Is the past prologue? Not necessarily. As long as the Deep State doesn’t play their NATO doomsday card. (Revised 9/24)
United States founding father Thomas Jefferson said it best in the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such priciples and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Great! That’s the ticket! We all get from God the rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. To secure these rights we form Governments. When those Governments don’t respect or protect our rights – We the People have a right to abolish the damn government and form a new one. Easy peasy, lemon squeezee.
But – as in everything else, the Devil is in the details. We all wink at the uncomfortable fact that at the time Jefferson wrote his Declaration of Independence Magnum Opus, he was sitting on hundreds of verdant acres in Virginia – an Estate called Montecello – where he owned at least four hundred slaves. He kept about two hundred slaves on other properties he owned. Then there was the not-so-insignificant matter of Sally Hemmings – a slave he bedded and enjoyed a conjugal relationship with. She bore him children. They traveled together to Europe and London. By all accounts, Sally Hemmings was treated well by Esquire Jefferson – but she was a slave nonetheless. Did she have unalienable rights from God? Did Jefferson’s other legions of bonded humanity have unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness? Sadly, no.
Jefferson incorporated into his Declaration of Independence the philosophies of men like John Milton and John Locke. Even Thomas Paine’s Common Sense factored into his logic.
The “vision” of America’s Founders and their belief in unalienable, God-given rights sprung from what and who they were: property-owning, well-educated white men. They believed that they alone were annointed by God to make manifest on Earth his Shining City on a Hill. White men are the “We the People” in all the foundational documents of the United States. They are the annointed ones who declared their “Independence” and picked up arms to fight George III of England.
The fly in the ointment here – as we ponder the words of the Declaration of Independence – is the “Consent of the Governed” language. What if “We the People” – a polity today that’s been expanded to include women and US Citizens of all races and origins – withdrew their collective consent to be governed by the United States Government? What if a bunch of us from a specific geography in the US today decided to Secede?
In Texas v. White (1869) the United States Supreme Court ruled that unilateral secession by any state is unconstitutional. Why? The Civil War. In 1860 and 1861 eleven Southern States each declared their secession from the United States, plunging the country into a bloody Civil War. The seceding states no doubt took literally that blurb in the Declaration of Independence about “Consent of the Governed”. We all know how it worked out.
Did the Founding Fathers of the USA opine on how and under what circumstances their “compact” of Union could be dissolved? Did they posit any guidelines how a state could get itself “Dis-Unioned” in case of buyers remorse?
Short answer? No. They debated and memorialized for posterity everything else – but apparently never seriously thought that Secession merited serious comment. Then again, the Founders were pre-occupied with a lot on their plate.
The nascent United States went through tons of controversies, growing pains and hard times.
A few years into his first Presidential term, George Washington had to saddle up his horse and lead 13,000 American Militiamen against his own citizens. This was the tax revolt known as the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791. Faced with crippling debt from fighting the War for Independence against England, Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton came up with the bright idea of taxing alcoholic spirits. To Americans that fought against English Tyranny – things like having to buy a “Stamp” from King George to put on their official documents – taxing their whiskey was unconscionable. King George III”s “Stamp Tax” was levied to help England pay for their overseas Colonial Governments and troops. Americans accused President Washington of taking a page out of King George III’s playbook. The Whiskey Rebellion was George Washington’s first real test as Chief Executive.
In 1794 irate citizens in Western Pennsylvania finally rioted and Washington’s forces stood them down. A compromise was worked out. Whiskey was a big deal because it was used as currency. Farmers grew rye and corn to eat and feed hogs. Leftover grains would rot – so the grains were preserved by distilling them into whiskey. If you wanted to pay your doctor or blacksmith, you paid him with a jug of whiskey. Take some of your neighbor’s timber? Pay him with whiskey. Citizens vociferously rejected a whiskey tax. Accordingly, americans taught President George Washington a valuable lesson – “Don’t Tred on Me” was a sentiment that was alive and well. Americans weren’t pushovers. Cross them at your peril.
In 1812, another war was fought against England. A Tennessee Hero General named Andrew Jackson distinguished himself at the Battle of New Orleans. The War basically ended in a draw and the British signed the Treaty of Ghent with the US in 1814. In the years to come, England pretty much focused on its Canadian possessions and left the USA alone.
America’s fragile economy whip-sawed from boom to bust every seven years – and bitter political battles were fought every four years at Presidential election time. Inflation was poorly understood and difficult to control. Jefferson (on his own authority as Chief Executive) committed the USA to borrow 15 million dollars that he paid to Emperor Napoleon of France for 828,000 acres of land West of the Mississippi River. This “Louisianna Purchase” doubled the size of the United States overnight. Even more territories were added and new states were carved out of them. Americans resolutely marched westward in search of new horizons – carrying their pro-slavery vs. abolitionist sentiments with them.
Texas made its move, defeated the Mexican “Napoleon of the West” (General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna) and and ultimately joined the Union in 1845. The Mexican-American War was fought in 1846 -1848 and solidified American legal dominion over most of the Southwest and California. California became a money-minting juggernaut after an unemployed carpenter from New Jersey named James Wilson Marshall noticed a rock gleaming in a stream at Sutter’s Mill near the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in 1848. The discovery of gold sucked people from clear around the globe and the North American continent to settle the West Coast. By the time the Southern states declared their intention to secede, the USA was punch-drunk from upheavals and reeling from sea-changes at every turn.
It wasn’t a bad showing, though, considering that the United States’ first government was an abject failure. At the end of America’s struggle for independence in 1781 the Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation, opting for a loose “Confederation” of states. This resulted in thirteen virtual sovereignities not under any strong, central “Federal” authority. The powers of the US “Government” (ie. the Congress and President) under the Articles of Confederation were extremely circumscribed. The States held all the power.
Under the Articles of Confederation, states regulated their own commerce. Some had well-oiled, wealthy economies based in seafaring trade and commerce (New York, Boston). Others had rural, agrarian economies subject to fearful swings of boom-bust prices and uncertainties of weather and rain. Each state had its own currency – and states engaged in vicious warfare playing banks against each other, sometimes refusing to even accept “foreign” state paper monies as specie in trade or payment for goods already delivered. Northern states – traditionally better heeled because of their broad commercial based economies – took advantage of Southern states who relied on Northern ships, maritime insurance and ports to get their cotton and agriculture-based products to England, Europe and beyond. Everybody money-squeezed and cheated each other. It was an inefficient, self-defeating economic model. Firm management from above was needed. Inmates were running the asylum.
After a few years of this nonsense, Jefferson, Madison, Washington and the “boys” fixed what was, essentially, a dysfunctional government system and – viola! – on September 17, 1787 presided over the adoption of what we know today as the United States Constitution. This was a “Federal” government paradigm that gave sweeping powers to a central government to oversee, fine-tune and rationalize the relationship of all states, inter se. The era of one part of the country taking fiscal advantage of another was now on the road to slowly correcting itself under a strong central administrative hand. Federal oversight and “aegis” eventually crept into every corner and crevasse of inter-state relations. The ultimate arbiter became the Supreme Court of the United States, whose word was “final” because it alone had jurisdiction over every state policy that impacted another state’s commerce.
This Constitutional paradigm and “re-alignment” of state relationships came at the precise time it was needed most. The early eighteen-hundreds was a malestrom of growth and change throughout the American landscape – as I described above. A prime example of the inanity states inflicted on each other was New Jersey prohibiting steamboat (and even early steam-train) traffic into New York and vice-versa by issuing exclusive franchise charters to favored resident businessmen. State sponsored monopolies. A no-nonsense genius called “Commodore” Vanderbilt single-handedly took on these unfair state practices in the courts and won. He and others like him midwifed the dawn of true Interstate Commerce in America. The “Interstate Commerce” Clause of the US Constitution gradually became an engine of change and unbridled economic growth. Mediums of exchange, however, bedeviled commerce.
Numerous and diverse state currencies plagued the banking system. Spanish silver “Pieces of Eight” were actually used in some sectors of the economy. Corn whisky in jugs was still coin of the realm in others. Finances suffered under the weight of old prejudices and “States Rights” policies that tethered us to the past. The Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution slowly rectified that problem, too. Stringent rules managing wealth transfer between the states were adopted and enforced. The US Supreme Court became a critical driver of America’s financial future and success, insuring that Federal regulations were equitably enforced for the common good.
Americans gradually realized that a strong, central Government had its benefits. That the old, parochial and insular methods of individual states charting their own economic path didn’t make for a robust, vibrant and multi-faceted country. The USA now spanned “Sea to Shining Sea”. It was a Continental country that had clearly outgrown its earlier britches. The world was its oyster.
Commerce boomed throughout the Northeast USA – manufacturing, shipping, railroads – big money was being generated and banking interests were exerting formidable influences everywhere. With big finance and commerce came the need for a sound infrastructure of roads, housing, bridges, mines, ports and a vigorous court system. Agrarian economies – like the South – lagged behind.
Influential Southerners grew concerned about their regional stagnation – and even more concerned at their demographics: they had almost three times as many slaves as white people. A powerful and vocal abolitionist movement was taking hold throughout the North and mid-west. The South’s cotton-based economic model depended on cheap slave labor – and the prospect of armed, angry hordes of Yankee-emancipated slaves marauding through their patrician paradise frightened the Bejeezus out of them. They studied the “writing on the wall” and watched in horror as public opinion in the powerful Northern states – and even Washington, DC – soured against them. Lincoln’s administration didn’t voice much sympathy, either. Regional tensions grew.
Then in 1860 and 1861 it all came crashing down. Southerners decided they’d had their bellies full of Federal control. And these Southerners included some of the finest lawyers in the country – guys like John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, Henry Clay of Kentucky and John Randolph of Virginia.
These Gentlemen made a very pursuasive and compelling case that the earliest blueprint for the United States – the Articles of Confederation – spoke in terms of a “Perpetual Union”……BUT this “Perpetual Union” language was promptly thrown under the wagon wheels when the US Constitution was drafted and adopted in 1787. The 1787 Constituion didn’t contain the words “Perpetual Union” anywhere. Why? Because – the Southern lawyers argued – it wasn’t viable. Governments come and governments go and strapping any construct of governance into a straight-jacket of “perpetuality” was folly. People evolved. People grew. Circumstances changed. One-size-fits-all was no recipe for an ever-developing world. The South wanted out. When? Now.
Ironically, Mssrs. Calhoun, Clay and Randolph’s legal argument had little to do with slavery……and this is important. It was about a state’s legal right to withdraw from the Union. Theirs was an argument exquisite in it’s simplicity, in it’s elegance. The South leaving the Union had no more to do with slavery than the fact that they had humid weather. Their legal argument was anchored on legal documents that Southern states initially found acceptable – but no more. Just as men had unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – the South had an unalienable right not to be a part of any “Union” they no longer found palatable. Their reasons for withdrawing were irrelevant – their case turned on whether or not they had the right to withdraw. Like being a little bit pregnant- the South either had the right to withdraw or it didn’t.
Their solution? Secession. They argued that there was no doctrine, writing, Constitutional impediment or historical precedent against them picking up their gym bag and leaving the Union. In fact, they advocated, Jefferson’s own Declaration of Independence enshrined the overarching jurisprudential premise that once any government lost the “Consent” of its governed, those non-consenting souls had the right to “abolish” it and institute a “new” government. After all – wasn’t that what the Federal government did in 1787 when they crafted a new Constitution of the United States – and tore up the Articles of Confederation? When they adopted a Constitution of the United States that intentionally omitted any reference to “perpetuity”?
Mssrs. Calhoun, Clay and Randolph drove home this devastating point to Lincoln and the North: the United States Constitution itself destroyed the earlier Articles of Confederation government. Changing one’s government is possible – because you did it! Their argument was: You tore up the Articles of Confederation and ended its “loose confederation” type government! And – because you changed governments before – We the People of the South have the legal right to end the Federal “Union” government too! And end it we will, by God!
The South never ratified the Constitution in “Perpetuity” – because a perpetual time line was never made obligatory in the body of that document. Words matter. Contracts matter – and unless a contract specifically binds you to a “term certain”, that contract is terminable “at will” by any of its signatories. Centuries of English Common law (and Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England) said so. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Abraham Lincoln – one of the most tyrannical (some say corrupt) Presidents this country has ever had – was a savy lawyer, too. He understood full well the brilliance of Calhoun’s, Clay’s and Randolph’s arguments. If this were a trial in front of a Jury, Lincoln might well have lost the case, despite his highly renowned homespun jawboning talents. But it wasn’t a Jury trial. And Lincoln had stronger arguments than any the Southern Gentlemen lawyers could muster: the Union army and a juggernaut of Northern industrial might and railroads.
Cannons went off at Fort Sumpter – and the Civil War started. It was a fight to the finish – for all the marbles. These wild-eyed country boys meant business. The Chevaliers of the South sallied forth, swords in hand, righteous in their noble cause.
About the same time, another interesting historical event took place that best exemplifies how Washington, DC deals with threats to its power. I offer “Exhibit A”: the saga of West Virginia.
In 1607 the London Company established the Virginia Colony – the first permanent English colony in the New World. Virginia was shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains at its Western border and to the East, the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. To the North, Virginia bordered lands later recognized as Pennsylvania. It was a huge expanse of territory. The Southern regions of Virginia were perfect for farming and agriculture. The Northern regions (what became West Virginia) were mountainous and had iron ore, minerals and coal in abundance. Coal mining operations and forges were established throughout the territory from its very beginnings as a Crown Colony.
West Virginia was admitted to the Union on June 20, 1863 while the rest of Virginia stood firmly in the Confederate camp. West Virginia was formed by the North forcibly hacking-off off half of the Confederate state of Virginia during the Civil War. How did this happen? Wealthy coal and iron ore interests – as well as the railroads that serviced them – whispered in Abraham Lincoln’s ear and Lincoln lobbied Congress hard to incorporate these coal and mineral-rich lands as a separate State, severing them from the Confederacy. He claimed that he had the “Consent” of the West Virginia “Governed” populace.
Wealthy interests in West Virginia rallied to the Stars and Stripes, their pockets bulging with filthy lucre. A “vote” was taken (after hefty contracts for iron ore and coal were inked by Northern industrialists) and statehood was declared. Obviously, the “fix” was in from the beginning. West Virginia would back the Union – but only a select few of her citizens would get rich in the bargain.
The West Virginia story was one of outright theft of Confederate Virginia mineral resources by a wealthy and influential regional few. The Southern-sympathizing people of West Virginia were “railroaded” by monied interests and a Lincoln Administration that coveted their iron, steel and coal. All the lofty sentiments and gallant heroism of the Confederacy could not prevail against the steamroller of cannons, munitions, mortars, trains, rails and war materiel Lincoln’s army arrayed against it. Palms were greased and Lincoln got his prize. So much for Constitutional principles and high-minded Jeffersonian philosophies. Money and power tipped the scales.
The United States lost upwards of 650,000 Americans in the Civil War. These horrific casualties carved an indelible and eternal scar on the psyche of our country. The very word “Secession” even now carries with it a talismatic opprobrium, an implication fatalistic in its breadth and scope. It is an end game, writ large. To suggest that anything good can come of it makes one appear demented, unserious – a dreaded “Conspiracy Theorist” or worse. Secession is a term crackpots and white supremacists use. It connotes an evil scheme with an unholy objective – destruction of the eternal goodness that is the United States of America. Like the Pledge of Allegiance says: “One nation, under God, indivisible……”
Since the Civil War, America has gone from strength to strength – and is now an Atlas bestride the globe. It’s power, wealth and military might is (for the time being) without peer. But the ghosts of our History still haunt us. The idea of a piece of this empire breaking off to go its own way evokes a subliminal terror in many Americans. It’s unacceptable on a visceral level. Anathema. The label “Secessionist” is tantamount to traitor. Old lessons die hard. Even states that were carved out of bigger ones – like Tennessee and North Carolina – were “approved” by Congress. Nobody just declares themselves “separate” – ie. secedes – and gets away with it. Petitions or not, it ain’t gonna’ happen without Washington, DC signing off on it.
Secession may be a different story with Texas. Don’t forget – Texas was “The Republic of Texas” , a sovereign nation, before it agreed to join the Union in 1845. A sovereign nation can never lose its sovereignty unless it is militarily defeated. Can a sovereign nation enter into a “Marriage of Convenience” with another power and voluntarily relinquish some of its prerogatives? Of course. But only a military defeat can extinguish sovereignty. Since the days of Alexander the Great, that has been the Rule. Can a once-sovereign – never defeated – political entity reclaim it’s sovereignty? It’s a tantalizing possibilty. Like the song says, “God Bless Texas!”
Conclusion
We’re told that unless an asteroid hits Earth or an Armageddon-stage nuclear event erupts on North America – forcing radiated survivors to congregate in ersatz settlements and isolated enclaves like in science fiction movies – a fragmented or Balkanized (un)United States is a long shot. But what of a voluntary succession movement? If past is any prologue, the Deep State will shit itself. The Feds don’t want less of anything – they want more. And “break-aways” or “recombinations” of geographic areas (like the proposed State of Jefferson) are still seen as tin foil hat fantasies. Since Congress has to approve any “re-alignments” of state borders, any voluntary changes are improbable at best.
But is secession impossible? No, given the right trigger. Like a pirated or stolen Presidential election, for example. What if Millions of pissed-off Americans just can’t stomach this shitshow of lies anymore? And let’s say out loud what everybody else is thinking, shall we? Secessionists have enough guns and ammo to force a reckoning. And the uniformed military? Don’t bet on them firing on their neighbors, family and friends. Civil War will be different this time. The Feds will have to bring in foreign NATO troops – and that will only make things worse. Why does the US bankroll NATO and endlessly kiss its ass? To defeat Russia? Hardly. Open your eyes. It’s the Deep State’s ace-in-the-hole in case things go catawampas here. NATO is their insurance policy. Against We the People.
Today talking heads on both sides of our misanthropic political spectrum prattle on and on about “Democracy” and how MAGA intends to destroy it. Spoiler alert: “Democracy” was never the end game of our Constitution! Benjamin Franklin famously said: “Democracy is two wolves and a sheep discussing what they’re going eat for dinner”. Our Founding Fathers intended to establish a Republic.
Savor that word…….Republic. Is our government today a Constitutional Republic? Yes and no. We may elect “Representatives” – but – for the most part – they don’t advocate for or serve our best interests. A majority of our elected Representatives serve their own interests and couldn’t care less what their constituencies want. We the People aren’t their masters. Somebody else is. Who? That’s the subject for another article.
So what about Secession? We might not have to bother. This country is splintering apart all on its own. You can feel it happening. And like all momentous events, things first happen slowly…….then all at once. Maybe it’s time.
Never say never.
