Posted on 01/19/2021 4:38:09 PM PST by rfreedom4u
Many people have stated that secession is illegal and not allowed as determined by the American Civil War. But is it really? Throughout the history of the United States our government has supported the independence/secession of states/territories/colonies from various other nations.
Haiti seceded from the French empire through a slave revolt. South Sudan broke from Sudan. Yugoslavia broke into several countries and later Kosovo seceded from Serbia. Czechoslovakia split into two countries. The Soviet split into quite a few countries. The UK left the European Union. And many others….
So why do people say secession is illegal in the United States? There’s nothing in the US Constitution that mentions secession. The Tenth Amendment states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Using my logic this means that since the issue of secession is not given to the federal government it is reserved to the states or the people themselves to determine. I’ve read the constitution of my own state (Texas) and secession is not mentioned at all. This even furthers my belief that is should be determined by the people.
If I were to join a club and did not like what the club became, I would be well within my rights to quit that club. If I go to see a movie and don’t like it, I can walk out. So why would anyone believe that the United States is a “once you’re in you can’t leave” type of deal? When someone doesn’t like the state in which they live they are free to move to another state or even another country.
If secession/independence/splitting up is supported for other people in the world why is it not ok for citizens of the United States? And yes, I know that politicians are garbage and want to maintain their power and control. So please give me your opinion on whether it is legal or not and why you think that way? But please spare me the “if it’s broke, we don’t run away, we fix it” argument. At this point I am fairly certain that it is not repairable.
So why would anyone believe that the United States is a "once you're in you can't leave" type of deal?See Mafia. La Cosa Nostra. US Federal Government - all the same. You can try to leave, but doing so is tantamount to a death sentence.
If I have attributed that quote incorrectly then it was incorrect in the source where I got it. I’ll have to check and verify that.
Because the secession of the Confederate states was — at its root — an exercise of the principle of self-governance that Lincoln was describing.
Secession is legal because there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents it. Since it is legal then the only question remaining is how to go about it? How to permit secession so that both sides of the matter, the states leaving and the states staying, have all their rights protected? The only way to do that is through negotiation and then approval of a majority of the states as expressed through a majority vote in both houses of Congress. In short, leaving should be not more difficult than joining. The hard part would be the negotiations leading up to the vote, but without those negotiations and agreement by both sides you are guaranteeing an acrimonious split.
When did they ever have the upper hand?
Real estate doesn't vote, people do.
LOL! No. But they did show that rebellion was illegal.
Thirty years before he was born? Neat trick.
Because it worked so well the last time?
How about naming a few of them?
***The Declaration and the Constitution establish the framework of not just a union of states but of “one people”.***
(Meanwhile, in reality, the Declaration of Independence was a beautiful disunionist manifesto.)
***“. . . When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve . .” Reading is really not that hard. By the way, the Declaration was not a “disunionist” manifesto, it was a revolutionary explanation of independence justifying the right to overthrow a government and a sovereign. Secession is not revolution. You diminish the Declaration's revolutionary meaning.***
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***It was a vote of the people in ratifying conventions in each new state that created the union.***
(Thereby proving that membership is maintained by the consent of the people of any said state. After all, the mechanism was not a referendum for the people of, say Vermont, to allow the former colony of New York to join.)
***Oh contraire, the Constitution required the approval of a super majority to be enacted - nine states - thus being exactly the mechanism of, say Vermont to allow or not allow New York to join. And all new states joining thereafter would also have to be approved by the others. You are confused***
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***Once joined it takes the consent of the whole for a State to depart.***
(Which theory contradicts the historical circumstance of individual states choosing for themselves whether they are part of the union or not.)
***See above.***
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***You are simultaneously a citizen of your state and of the nation as a whole.***
(Federal citizenship as you're imagining it was created by the Fourteenth Amendment to resolve the issue of it-not-actually-even-existing-prior-to-the-rump-ratification-of-the-Fourteenth-Amendment.)
***Oh dear! You do know, I hope, that after the original 13 states became one nation there were territories in which US citizens lived? And that these citizens were not fully self-governing until their territory was accepted as a state. Meanwhile these citizens, while not having “states” rights or citizenship still had federal rights and obligations. And all of this well before the Fourteenth Amendment. Whew!***
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***Just as one state may not abrogate or diminish your citizenship rights in another state, a state may not abrogate or diminish your national citizenship though secession.***
(Oh, how you must resent those damned revolutionaries who deprived your fellow subjects of their ability to participate in the Crown's government. Unless, of course, you're complete hypocrite.)
***You also do realize that the colonies were not states. I was speaking of constitutionally formed states and their permanent union. As for your argument
about the colonies overthrowing the King, well yes there were Tories and pacifists, and they did suffer greatly as did patriots. Your point being . . . Ummm, well, huh?***
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***Lincoln laid this all out, many times.***
(Lincoln wasn't around when the constitution was being crafted, how could he ‘lay out’ anything?)
***Do I sense an unreconstructed Southerner here? Everyone realizes the Constitution “punted” on the issue of slavery. It was a devils bargain to get it ratified. Lincoln most definitely laid out or “wrote”, if you will, the conclusion to that constitutional issue. He also put to rest the silly, but dangerous notion, that the “permanent” union that the Constitution created, could be reduced to a confederation which had previously been found wanting, and that secession was an option. Finally, though he did not want to, he “laid” out the South, decisively. He finally saw the war as a purging of an “original” sin that the Union had within its founding with hopes for ultimate extinction but that the South demanded to be kept, blemishing all. He is as much a founder as Washington, Jefferson, and all.***
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***There is no constitutional process for dissolving all or part of this union of states and people. A constitutional amendment would have to be enacted that would lay out the process.***
(Most of our rights are unaccompanied by a constitutionally mandated process. The First Amendment guarantees the rights of free expression, religious observation, political demonstration, publication without prior constraint, and the right to specifically petition the government. But that same amendment provides NO guidance for how to enjoy them because rights don't originate with government and the constitution doesn't create rights — it merely prohibits government intrusion into our exercise of our own original rights. The whole premise of the American experiment in self-government is that the people of each of the several states have the sovereign and natural right to withdraw from political union to which they withhold consent. As with other rights, the “process” would consist of the federal government staying the hell out of it.)
***I'll give you the short version (you can read your Montesquieu and Locke, et. al. for the longer one). Sovereignty posed a ticklish problem. So in typical American fashion, for practicalities sake, the founders “ignored” its philosophical conundrums, by simply asserting the “people” were sovereign. They concentrated on distributing the “exercises” of sovereignty assigning national uses to the federal government, and the rest to the states or “to the people themselves”. Neither the federal government nor the states are “sovereign”, but each has roles in the exercise of the powers of sovereignty.
The claim that the people are sovereign fits well with the notion of one nation. It also allows for the assertion that the people can overthrow an unjust government. Overthrow means revolution not secession. Of course, an unsuccessful revolution is seen as a failed rebellion, in which the losers are drawn and quartered.***
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***Good luck with that. Just trying to figure out who absorbs the national debt or how to keep social security payments flowing or how to divide military assets would never be resolved.***
(Yeah, because nations never negotiate treaties and shit./s)
***Yeah, and there once was a time that I thought I could “negotiate” certain things with my wife. Silly me.***
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***You may not be a citizen of California or Texas or Ohio, but as an American you have as much “right” to to those states as anyone else. Equal protection of the law and other federal rights is what you gained in union, having that also granted to all American citizens. That can't be taken from you by another citizen or a state in any legal manner.***
(Next time I take my ar-15 through a New York airport or visit a public firing range in California with my thirty-round magazines, I'll be sure to direct any inquiring authorities your way. You'll straighten them out for me.)
***Well, the doctrine of incorporation, is clearly a mess, I'll grant you that.
Don't worry too much about your 2a rights of where to take your AR. Soon it seems, your 1a rights to praise your AR may soon be criminalized. Here is where the free states have the opportunity to oppose and even criminalize the actions of the tyrant states and the Feds. There is fertile room for nullification and free state compacts. The winning state expansion of constitutional and concealed carry shows the way, given the absolute lack of probity by Congress and the Supreme Court.***
It's been fun, but I really need to move on to ordering my seeds. We basically grow, process and store all our own food with always well over a year's worth of fresh supply, rotated annually. I also have no need of any more ammo. Silly me again.
No, secession as practiced by the Southern states was the act in insurrection that Lincoln spoke of. Lincoln always recognized the right of people to rebel but he never said that the success of their rebellion was guaranteed or that the government had no duty to oppose the rebellion.
You are correct and my learned friend jmacusa is wrong. The quote is from Lincoln's first inaugural. He may be thinking of Lincoln's 1848 speech on the war with Mexico when he said, "Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better."
Whether it’s a good idea or not, the question of the legality of secession is probably irrelevant when abject tyranny is the issue.
Not really. "Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." - George Washington, 1796
The idea that we were citizens of the United States over citizens of a separate state existed long before the 14th Amendment.
Which theory contradicts the historical circumstance of individual states choosing for themselves whether they are part of the union or not.
With the exception of the original 13 states, the individual states decided nothing. They were admitted and only after the existing states said that they could joing. Why should leaving be any different?
1. They all had ancestors who fought for the Union in the Civil War — ostensibly to free the slaves.
2. They all spent a lot of money and energy in the post-WW2 era fleeing to the suburbs — to get the hell away from the descendants of those slaves.
No I am not. Do not put words in my mouth.
The Green Mountain Boys — the colonial militia of Vermont — seem to be the one group that got it right. They helped defeat the British at Ticonderoga ... and then 18 months later the Continental Congress was pushing Gen. Washington to take an army up there to suppress them. They had no interest in joining the U.S. and wanted to remain an independent state. That’s why Vermont was conspicuously absent among the original thirteen states.
And yet was admitted as the 14th state while Washington was president, and would therefore have been part of the U.S. when Washington made his remarks.
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