{"id":1481499,"date":"2024-08-04T02:10:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-04T06:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1481499"},"modified":"2024-08-04T02:10:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-04T06:10:00","slug":"the-civil-war-didnt-settle-the-question-of-state-secession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/the-civil-war-didnt-settle-the-question-of-state-secession\/1481499\/","title":{"rendered":"The Civil War Didn’t ‘Settle’ The Question Of State Secession"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Civil War Didn’t ‘Settle’ The Question Of State Secession<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

By Brian McGlinchey at Stark Realities<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Secessionist inclinations are on the rise in the United States, and are sure to intensify after Nov. 5<\/strong> regardless of which party prevails. When that happens, you can expect the accompanying discourse will be peppered with assertions that states have no right to secede, with many declaring the question was \u201csettled\u201d by the Civil War.<\/p>\n

The embedded contention that legal and moral questions are rightly and permanently settled by the outcome of a mass-murder contest is absurd on its face<\/strong>. However, the notion is so widely and casually embraced that it invites an emphatic response. It also serves as a starting point to address other flawed forms of secession skepticism.<\/p>\n

Written\u00a0by a socialist<\/a>\u00a0in 1892, the Pledge of Allegiance attempts to program Americans into internalizing a falsehood: that the United States is \u201cone nation, indivisible.\u201d On that score at least, the\u00a0deeply-flawed pledge<\/a>\u00a0isn\u2019t working on a large number of citizens.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0YouGov poll<\/a>\u00a0taken earlier this year found substantial slices of both major parties would support their state\u2019s departure from the union: 29% of Republicans and 21% of Democrats. <\/strong>Similarly, the five states in which secessionist yearning is highest represent a mixed bag of red and blue: Alaska (36%), Texas (31%), California (29%), New York (28%) and Oklahoma (28%). While 23% of all Americans want their state to secede, 28% would be content if other states did so.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

For now, the Lone Star State seemingly has the strongest separatist momentum.<\/strong> In a June victory for the\u00a0Texas Nationalist Movement<\/a>, the Republican Party of Texas\u00a0adopted platform planks<\/a>\u00a0proclaiming the state\u2019s right to secede, and urging the legislature to arrange a state referendum question on the issue in the next general election. Many other states have secession movements of their own, and this July alone saw the launch of\u00a0Free Louisiana<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0NHEXIT Now<\/a>, the latter representing a rebranded drive for an independent New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only natural that secession interest is highest in some of the reddest and bluest states, where citizens have the most to lose via the imposition of centralized federal dictates that emphatically clash with local preferences<\/strong>. Those anxieties over which party governs Washington, and the animosity between the two principal opposing camps, will only grow as Election Day nears and could skyrocket after the votes are counted.<\/p>\n

It shouldn\u2019t be that way: As I wrote in January\u00a0here at\u00a0<\/a>Stark Realities<\/a><\/em>, \u201cthe intensity of our division springs from a federal government operating far beyond the limits of the Constitution<\/strong> \u2014 fueling a fight for control over powers that were\u00a0never supposed to exist<\/a>\u00a0at the national level.\u201d Sadly, that dynamic isn\u2019t going to change anytime soon, which means secessionist impulses are sure to ratchet up when the returns pour in on Nov. 5. The only question is whether that ratcheting will be strongest in blue or red states.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Either way, you\u2019re sure to hear plenty of social media users, TV pundits and purported experts proclaiming that the question of whether states have the right to leave the union was \u201csolved by the Civil War\u201d <\/strong>\u2014 meaning that, since the seceding states\u2019 armies were defeated, the answer is a firm \u201cno.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Mises Institute\u2019s Ryan McMaken wrote in\u00a0Breaking Away: The Case for Secession, Radical Decentralization and Smaller Polities<\/a><\/em>, \u201cThose who invoke this phrase\u2026are signaling that they believe any attempt at secession justifies military invasion and occupation of separatist territories.\u201d No reasonable person would apply that blanket proscription on foreign peoples, so it\u2019s all the more strange to see Americans apply it to their fellow citizens<\/strong> \u2014 particularly when you consider that America is itself the product of secession.<\/p>\n

As stated in the\u00a0Declaration of Independence<\/a>, \u201cGovernments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed\u2026whenever any form of government becomes destructive of [inalienable rights], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government.\u201d\u00a0The idea that the federal government\u2019s conquest of seceding states in the mid-1800s would somehow obliterate that right is as un-American as it is illogical<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Texas has the strongest secession movement of any state. As a separate republic, it would rank as the world’s 8th<\/a>-largest economy.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Though the Civil War has conditioned many Americans to associate secession with war \u2014 and to reflexively recoil from it on that basis \u2014 secession is not an inherently violent proposition<\/strong>. Secessionists don\u2019t seek to destroy a government, only to remove themselves from its domain, consistent with their right of self-determination.<\/p>\n

As showcased in\u00a0dozens of separations<\/a>\u00a0around the world since 1776, peaceful secession is a gentle remedy for political incompatibility. The determination of whether a secession is peaceful or not is ultimately in the hands of the incumbent central government<\/strong>, and not those who seek to leave its control.<\/p>\n

Some Americans struggle to approach the secession question with intellectual honesty because their thinking is fogged by feelings of vindication associated with the Civil War \u2014 feelings compounded by the widespread myth that the war was entirely about slavery and was therefore nothing less than a battle between good and evil.<\/p>\n

To many, the very idea of secession is associated with sinister motives, even though the United States and many other countries came into being via secession, with no malicious intent.<\/p>\n

Looking back to the run-up to the Civil War, slavery-abolitionists themselves championed secession,\u00a0pushing<\/a>\u00a0for northern states to abandon the union<\/strong>. They sought not only to distance their states from slavery, but to undermine the institution by negating northern states\u2019 legal obligation to send runaway slaves back to their masters.<\/p>\n

This flag<\/a>, circa 1861, centers on a slogan of northern abolitionists who promoted secession to distance free states from slave states<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Not that long before launching his war of choice that killed upwards of\u00a0850,000<\/a>\u00a0soldiers and civilians for the\u00a0paramount purpose of preserving the union<\/a>, Abraham Lincoln himself vigorously endorsed the universal right of secession<\/strong> in an 1848\u00a0speech<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cAny people anywhere\u2026have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better\u2026Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government, may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Venturing beyond the paper-thin \u201cmight makes right\u201d Civil War argument, secession skeptics also point to the Supreme Court\u2019s 1869 ruling in\u00a0Texas v White<\/a><\/em>.<\/strong> Though that case centered on a dry financial issue, it hinged on whether Texas was still part of the United States even after it declared its secession.<\/p>\n

In a 5-3 decision, the court asserted that Texas had never really left the union because neither it nor any other state has the power to do so. In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Salmon Chase \u2014 a Lincoln appointee who may have been inclined to affirm the justness of the astoundingly bloody Civil War four years after it ended \u2014 wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe union between Texas and the other States was as complete, as perpetual, and as indissoluble as the union between the original States. There was no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through consent of the States.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

To justify that conclusion, Chase embraced the fiction that the United States is a monolithic entity, one that vaguely \u201cbegan among the colonies<\/strong>, and grew out of common origin, mutual sympathies, kindred principles, similar interests, and geographical relations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chase\u2019s\u00a0opinion<\/a>\u00a0places great weight on the Constitution-preceding\u00a0Articles of Confederation<\/a>\u2019s statement that \u201cthe union shall be perpetual.\u201d His argument also relies heavily on the Constitution\u2019s preamble, which refers to the states\u2019 desire to form a \u201cmore perfect union.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through mere juxtaposition of the two phrases, Chase would have you believe that a supposedly indestructible, one-nation monolith created under the Articles of Confederation (it wasn\u2019t) was merely given a polish by the Constitution<\/strong>, rather than a complete reformation that required each state to affirmatively accede to the new arrangement. The\u00a0Texas Nationalist Movement<\/a>\u00a0has concisely skewered Chase\u2019s short-circuiting rationale:<\/p>\n

To reinforce his belief that the United States was a \u201cperpetual union,\u201d he had to assert the ludicrous argument that the United States Constitution was merely an amending document to the previous Articles of Confederation, citing the Preamble to the Constitution. He then had to ignore that it only took 9 States of the original 13 to ratify the Constitution of 1787<\/strong> and that, had less than 13 States ratified, it would have destroyed the \u201cperpetual union\u201d allegedly created by the Articles of Confederation.<\/em><\/p>\n

As with so\u00a0many other cases<\/a>\u00a0in the high court\u2019s history,\u00a0Texas v White<\/em>\u00a0was wrongly decided. However, even those who credit the decision must acknowledge that it left the secession door cracked ajar<\/strong>: In the passage quoted above, Chase offered an avenue of Supreme Court-sanctioned secession via \u201cconsent of the states,\u201d though it\u2019s unclear how that would be put into practice.<\/p>\n

Others who attempt to deny states\u2019 right of secession point to the Constitution\u2019s lack of a provision for a parting of ways. For example, while campaigning for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, former South Carolina Governor Nicky Haley\u00a0said<\/a>, \u201cTexas has talked about seceding for a long time. The Constitution doesn’t allow for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

While the Constitution doesn\u2019t address secession, it does have a provision that implicitly grants that power to the states<\/strong>. According to the 10th Amendment, \u201cthe 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.\u201d Since the Constitution does not expressly deny the states of that power (nor delegate it to the central government), secession is reserved to the states.<\/p>\n

Even by itself, the word \u201cdelegated\u201d further substantiates states\u2019 right to secede, by underscoring that the United States was formed as a compact of independent states<\/strong> \u2014 with \u201cstates\u201d used in a sense that puts Pennsylvania\u00a0on par with Mexico or France<\/a>. Those sovereign states created the federal government to serve them, only granting the new entity powers that James Madison described as \u201cfew and defined<\/a>,\u201d while the states retained powers that were \u201cnumerous and indefinite<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDelegated\u201d validates that the states are rightly the masters of the federal government they created, and should therefore be free to voluntarily exit the compact just as they voluntarily entered it. As historian\u00a0Brion McClanahan<\/a>\u00a0argued in a 2015 speech, \u201cSovereignty can be delegated, but a delegation assumes the ability to rescind that power.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking on the Constitution\u2019s 50th anniversary, former president and statesman John Quincy Adams\u00a0said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the day should ever come, (may Heaven avert it,) when the affections of the people of these states shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give away to cold indifference, or collisions of interest shall fester into hatred\u2026far better will it be for the people of the disunited states to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint.<\/strong>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

One can debate whether the conditions Adams dreaded have fully descended or are merely imminent.<\/strong> Either way, when one also considers that the federal government is not only\u00a0operating far beyond the bounds of the Constitution<\/a>, but is also $35 trillion in debt and on\u00a0an autopilot course for insolvency<\/a>, the case for peaceful American secessions has never been stronger.<\/strong><\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/p>\n

Stark Realities<\/a>\u00a0undermines official narratives, demolishes conventional wisdom and exposes fundamental myths across the political spectrum.\u00a0Read more and subscribe at\u00a0starkrealities.substack.com<\/a><\/strong><\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSat, 08\/03\/2024 – 22:10<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/civil-war-didnt-settle-question-state-secession<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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