“If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers ‘separation’ over ‘union,’ “I have no hesitation in saying, ‘let us separate.’” 1
~ Thomas Jefferson
In 1998, Russian Professor Igor Panarin, former KGB analyst, lecturer, and writer tied to Russia’s Foreign Ministry, predicted the economic and moral collapse of these United States, leading to eventual civil war and breakup by 2010. His predictions appeared in The Wall Street Journal and other publications. Of course, to this date, no such separation has come to pass. However, with the lingering 2020 election controversies (thousands of votes mysteriously appearing early on November 4th, hundreds signing sworn affidavits attesting to election fraud and the near impossibility that any of these accusations will ever be examined, questionable voting machines, etc.), various assaults on individual rights, increased centralization of government power, Marxist indoctrination within the education system, and other factors, some in Texas and other States have openly talked about secession.
After considerable bloodshed, the Thirteen Original Colonies seceded from the British Empire. Post-Revolutionary War, Britain and these “United States” signed the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which stated: “His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be free, sovereign, and independent States.”2 Furthermore, “In 1781, the original thirteen States entered into a ‘Confederation’, and drew up ‘Articles’, one of which said: ‘Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States.’”3 The States have never relinquished their sovereignty.
Events of the 1800s included:
- In 1803 the New England States threatened secession; the Louisiana Purchase was seen as a dilution of their power. Massachusetts Senator Thomas Pickering stated: “I rather anticipate a new Confederacy exempt from the corrupt influence of the aristocratic Democrats of the South…There will be a separation…”4
- Largely due to dissatisfaction with the War of 1812, the New England States considered secession in 1814 during the Hartford Convention. Secession sentiments ebbed after American victory was assured.
- The New England States mulled secession in 1845. “John Quincy Adams and fellow New Englanders so opposed the admission of Texas that they openly urged the withdrawal from the Union.”5 Again, they saw it as a dilution of power.
- Seven Southern States seceded in 1860-1861. (The remainder seceded after Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops to invade sovereign States.) They protested the North’s perversion of the U.S. Constitution, e.g., usurpation of Southern rights, slavery disagreements, and the punitive protectionist tariffs that supported Northern industry. The late Charles Adams explained: “When Southerners realized what they were up against with respect to a high tariff and a new Congress and Republican administration, only two courses of action seemed open to them–secession from the Union and a low tariff for the Confederate states.”6
The American Colonies and Southern States both had valid reasons to secede. As members of a voluntary compact, the Southern States had the best case; whereas, the American Colonies were one part of a vast Empire. Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island entered the Union under the proviso they could withdraw if it was in their best interests. From the 1788 Virginia Convention, we have the following: “We the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pursuance of a recommendation of the General Assembly and now met in Convention, having fully and freely investigated and discussed the proceedings of the Federal convention and being prepared as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us to decide thereon, do in the name and in behalf of the People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution, being derived from the People of the United States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury and oppression, and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will.”7 New York and Rhode Island mirrored Virginia’s language: ”their conventions ordained the root principles on which the right was founded: ‘That all power is naturally vested in, and consequently derived from the people’: and ‘That the powers of government may be reassumed by the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their happiness.’”8
Even Lincoln, the extreme nationalist, commented on January 12, 1848: “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. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.”9
If Panarin’s predictions eventually come to fruition, we must all hope that it is accomplished peacefully. After all, there is nothing more American than secession.
- 1Earl Starbuck, “Was Secession Treason?” [Quoted from an 1816 letter to William H. Crawford], Abbeville Institute Blog, September 18, 2020, at: https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/was-secession-treason/.
- 2John S. Tilley, Facts the Historians Leave Out, Twenty-Second Printing (Nashville, Tennessee: Bill Coats, Ltd., 1991), 25-26.
- 3Ibid., 25.
- 4Ibid., 34.
- 5Ibid.
- 6Charles Adams, When in the Course of Human Events--Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000), 81.
[1] John Remington Graham, A Constitutional History of Secession, (Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 2002), 106. - 7John Remington Graham, A Constitutional History of Secession, (Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 2002), 106.
- 8Ibid.
- 9Tilley, 32.
