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"Secession
is a deeply American principle. This country was born through secession."
~ Ron Paul
Leftists and neocons
in the media who tend to agree
on the propriety and desirability
of an ever-growing welfare/warfare/police state were predictably apoplectic when Ron Paul recently stated on his House Web site that secession is "a deeply American principle." Congressman
Paul was alluding to the fact that all fifty states have sent secession
petitions to the White House.
Typical of the media response
was a snotty remark by one Robert Schlesinger,
the son of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who is the "managing editor of opinion" of the soon-to-go-out-of-business U.S. News. Ron Paul is "deeply wrong," he moaned, calling the congressman a "crank"
and predicting that he "will soon be forgotten."
Robert Schlesinger’s bad
manners are matched by his utter ignorance of American
history.
Ron Paul was
most certainly correct when he said
that America "was born through
secession." The Revolutionary
War was a war of secession
from the British empire. As Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of
Independence, our Declaration
of Secession from the
British Empire, governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed, and whenever that consent is withdrawn, it is the right and duty of the
people to "alter or abolish" that government and "to institute a new government."
How else
could one possibly interpret the following passage
from the Declaration but
a declaration of secession
or separation from Great Britain?: "That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE and
INDEPENDENT STATES; that they
are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that
all political connection between them and the state of
Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved . . ." (emphasis in original).
In his
first inaugural address Jefferson advocated attempts at persuasion, as opposed to a Lincolnian waging of total war of terrorism on American citizens who sought disunion: "If there be any
among us who would wish to dissolve this Union . . . let them stand
undisturbed as monuments of the safety
with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it." In a January 29, 1804
letter to a Dr. Joseph Priestly,
who had inquired about the prospect of the New England Federalists seceding from the union, as they were plotting
to do at the time, Jefferson said:
"Whether we remain in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and
Mississippi confederacies, I believe
not very important to the happiness
of either part. Those of
the western confederacy will
be as much our children and descendants as
those of the eastern . .
. " If there was a separation in the future, Jefferson continued,
"I should feel the duty & the desire to promote the western interests
as zealously as the eastern,, doing all the good for both portions of our future family which should fall within
my power."
In an August 12, 1803 letter to John C. Breckenridge
Jefferson addressed the issue of New England secession by saying that if they seceded, "God bless them
both, & keep them in the union if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better."
On June 20, 1816, Jefferson wrote
to a Mr. W. Crawford that "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation
. . . to a continuance in the union," then "I have no hesitation
in saying, ‘let us separate’"
(The
Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 15, p.
27). Jefferson believed that
the right of secession was
absolutely necessary if America was to avoid tyrannical government. (And Robert Schlesinger
hasn’t the foggiest
idea of what he is talking
about).
John Quincy Adams believed that if a state or
states wanted to secede, then "a more perfect
Union" could be formed "by dissolving that which could
no longer bind . . ." (John Quincy Adams, The
Jubilee of the Constitution, p. 66). In Democracy in America
(p. 381) Alexis de Tocqueville observed that "The Union was formed by the voluntary
agreement of the States; and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality . . . . If one of he
states chooses to withdraw
from the compact, it would be difficult
to disprove its right of doing so, and the Federal Government would have no means of maintaining its claims directly either by force or
right."
Jefferson’s great nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, defended
the right of secession by saying
that "To coerce the
States [to remain in the Union] is
one of the maddest projects
that was ever devised" and thought of "a government that can only
exist by the sword,"
with "Congress marching the troops of one
State into the bosom of another" a moral abomination (Jonathan Elliot’s Debates in the Several State
Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal
Constitution, p. 232).
America’s second generation
of secessionists were not
the Southern Confederates
but the New England Federalists
who so loathed the idea of a Jefferson
presidency that they plotted to secede for the next fourteen years. Their efforts culminated in the
Hartford Secession Convention of 1814 (See James Banner, To
the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in
Massachusetts). Much of the discussion of the New England
secessionists is contained in Henry Adams, editor, Documents
Relating to New-England Federalism. In it one learns that the leader of the
New Enland Yankee secessionists
was United States Senator Timothy Pickering, who had previously
served as George Washington’s
adjutant general and quartermaster during the Revolution, and later as secretary of state and secretary
or war in the Washington administration.
In 1803 Pickering announced
that with New England seceding from the union "I will rather anticipate a new confederacy, exempt from the corrupt and corrupting influence of the aristocratic
Democrats of the South." United States Senator
James Hillhouse agreed that "The Eastern States
must and will dissolve the union and form a separate
government." George Cabot, Elbridge
Gerry, John Quincy Adams, Fisher Ames, Josiah Quincy, and Joseph Story, among others, voiced similar opinions in the
first years of the nineteenth
century.
Governor Roger Griswold
of Connecticut proclaimed that
because of the political clout of the Southern states,
"there can be no safety [from political plunder] to the Northern States
without a separation from the confederacy [a.k.a. the union]." Senator Pickering explained that secession was THE principle of the American Revolution
when he said that "the principles of our Revolution point to the remedy
– a separation. That this
can be accomplished, and without spilling one drop of blood, I
have little doubt."
And he was right: President Jefferson considered
New Englanders to be an integral part of the American family,
and the last thing in the world he
would have done was to launch an invasion of
New England, bombing
Boston, Providence, and Hartford and turning them into a
smoldering ruin to "save the union."
The New England
Federalists eventually decided in 1814 at the Hartford Secession
Convention to remain in the union and work within the system. All during this fourteen
year ordeal the predominant view of the New England Federalists as well as the Jeffersonian Democrats was that of course the American union was
voluntary, and of course the states therefore have a right to secede
without asking for or being given permission by anyone or by any other government.
The third
significant American secession
movement occurred in what in the nineteenth century were called "the middle states" – New York,
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland.
In The
Secession Movement in the
Middle Atlantic States historian William C.
Wright described how in the 1850s these states, which accounted for some 40 percent
of the U.S. economy, had
put together a powerful political movement in favor of forming a Central Confederacy as a separate
country. On the eve of the War
to Prevent Southern
Independence leading opinion makers
in these states advocated
either allowing the Southern states to secede in peace; seceding and joining the Southern Confederacy; or seceding to form a separate nation comprised of the Middle Atlantic states.
Belief that the
American union was voluntary
and that it would be a war
crime and a moral abomination for the federal government to force any state
to remain in the union was
strong throughout America on the eve of the war. Northern Editorials on Secession, edited by
Howard C. Perkins, describes
how the majority of Northern
newspapers advocated peaceful secession of the Southern states in 1860-61. For
example, the Bangor Daily Union editorialized on November 13,
1860 that "The Union depends
for its continuance on
the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state,
and when that consent and
will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone." The New
York Journal of Commerce condemned "the meddlesome spirit" of Northern
"Yankees" who "seek
to regulate and control people in other communities." The New
York Tribune wrote on December
17, 1860 that "If tyranny
and despotism justified
the Revolution of 1776, then
we do not see why it would
not justify the secession
of Five Millions of Southrons from
the Federal Union in
1861." The Kenosha, Wisconsin Democrat
editorialized on January
11, 1861 that "Secession
is the very germ of liberty . . . the right of secession
inheres to the people of every
sovereign state."
Ron Paul could
not have said it better.
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