and to hang the leader of the secessionists from the highest tree in South Carolina Also due to this Jackson s vice president John C Calhoun who supported the movement and wrote the essay The South Carolina Exposition and Protest became the first US vice president to resign On May 1 1833 Jackson wrote of nullification the tariff was only a pretext and disunion and Southern confederacy the real object The next pretext will be the negro or slavery question 56 South Carolina also threatened to secede in 1850 over the issue of California s statehood It became the first state to declare its secession from the Union on December 20 1860 with the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union and it later joined with the other Southern states to form the Confederacy Seceded states form the Confederate States of America edit nbsp States under CSA control States and territories represented in the governments of the USA and CSASee main articles Origins of the American Civil War Confederate States of America and American Civil War The most famous secession movement was the case of the Southern states of the United States Secession from the United States was accepted in eleven states and failed in two others The seceding states joined to form the Confederate States of America CSA The eleven states of the CSA in order of their secession dates listed in parentheses were South Carolina December 20 1860 Mississippi January 9 1861 Florida January 10 1861 Alabama January 11 1861 Georgia January 19 1861 Louisiana January 26 1861 Texas February 1 1861 Virginia April 17 1861 Arkansas May 6 1861 North Carolina May 20 1861 and Tennessee June 8 1861 Secession was also declared by pro Confederate governments in Missouri and Kentucky see Confederate government of Missouri and Confederate government of Kentucky early in the war the Confederacy controlled the southern portion of Missouri and more than half of Kentucky till 1862 but it never became effective as it was opposed by pro Union governments that in both states retained actual control of the territory after 1862 In Virginia Unionists in the northwestern part of the state quickly succeeded in forming a functioning government in Wheeling that opposed the pro Confederate government in Virginia By 1863 Unionists convinced Congress to admit fifty Virginia counties as the State of West Virginia and the Restored Government of Virginia relocated to Union occupied Alexandria until the Confederacy s dissolution This secession movement brought about the American Civil War The position of the Union was that the Confederacy was not a sovereign nation and never had been but that the Union was always a single nation by intent of the states themselves from 1776 onward and thus that a rebellion had been initiated by individuals Historian Bruce Catton described President Abraham Lincoln s April 15 1861 proclamation after the attack on Fort Sumter which defined the Union s position on the hostilities After reciting the obvious fact that combinations too powerful to be suppressed by ordinary law courts and marshalls had taken charge of affairs in the seven secessionist states it announced that the several states of the Union were called on to contribute 75 000 militia to suppress said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed And I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid to disperse and retire peacefully to their respective abodes within twenty days from this date 57 Political effects of their secession editWith the departure of the Representatives and Senators from the seceding states most voluntarily but some were expelled the makeup and organization of the 36th United States Congress changed dramatically Vice President and Senate President John C Breckinridge of Kentucky remained until he was replaced by Hannibal Hamlin and then expelled but gone was the President pro tempore Benjamin Fitzpatrick of Alabama and the heads of the Senate committees on Claims Alfred Iverson Sr of Georgia Commerce Clement Claiborne Clay of Alabama the District of Columbia Albert G Brown of Mississippi Finance Robert M T Hunter of Virginia expelled Foreign Relations James M Mason of Virginia expelled Military Affairs Jefferson Davis of Mississippi Naval Affairs Stephen Mallory of Florida and Public Lands Robert Ward Johnson of Arkansas Within days Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state an issue at the time similar to the 20th and 21st century debate over statehood for the District of Columbia Within a month Colorado Nevada and Dakota Territory followed The end of slavery in the District of Columbia had been a goal of abolitionists since the slavery gag rule crisis of the 1830s The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act passed in 1862 as did the Homestead Act and the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862 other measures the slave states had blocked Disputed legality of unilateral secession editThe Constitution does not directly mention secession 58 The legality of secession was hotly debated in the 19th century Although the Federalist Party briefly explored New England secession during the War of 1812 secession became associated with Southern states as the North s industrial power increased 59 The Supreme Court has consistently interpreted the Constitution to be an indestructible union 58 The Articles of Confederation explicitly state the Union is perpetual the U S Constitution declares its purpose is to form a more perfect union than the Articles of Confederation 60 Other scholars while not necessarily disagreeing that the secession was illegal point out that sovereignty is often de facto an extralegal question Had the Confederacy won any illegality of its actions under U S law would have been rendered irrelevant just as the undisputed illegality of American rebellion under the British law of 1775 was rendered irrelevant Thus these scholars argue the illegality of unilateral secession was not firmly de facto established until the Union won the Civil War in this view the legal question was resolved at Appomattox 59 61 Supreme Court rulings edit Texas v White 60 was argued before the United States Supreme Court during the December 1868 term Chief Justice Salmon P Chase read the Court s decision on April 15 1869 62 Australian Professors Peter Radan and Aleksandar Pavkovic write Chase Chief Justice ruled in favor of Texas on the ground that the Confederate state government in Texas had no legal existence on the basis that the secession of Texas from the United States was illegal The critical finding underpinning the ruling that Texas could not secede from the United States was that following its admission to the United States in 1845 Texas had become part of an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States In practical terms this meant that Texas had never seceded from the United States 63 Chase however recognized that a state could cease to be part of the union through revolution or through consent of the States 63 64 In 1877 the Williams v Bruffy 65 decision was rendered pertaining to Civil War debts The Court wrote regarding acts establishing an independent government that The validity of its acts both against the parent state and the citizens or subjects thereof depends entirely upon its ultimate success if it fail to establish itself permanently all such acts perish with it if it succeed and become recognized its acts from the commencement of its existence are upheld as those of an independent nation 63 66 The Union as a sovereign state edit Historian Kenneth Stampp notes that a historical argument against secession was that the Union is older than the states and that the provision for a perpetual Union in the Articles of Confederation was carried over into the Constitution by the reminder that the preamble to the new Constitution gives us one of its purposes the formation of a more perfect Union 23 Concerning the White decision Stampp wrote In 1869 when the Supreme Court in Texas v White finally rejected as untenable the case for a constitutional right of secession it stressed this historical argument The Union the Court said never was a purely artificial and arbitrary relation Rather It began among the Colonies It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war and received definite form and character and sanction from the Articles of Confederation 23 Texas secession from Mexico editThe Republic of Texas successfully seceded from Mexico in 1836 this however took the form of outright rebellion against Mexico and claimed no warrant under the Mexican Constitution to do so Mexico refused to recognize its revolted province as an independent country and the Texas Republic did not have significant international recognition In 1845 Congress admitted Texas as a state The documents governing Texas s accession to the United States of America do not mention any right of secession although they did raise the possibility of dividing Texas into multiple states inside the Union Mexico warned that annexation meant war and the Mexican American War followed in 1846 67 Partition of a state editArticle IV Section 3 Clause 1 of the United States Constitutions provides New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States or parts of States without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress The separation referred to is not secession but partition Some of the movements to partition states have identified themselves as secessionist movements Of the new states admitted to the Union by Congress three were set off from already existing states 68 while one was established upon land claimed by an existing state after existing for several years as a de facto independent republic They are Vermont was admitted as a new state in 1791 69 after the legislature of New York ceded its claim to the region in 1790 New York s claim that Vermont also known as the New Hampshire Grants was legally a part of New York was and remains a matter of disagreement King George III ruled in 1764 that the region belonged to the Province of New York Kentucky was a part of Virginia until it was admitted as a new state in 1792 70 with the consent of the legislature of Virginia in 1789 71 Maine was a part of Massachusetts until it was admitted as a new state in 1820 72 after the legislature of Massachusetts consented in 1819 71 West Virginia was a part of Virginia until it was admitted as a new state in 1863 73 after the General Assembly of the Restored Government of Virginia consented in 1862 74 The question of whether the legislature of Virginia consented is controversial as Virginia was one of the Confederate states However antisecessionist Virginians formed a government in exile which was recognized by the United States and approved the state s partition Later by its ruling in Virginia v West Virginia 1871 the Supreme Court implicitly affirmed that the breakaway Virginia counties did have the proper consents required to become a separate state 75 See also Admission to the Union Many unsuccessful proposals to partition U S states have been drawn Efforts since the 1980s editThe late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen examples of local and state secession movements All such movements to create new states have failed The formation in 1971 of the Libertarian Party and its national platform affirmed the right of states to secede on three vital principles We shall support recognition of the right to secede Political units or areas which do secede should be recognized by the United States as independent political entities where 1 secession is supported by a majority within the political unit 2 the majority does not attempt suppression of the dissenting minority and 3 the government of the new entity is at least as compatible with human freedom as that from which it seceded 76 City secession edit See also Municipal deannexation in the United States There was an attempt by Staten Island to break away from New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s leading to a 1993 referendum in which 65 voted to secede Implementation was blocked in the State Assembly by assertions that the state s constitution required a home rule message from New York City 77 The San Fernando Valley lost a vote to separate from Los Angeles in 2002 Despite the majority 55 of the valley within the L A city limits voting for secession the city council unanimously voted to block the partition of the valley north of Mulholland Drive Other attempted city secession drives include Killington Vermont which has voted twice 2005 and 2006 to join New Hampshire the community of Miller Beach Indiana originally a separate incorporated community to split from the city of Gary in 2007 and Northeast Philadelphia to split from the city of Philadelphia in the 1980s A portion of the town of Calabash North Carolina voted to secede from the town in 1998 after receiving permission for a referendum on the issue from the state of North Carolina Following secession the area incorporated itself as the town of Carolina Shores Despite the split the towns continue to share fire and emergency services 78 The town of Rough and Ready California declared its secession from the Union as The Great Republic of Rough and Ready on 7 April 1850 largely to avoid mining taxes but voted to rejoin the Union less than three months later on 4 July 79 The Northwest Angle is a small exclave of Minnesota that juts north into Canada due to a quirk in the definitions of the US Canada border Because of laws restricting fishing some residents of the Northwest Angle suggested leaving the United States and joining Canada in 1997 The following year U S Representative Collin Peterson of Minnesota proposed legislation to allow the residents of the Northwest Angle part of his district to vote on seceding from the United States and joining Canada 80 81 The action did not lead to secession but did succeed in getting fishing regulations synchronized across international fresh waters 82 State secession edit Some state movements seek secession from the United States itself and the formation of a nation from one or more states Alaska In November 2006 the Alaska Supreme Court held in the case Kohlhaas v State that secession was illegal and refused to permit an initiative to be presented to the people of Alaska for a vote The Alaskan Independence Party remains a factor in state politics and Walter Hickel a member of the party was Governor from 1990 to 1994 83 California California secession known as Calexit was discussed by grassroots movement parties and small activist groups calling for the state to secede from the union in a pro secessionist meeting in Sacramento on April 15 2010 84 In 2015 a political action committee called Yes California Independence Committee formed to advocate California s independence from the United States 85 On January 8 2016 the California Secretary of State s office confirmed that a political body called the California National Party filed the appropriate paperwork to begin qualifying as a political party 86 87 The California National Party whose primary objective is California independence ran a candidate for State Assembly in the June 7 2016 primary 88 On November 9 2016 after Donald Trump won the presidential election residents of the state caused the hashtag calexit to trend on Twitter wanting out of the country due to his win they argue that they have the 6th largest economy in the world and more residents than any other state in the union 89 32 of Californians and 44 of California Democrats were in favor of California secession in a March 2017 poll 90 The Attorney General of California approved applications by the California Freedom Coalition and others to gather signatures to put Calexit on the 2018 ballot 91 92 In July 2018 the objectives of the Calexit initiative were expanded upon by including a plan to carve out an autonomous Native American nation 93 that would take up the eastern part of California and postponing its ballot referendum approach in favor of convincing Republican states to support their breakaway efforts 93 Florida The mock 1982 secessionist protest 94 by the Conch Republic in the Florida Keys resulted in an ongoing source of local pride and tourist amusement Georgia On April 1 2009 the Georgia State Senate passed a resolution 43 1 that asserted the right of states to nullify federal laws under some circumstances The resolution also asserted that if Congress the president or the federal judiciary took certain steps such as establishing martial law without state consent requiring some types of involuntary servitude taking any action regarding religion or restricting freedom of political speech or establishing further prohibitions of types or quantities of firearms or ammunition the constitution establishing the United States government would be considered nullified and the union would be dissolved 95 Hawaii The Hawaiian sovereignty movement has a number of active groups that have won some concessions from the state of Hawaii including the offering of H R 258 in March 2011 which removes the words Treaty of Annexation from a statute As of 2011 update it had passed a committee recommendation 6 0 96 Montana With the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States to hear District of Columbia v Heller in late 2007 an early 2008 movement began in Montana involving at least 60 elected officials addressing potential secession if the Second Amendment were interpreted not to grant an individual right citing its compact with the United States of America 97 New Hampshire On September 1 2012 The New Hampshire Liberty Party was formed to promote independence from the federal government and for the individual 98 The Free State Project is another NH based movement that has considered secession to increase liberty On July 23 2001 founder of the FSP Jason Sorens published Announcement The Free State Project in The Libertarian Enterprise stating Even if we don t actually secede we can force the federal government to compromise with us and grant us substantial liberties Scotland and Quebec have both used the threat of secession to get large subsidies and concessions from their respective national governments We could use our leverage for liberty 99 Oregon Following the 2016 presidential election Portland residents Christian Trejbal and Jennifer Rollins submitted a petition for a ballot measure relating to secession from the United States the petitioners withdrew the measure shortly afterward citing recent riots and death threats 100 101 South Carolina In May 2010 a group formed that called itself the Third Palmetto Republic a reference to the fact that the state claimed to be an independent republic twice before once in 1776 and again in 1860 The group models itself after the Second Vermont Republic and says its aims are for a free and independent South Carolina and to abstain from any further federations citation needed Texas The group Republic of Texas generated national publicity for its controversial actions in the late 1990s 102 A small group still meets 103 In April 2009 Rick Perry the Governor of Texas raised the issue of secession in disputed comments during a speech at a Tea Party protest saying Texas is a unique place When we came into the union in 1845 one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that My hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention We ve got a great union There s absolutely no reason to dissolve it But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people who knows what may come of that 104 105 106 107 Another group the Texas Nationalist Movement also seeks Texas independence from the United States but its methodology is to have the Texas Legislature call for a statewide referendum 108 on the issue similar to the Scottish Independence vote of 2014 In 2022 the Republican Party of Texas platform called for the legislature to introduce a referendum on secession 109 In March 2023 state representative Bryan Slaton introduced a bill that would add a referendum on independence to the 2024 election ballot 110 Vermont The Second Vermont Republic founded in 2003 is a loose network of several groups that describes itself as a nonviolent citizens network and think tank opposed to the tyranny of Corporate America and the U S government and committed to the peaceful return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic and more broadly the dissolution of the Union 111 Its primary objective is to extricate Vermont peacefully from the United States as soon as possible 112 They have worked closely with the Middlebury Institute created from a meeting sponsored in Vermont in 2004 113 114 On October 28 2005 activists held the Vermont Independence Conference the first statewide convention on secession in the United States since North Carolina voted to secede from the Union on May 20 1861 112 They also participated in the 2006 and 2007 Middlebury organized national secessionist meetings that brought delegates from over a dozen groups 115 116 117 118 After Barack Obama won the 2012 presidential election secession petitions pertaining to all fifty states were filed through the White House We the People petition website 119 After the Supreme Court of the United States rejected Texas v Pennsylvania Texas attempt to invalidate 2020 election results from four states Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas Allen West said Perhaps law abiding states should bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the Constitution Some have interpreted this as an encouragement of secession from the United States 120 121 Regional secession edit nbsp Proposed State of Jefferson nbsp A map that shows the boundaries of the American RedoubtAmerican Redoubt is a political migration movement first proposed in 2011 which designates Idaho Montana and Wyoming along with parts of Oregon and Washington as a safe haven for conservative Christians 122 123 Republic of Lakotah Some members of the Lakota people of Montana Wyoming Nebraska North Dakota and South Dakota created the Republic to assert the independence of a nation that was always sovereign and did not willingly join the United States therefore they do not consider themselves technically to be secessionists 124 Pacific Northwest Cascadia There have been repeated attempts to form a Bioregional Democracy Cascadia in the northwest The core of Cascadia would be made up through the secession of the states of Washington Oregon and the Canadian province of British Columbia while some supporters of the movement support portions of Northern California Southern Alaska Idaho and Western Montana joining to define its boundaries along ecological cultural economic and political boundaries 125 126 127 128 129 Deseret A proposed Mormon theodemocracy based in the Intermountain West The Mormons unsuccessfully fought the United States federal government for control of the region culminating in the Utah War of 1857 After many failed attempts at statehood Deseret was diminished to the current boundaries of the state of Utah Mormon culture still persists throughout the Intermountain West a region known as the Mormon corridor League of the South The group seeks a free and independent Southern republic 130 made up of the former Confederate States of America 131 It operated a short lived Southern Party supporting the right of states to secede from the Union or to legally nullify federal laws 132 Red State secession Blue state secession Various editorials 133 134 have proposed that states of the U S secede and then form federations only with states that have voted for the same political party These editorials note the increasingly polarized political strife in the U S between Republican voters and Democratic voters They propose partition of the U S as a way of allowing both groups to achieve their policy goals while reducing the chances of civil war 135 136 Red states and blue states are states that typically vote for the Republican and Democratic parties respectively Northwest Territorial Imperative Proposed White ethnostate in which residence or citizenship would be limited to White people and would exclude non whites proposals for such a state are advanced by White supremacists and White separatists Historically as well as in modern times the Pacific Northwest Washington Oregon Idaho and a portion of Montana has been proposed by many white supremacists as a location for the establishment of a White ethnostate Aztlan 137 Chicano nationalism Plan de Aztlan Chicano Movement Advocacy groups Brown Berets Aztlanecas Brown Berets 138 MEChA Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan 139 140 Freedom Road Socialist Organization 141 which calls for self determination for the Chicano nation in Aztlan up to and including the right to secession 142 Raza Unida Party Defunct 143 Republic of New Afrika founded in 1968 144 is a black nationalist organization and black separatist movement in the United States popularized by black militant groups Polling editA September 2017 Zogby International poll found that 68 of Americans were open to states of the USA seceding 145 A 2014 Reuters Ipsos poll showed 24 of Americans supported their state seceding from the union if necessary 53 opposed the idea Republicans were somewhat more supportive than Democrats Respondents cited issues like gridlock governmental overreach the possible unconstitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and a loss of faith in the federal government as reasons for desiring secession 146 A 2021 poll found that 52 of Trump voters and 41 of Biden voters support partitioning the United States into multiple countries based on political party lines 147 148 149 A different poll that same year grouped the United States into five geographic regions and found that 37 of Americans favored secession of their own region 44 of Americans in the South favored secession with Republican support at 66 while Democratic support was 47 in the Pacific states 150 151 152 See also editList of active autonomist and secessionist movements in the United States List of U S state partition proposals List of U S county secession proposals List of U S states by date of statehood Territorial evolution of the United States Annexation movements of Canada Geography of the United States Historic regions of the United States National Atlas of the United States Hawaiian separatist movements Republic of Hawaii Puerto Rican Independence Party Second Vermont Republic 51st state American Redoubt Kirkpatrick Sale Northwest Territorial Imperative Ordinance of Secession Southern nationalism Submissionist Thomas Naylor Republic of Sonora Republic of West Florida State of Deseret Siouxland Great Sioux Reservation Great Sioux Nation Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone California Freedom Coalition Partition and secession in California Partition and secession in New York New England Cascadia bioregion References editInformational notes St George Tucker wrote The dissolution of these systems any confederacy of states happens when all the confederates by mutual consent or some of them voluntarily abandon the confederacy and govern their own states apart or a part of them form a different league and confederacy among each other and withdraw themselves from the confederacy with the rest Such was the proceeding on the part of those of the American states which first adopted the present constitution of the United States leaving the states of Rhode Island and North Carolina both of which at first rejected the new constitution to themselves 15 Tucker wrote that this was an evident breach of the Articles of Confederation because they stipulated that those articles should be inviolably observed by every state and that union should be perpetual nor should any alteration at any time thereafter be made in any of them unless such alterations be agreed to in the congress of the United States and be afterwards confirmed by the legislatures of every state Tucker quoting from the Articles of Confederation Yet the seceding states as they may not be improperly termed did not hesitate as soon as nine states had ratified the new constitution to supersede the former federal government and establish a new form more consonant to their opinion of what was necessary to the preservation and prosperity of the federal union 15 Of Madison Ferling wrote that he was resolute about protecting the propertied class from what he believed were the democratic excesses of the American Revolution and at the same time guarding Southern interests which to a considerable extent meant preserving the well being of slaveholders against a Northern majority Of Hamilton Ferling wrote His principal aim according to his biographer Forrest McDonald was to lay groundwork for enhanced Congressional authority over commerce 17 Ferling notes that John Jay wrote to George Washington that Errors in our national Government threaten the Fruit we expected from our Tree of Liberty Ferling wrote of Henry Lee that he spoke of the contempt with which America was held in Europe Ferling s words and the dangers that the country s degrading supiness Lee s words presented to preservation of the nation 18 From Federalist 43 A compact between independent sovereigns founded on ordinary acts of Legislative authority can pretend to no higher validity than a league or treaty between the parties It is an established doctrine on the subject of treaties that all the Articles are mutually conditions of each other that a breach of any one Article is a breach of the whole treaty and that a breach committed by either of the parties absolves the others and authorizes them if they please to pronounce the compact violated and void Should it unhappily be necessary to appeal to these delicate truths for a justification for dispensing with the consent of particular States to a dissolution of the federal pact will not the complaining parties find it a difficult task to answer the multiplied and important infractions with which they may be confronted 20 Citations Gienapp 2002 An Act declaring the Consent of Congress that a new State be formed within the Jurisdiction of the Commonwealth of Virginia and admitted into this Union by the Name of the State of Kentucky Library of Congress February 4 1791 Retrieved February 7 2024 Wickersham George November 1911 New States and Constitutions PDF Yale Law Journal 21 1 9 Retrieved February 7 2024 a b Maier 1997 p 135 J Jayne Allen Op Cit pp 45 46 48 citation needed Eidelberg 1976 p 24 J Jayne Allen Op Cit p 128 Creating the Declaration of Independence Train of Abuses Antecedent Documents Creating the United States Library of Congress Retrieved February 16 2015 includes Draft of the Virginia Constitution 1776 Common Sense 1776 A Summary View of the Rights of British America 1774 Fairfax County Resolves 1774 Two Treatises of Government 1690 Exhibition Home Creating the United States Library of Congress Archived from the original on June 6 2010 Wood 1969 p 40 Klein 1997 pp 32 33 Klein 1997 p xii McDonald 1985 pp 281 82 Varon 2008 pp 1 2 a b Tucker 1999 p 84 Amar 2005 p 30 Ferling 2003 pp 273 74 Ferling 2003 p 274 a b Amar 2005 p 31 The quoted material is from Blackstone s Commentaries Amar 2005 p 31 Tucker 1999 pp 85 86 Amar 2005 p 39 quoting Gibbons v Ogden 22 U S 9 Wheat 1 1824 a b c Stampp 1978 p 6 Amar 2005 pp 29 32 Amar 2005 p 33 Amar 2005 p 35 Amar 2005 pp 35 36 a b Amar Akhil Reed September 19 2005 Conventional Wisdom New York Times Archived from the original on May 29 2015 Retrieved May 29 2015 Amar Akhil Reed 2001 David C Baur Lecture Abraham Lincoln And The American Union University of Illinois Law Review Yale Law School 2001 5 1124 Retrieved November 20 2019 Farber 2003 p 87 Ketcham 1990 pp 644 46 Volume 1 Chapter 3 Document 14 James Madison to Daniel Webster The Founder s Constitution University of Chicago March 18 1833 Retrieved September 16 2015 Remini 1984 p 21 President Jackson s Proclamation Regarding Nullification The Avalon Project Yale Law School December 10 1832 Retrieved September 16 2015 a b James Buchanan Fourth Annual Message to Congress on the State of the Union Stromberg 1982 p 42 Smith 1995 p 1119 Chernow 2004 p 586 Chernow 2004 p 587 McDonald 1985 p 281 citing Morris Address to the People of the State of New York 1814 et al Buel 2005 pp 22 23 Buel 2005 pp 44 58 Buel 2005 p 23 a b Hickey 1997 p 233 Amendments to the Constitution Proposed by the Hartford Convention 1814 The Avalon Project Retrieved September 16 2015 Hickey 1997 pp 233 34 Hickey 1997 p 234 Cain 1995 p 115 Sibley 2005 p 117 a b House of Representatives The Monomania Hoax Ex President Adams The Treasury Note Bill Petition for the Dissolution of the Union New York Daily Herald January 26 1842 p 3 Mayer 1998 p 327 Mayer 1998 p 328 Barnard Frederick A P 1851 No just cause for a dissolution of the Union in any thing which has hitherto happened but the Union the only security for southern rights Tuscaloosa Alabama a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link a b Wright Henry C January 16 1857 20 Dec 1856 Downfall of the American Union The Liberator Boston Massachusetts p 3 Powell Aaron M January 16 1857 10 Jan 1857 Letter from Aaron M Powell The Liberator Boston Massachusetts p 3 Meacham 2009 p 247 Catton 1961 pp 327 28 a b DeRusha Jason Good Question Can A State Secede From The Union CBS Minnesota Retrieved September 26 2016 a b Zurcher Anthony June 22 2016 EU referendum How is the US not like the EU BBC News Retrieved September 26 2016 a b ussc 74 700 1868 Pattani Aneri June 24 2016 Can Texas Legally Secede From the United States The Texas Tribune Retrieved September 26 2016 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editDeclaration of Causes of Seceding States Ordinances of Secession of Georgia Mississippi South Carolina and Texas Williamson Eric October 16 2017 Was Secession Legal University of Virginia Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Secession in the United States amp oldid 1204728546, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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