Secession in the Air
No, it is not 1860 again.
But with all the talk of the 10th Amendment, nullification and interposition, states rights and secession—following Gov. Rick Perry's misstatement that Texas, on entering the Union in 1845, reserved in its constitution a right to secede—one might think so.
Chalk up another one for those Tea Party activists who exploded in cheers when Sister Sarah brought up the dread word in endorsing Rick Perry in the primary.
Looking back in American history, however, these ideas, these sentiments, decried as insane inside the Beltway, were once as American as "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere."
"I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical," wrote Thomas Jefferson to James Madison from Paris in January 1787, about Revolutionary War Capt. Daniel Shay's anti-tax rebellion in Massachusetts.
In the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, both of these founding fathers sanctioned the idea that states could interpose their own sovereignty and nullify acts of Congress. Both were enraged by the Alien and Sedition Acts of John Adams and the Federalists, written into law to combat sedition during the undeclared naval war with France.
On taking office, President Jefferson declared the acts unconstitutional, refused to prosecute those charged and freed the imprisoned writers.
In 1814, Timothy Pickering, another veteran of the revolution and secretary of state to both George Washington and Adams, was a force behind the Hartford Convention, which argued for New England's secession and reuniting with Great Britain. Massachusetts opposed Madison's War of 1812 that had caused the British blockade that destroyed their trade and prosperity.
The war's end and Jackson's victory at New Orleans, however, aborted the Hartford movement and finished off the Federalists forever.
In 1832, it was Vice President John Calhoun who inspired South Carolina to vote to nullify the Tariff of Abomination that was killing the cotton-exporting South and enriching Northern manufacturers. To the chagrin of Madison, Calhoun invoked his and Jefferson's Virginia and Kentucky resolutions in defense of Carolinian defiance.
In 1845, it was Massachusetts again. Ex-President John Quincy Adams declared that admission of Texas to the Union as a slave state might constitute grounds for secession and civil war.
With Abraham Lincoln's election in 1860 and Republicans, the Northern party, assuming power, South Carolina, Georgia and the Gulf states seceded.
But not until after Fort Sumter, when Lincoln called for volunteers to march south and crush the rebellion, did Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas secede, rather than remain passive or participate in a war on their kinfolk.
Unlike the issues of yesteryear that tore the Union asunder, Tea Party issues are not sectional but national. Yet, they are rooted in a similar set of beliefs—that the federal government no longer serves their interests, but the interests of economic and political forces that sustain the party in power.
In 1860, the South saw power passing indefinitely to a new regime, a Republican Party that represented high-tariff industrialists and New England radicals and abolitionists who despised the agrarian South and celebrated the raid on Harper's Ferry by the terrorist John Brown, who had sought to incite a slave uprising, such as had occurred in Santo Domingo.
What called the Tea Party into existence?
Some are angry over unchecked immigration and the failure to control our borders and send the illegals back. Some are angry over the loss of manufacturing jobs. Some are angry over winless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some are angry over ethnic preferences they see as favoring minorities over them.
What they agree upon, however, is that they have been treading water for a decade, working harder and harder with little or no improvement in their family standard of living. They see the government as taking more of their income in taxes, seeking more control over their institutions, creating entitlements for others not them, plunging the nation into unpayable debt, and inviting inflation or a default that can wipe out what they have saved.
And there is nothing they can do about it, for they are politically powerless. By their gatherings, numbers, mockery of elites and militancy, however, they get a sense of the power that they do not have.
Their repeated reappearance on the national stage, in new incarnations, should be a fire bell in the night to the establishment of both parties. For it testifies to their belief and that of millions more that the state they detest is at war with the country they love.
The secession taking place in America is a secession of the heart—of people who have come to believe the government is them, and not us.
Obama's problem, like the Bushes' in 1992 and 2008, is that one thing these folks are really good at is throwing people out of power.
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The secessionists were not strong enough or intelligent enough to succeed in 1860 - their prospects are considerably worse now. In any case, the politicians making these noises are just bluffing I note also that there is a discrepancy between this article and the nearly identical article at VDare.com. In listing the South's perceived enemies in 1860, Mr. Buchanan includes "immigrant-backed big city machines" at VDare but not here. Why the alteration? Perhaps Mr. Buchanan decided not to take a further swipe at his immigrant ethnic ancestors? Perhaps the champion of white ethnics overcame the pro-Confederate sentimentalist? Then again, the historian in him may have realized that the big city machines were run by Copperhead Democrats like Fernando Wood, the NYC mayor who proposed that NYC secede (actually, a good idea).
TVO: If Mr. Buchanan included that phrase, it was in a private communication to the folks at VDare. We ran the piece from Creators unaltered. I reckon it's possible that Mr. Buchanan didn't include it at all. I'd inquire in the comments section on VDare.
At the Abbeville Institute conference last weekend
in Charleston, I heard excellent papers delivered
on secession and nullification. There are persuasive
arguments to be made for the right of secession.
Some of those arguments were used twenty years to
give independence to former Soviet satellite states.
The subscript of Mr. Buchanan's article at VDare is:
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One thing I do agree with in the article: our current troubles are national, not sectional (as the late Sam Francis also maintained). Talk about secession and nullification is just moonshine, we will sink or swim together.
Break up the U.S.! Secession NOW!
Mr. Van Oosbree #4, I don't know that the term "national" has the same meaning that it used to, namely, pertaining to a nation, a people, with shared values, religion, history, culture. Increasingly, in this propositional "nation", devoted to a secular humanist world view, we hold ever fewer things of substance in common. What, TV, the mall, post-modern, deconstructed nonsense? If what I see expressed in the popular culture and crony-capitalist-corporate politics is representative of what is today "American", then me and mine aren't Americans. We're better off with the culture and institutions (including the adaptation of our rye whiskey into corn-based moonshine!) we brought over with us from the British Isles and adapted to our new country.
Regardless, desirability isn't inevitability, and I'm not so arrogant as to say that they're the same thing. But I will say that the increasing hubris of our "elites" and political "masters" over a long period of time may well produce a perfect storm that will shift paradigms in ways few could foresee. Secession, then, is not so fantastical.
Mr. V.O. has, as usual, used the occasion to make a nasty and irrelevant attack on the South, about which he knows nothing. Note how he speculates on Mr. Buchanan's motives in a condescending and critical manner, the usual way of proceeding for his ilk.
By the Way, the founders of the League of the South anticipated Mr. Buchanan's penultimate paragraph well over a decade ago, when we pledged to "abjure the realm," i.e., morally secede from the vile American regime.
Neither secessionism nor nationalism are in themselves good or bad, and it is as serious a mistake to eschatize the immanent as to immanentize the eschaton. Southerners in 1860 were not secessionists in the sense that they elevated secession above other political principles but Americans who firmly believed that one section of the country was determined to build up a national government to harm Southern economic interests and subjugate Southern states. To depict the Southern leadership as unintelligent is a piece of stupidity contradicted by all the contemporary evidence and witnesses. The argument that because, in the end, they lacked the resources needed to preserve their liberties they should have submitted to oppression could be just as fairly applied to the Spartans at Thermopylae or any brave people, whether they won or lost, who defended themselves against a greater power. Many Southerners at the time made practical arguments against secession, but many of them also became loyal Confederates and brave soldiers. This is the kind of argument that makes an honest man sick to his stomach.
Sam Francis opposed secessionist movements on the grounds that white Americans faced a common foe and have to stick together, but he loathed and despised the twerps who attacked the South or made light of the gallantry of Southern soldiers. If we do have to sink or swim, let us make sure it it will be with honest men who do not continue to repeat the propaganda lies that first subjugated the South and went on to subjugate an entire country. Let's dig up John Brown's body and throw it on the garbage heap where it belongs.
"One thing I do agree with in the article: our current troubles are national, not sectional (as the late Sam Francis also maintained)."
Abortion is not a trouble that has a sectional component? Prayer in school? Hyper-secularization? Health care, even? Had states been able to credibly threaten secession - or had some actually seceded - then not a few troubles that are now national might be only sectional, and might not now burden every one of the states.
They were not unintelligent, just not intelligent enough. The South's relative material deficits gave their leadership less room for error. Many historians (Southerners included) cite the mistakes made by the Confederate leadership as critical to their defeat. The mistakes were not malicious but resulted from a lack of military/strategic insight. Obviously, no slur of Southern gallantry is implied in such a critique. To err is human. Neither does opposition to secession now or then imply a loathing of the South (or anybody else). Dr. Fleming correctly points out that many Southerners opposed secession (a large number continued to oppose it during the war itself).
Perhaps we would be better off if we considered likely scenarios in which secession might take place within ten years. The U.S. is obviously a failed state now due to the irresponsibility, criminality, and stupidity of it's leaders. Breakup is now inevitable whether we like it or not, and perhaps we might be able to better prepare for what might happen if we had some idea what is likely to happen. Any ideas anyone?
I, too, attended the Abbeville Institute's conference in Charleston which dealt with state nullification, secession and the human scale of political order.
I had opportunity to discuss the issue with Professor Thomas Naylor whose paper was entitled "The Vermont Village Green: An Alternative to Empire." Based on my conversations with Dr. Naylor, I concluded that our common ground was that secession is and must be an option for a state if the traditions, customs and social customs of that state are threatened by a general government "gone Hobbesian."
The issues which might lead the people of a given state to consider and perhaps attempt to secede are a different matter. On the long drive back from the conference, I considered my state of Louisiana which, on that Sunday just last week, was in the pitch fever of the Saints at the Superbowl. I decided to look as the obstacles to secession in the Bayou State. I concluded that the obstacles are formidable. We are corrupt! That corruption is evident in many ways.
We have a large black population, the majority of which has been a dependent ward of the general government since the mid-1860's, particularly since the New Deal and the Great Society. I seriously doubt that this population would support a secession movement.
We have a huge white welfare class as well, a class very dependent on the transfer of wealth which the Hobbesian general government "graces" it with. It would not support secession.
The "conservative" farming class of Louisiana is thoroughly corrupted with land-bank welfare, crop-insurance welfare, and cheap-money welfare.
Louisiana is addicted to the military-industrial complex. We have two huge military bases in the state along with over a score of smaller ones. Billions of dollars flow into the state, and thousands of people are directly employed by these bases. Thousands more make their livings off these sites. Thousands of Louisianans are veterans and receive extensive benefits from the general government.
Of course, large portions of our population receive social security and medicare from the general government.
Most of the wealth in Louisiana belongs and has belonged since Reconstruction to outside interests who would put tremendous political pressure on the general government and one the state and local governments of Louisiana to stamp out any movement toward secession.
Large segments of "conservatives" in Louisiana have become nationalists and are the willing Janissary of the imperial designs of the general government in its foreign policy.
Health care proved that our ranking politicians could be bought with the money which the general government had appropriated from others.
None of this was true in 1861 when the people of Louisiana in convention assembled dared to assert their sovereignty and to resume their place among the republics of the world.
The general government would have to make a very large misstep, one that I frankly cannot anticipate, for these obstacles to be overcome so that the people of Louisiana would seriously consider secession.
None of the social issues - gay marriage, abortion, etc. - will bring us to the barricades chanting "Secession!" I do not believe that even the issue of the right to bear arms would put us at the gates. There is an outside chance that a complete financial collapse, dooming the general government, might cause some to consider secession. At that point, however, Texas might invade and take the No-Man's-Land, and the Republic of West Florida might again host the Bonnie Blue Flag. Perhaps the French could have the Isle d'Orleans. The Gulf of Mexico will eventually get Cajun Country. The rump of the state will be left to us hillbillies.
Secession, like any instrument, can be used irresponsibly and therefore immorally. But there can come a time when not to use the instrument is irresponsible and therefore immoral. To make such decisions we need moral men, republican men, meaning men with character who live out that character in public and in private life. I find none among us, none in leadership. That is our biggest obstacle.
Secession is simply not happening any time soon despite these encouraging signs. If you think the South is going to lead secession movements, I would remind you that the good people of Norfolk and Fort Bragg and Fort Jackson and Paris Island have "taken their stand" and it is for empire. Nor is the Tea Party movement our salvation. Here in FL, it seems to have spawn the rise Marco Rubio-a candidate who supports open borders and American military involvement anywhere and everywhere.
I am just a little more optimistic, or less discouraged, than Dr. Peters. I think that many otherwise solid people who are static under the present regime will be forced more and more to begin to calculate the "value of the Union." The allegiance of the middle and working classes in the sounder parts of the country and of much of the really patriotic military even, can be destroyed by the regime itself as it continues on its corrupt decay.
That's my line of reasoning, Dr Wilson, though I admit that both Peters and Rob are spot on in their analysis of the current situation.
My line of reasoning is that the current welfare-warfare state is unsustainable and it's collapse is inevitable. Breakup of the union is now only a matter of time, and all those people out there will find themselves caught in the circumstances when the collapse comes, just as happened in the Soviet empire. Like Belarus, we may just find ourselves independent by default.
My comments were about Louisiana. I have made no analysis of other states, although many would face, if considering secession, some of the same or similar problems.
My discussions with Dr. Naylor led me to believe that Vermont is well positioned to be a state which could lead the way. In our discussions, we agreed that the issues which might lead one state to consider secession might not be the key issues for another state to contemplate it.
I agree with Mr. Allen Wilson in that I do not believe that the welfare-warfare state is sustainable.
There were those at the conference who wanted the general government to push the issue or "to give the tug" that would bring down the house of cards. They felt it might come after the general government reacted to a governor's bold attempt at interposition. I am not sure where there might be such a governor, but such might be a possibility.
It is compellingly interesting that this is being discussed at all in Internet and other public fora.
@16
At first I had high hopes about the Vermont movement, but as I spoke to some of its followers it seemed that much of it was built upon left wing anti-Bushism (not that Bush was good, mind you). Some Vermonters made a big stink about the alliance with the 'racist' LOS and eventually they removed all links and references to them from the Second Vermont Republic website.
As sincere as the SVR's leaders are, I think if you did a poll of Vermonters right now you'd find they are perfectly happy with rule by Obama. We must not forget that Vermonters are still yankees, after all.
Mr. Maxwell @ 17
I the discussion in which I participated about the Vermont Republic, the point that was made that percent of those who might consider secession within the state had dropped.
Indeed, it seems that the issues about which secession might be considered in Vermont were those associated with the War in Iraq, the War in Afghanistan, and U.S. policy toward Israel. Those were at least the ones articulated most often to me.
The League of the South, among other organizations, represents Southern interests. Vermont is, of course, not a part of the South. That is why I maintain that each state which has the courage to consider secession will consider it based on its own issues in its context of customs and traditions. We Southerners should not expect the people of Vermont to embrace our issues and concerns; we in turn should not embrace theirs where we differ.
Our common ground, it would seem, is that a state/republic has the obligation to consider secession, after other remedies have been duly attempted. Assuming that Vermont were to begin the secession process, because the people thereof saw it as the only remedy for preserving their customs and traditions, I certainly would not move to Vermont and abandon my Southern roots just so that I could "experience" secession. That would be making an means into an end.
Mr. Maxwell, you are perfectly right about the Vermont secessionists. They may, as they claim, want independence, but they will never give up their assumed right to govern US. That is their indelible character. Having no culture or substance of their own, they do not exist except by defining themselves against the South.
However, it is correct that a New England State ought to lead secession. The feds would not nuke them. They would nuke us, for which they have ample historical precedent, not to mention total lack of any sense of generosity and fair play.
I will always have a soft spot for Vermont because of the 1936 presidential election. So sad what has become of it since.