In a world where a poll in 2021 showed that “52% of Trump voters and 41% of Biden voters favored red/blue states seceding from the union,” it’s not a surprise that the talk about secession isn’t just limited to social media websites.
I am not sure of the numbers of others, or the strength of their convictions, but my thought is that if the electoral college is somehow eliminated, and we go to straight nationwide vote count, that people who live in "fly over country" would soon feel compelled to revolt because they would essentially become slaves to the citizens of the big, mostly coastal, cities. America as a collection of states would be wiped out, so whether you call it a secession or not, people like myself would fight to escape that. My franchise would become worthless, and I would choose not to live in a nation like that. "Live Free of Die..."
Having just finished Allen Guelzo's /Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War/, he concludes that after-the-fact "rational analysis" is a waste of time, the more so that--as he demonstrates, to my satisfaction at least--both sides acted with impeccable rationality within the epistemological and hermeneutical frameworks they had to hand.
And lest you think this was driven by extremists or low-information people, there's a famous description by Joshua Chamberlain--then a professor at Bowdoin College--of his dinner with a similarly erudite and scholarly Southerner in 1859. He describes the evening as a feast of wit and spirit (my words, paraphrasing his), at the conclusion of which he took the view that civil war was inexorable.
Historically, war has always been the product of miscalculation: regardless of the other causes, each side misperceives in some way the resolve, capability, or resilience of their adversaries, and conclude that war is a low order of probability. And most of the time, they're right. Unfortunately, sometimes they're spectacularly wrong. I could cite any number of examples but I'll stick to the Civil War.
Guelzo argues that the South was deeply committed to the slave system, and became more so over the course of time. Consequently they brandished secession every time they perceived some action by the North as a threat to the "Peculiar Institution" as they came to call it (side note; Guelzo persuasively argues that the events of the Hartford Convention in 1814 made it difficult for the North to dismiss these Southern threats...the more so that prior to the Civil War the issue of secession had never been litigated or otherwise constitutionally laid to rest).
This approach worked out pretty well for the South in 1820 (Missouri Compromise), 1850 (Compromise of 1850), and 1854 (Kansas-Nebraska Act) but not so well in 1833 (Nullification Crisis) or--of course--in 1861. By then, the 1857 /Dred Scott/ decision threatened to make any future political compromise impossible, especially if--again, as Guelzo suggests--Taney intended to use future cases to eviscerate the anti-slavery laws in the free states as well.
Well, if "Historically, war has always been the product of miscalculation," then it's good for more people to be aware of what the likely consequences of a war and/or secession might be. The more people have gamed out the possibilities beforehand, the less likely they are to make a miscalculation.
Honestly, I doubt it will make much difference, the more so that people are the captives of their own a prioris. As one of my friends likes to say, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
But your efforts are well-intentioned, and I respect that.
You neglected to mention deciding how federal properties in a seceding state would be handled. California and Florida have numerous US military bases within their borders. THAT would be an instant point of contention.
In principle, the idea of seceding resonates with the average citizen who feels taxed and regulated to death. I get that.
But I know from the experience of living in a state where the notion of seceding pops up every decade or so. People say "hell yeah!!"
But, when you move them from the glittering generalities to the dry particulars of exactly what that would mean to their day to day existence, (forgoing their monthly Social Security payments is an item they never think about) their enthusiasm quickly evaporates like cold water on red hot asphalt.
In 1860 the federal government was tiny and the "administrative bureaucracy " virtually invisible. Southerners had tremendous liberty to create their own lives. Today, unfortunately, the lives of 95% of us are so entwined with local, state and federal bureaucracies,and the invisible interdependence that exerts on us, that few of us would be willing to embrace the sacrifices necessary to see through the first decade of actual secession.
I wouldn't want to fly from Arizona to Oregon by way of having to go through the international gate at Sky Harbor. No thank you. We could conduct a "quiet secession", from DC at least, by taking federal agencies to federal courts at every opportunity over the onerous burdens of the administrative state. And by electing liberty-loving legislators to office at every turn.
I believe the author is absolutely correct that, even if secession went peacefully, there would be many practical questions. One could imagine an amicable split where the two new nations divided up assets and debts. And one can imagine a bitter conflict if they argued about everything, like a messy divorce. Like, maybe the seceding states would agree that they would continue paying social security benefits to seniors within their borders. And maybe not. Maybe the two sides would agree to peaceful trade. And maybe not. Etc.
Yes, the big question is, What would the Feds do? My guess is that they would send federal marshalls to arrest the government leaders who declared they were seceding -- the governor or whomever. At that point the question would become, what would state law law enforcement and the state militia do? If they supported the marshalls and helped them arrest the governor, or stood aside while they arrested the governor, then the secession is over. But what if they said no and defended the governor? Would the marshalls shoot it out with state police?
And super big question: Would the Feds order the army in? And if they did, what would the army do? I find it hard to imagine that a US miliitary unit made up mostly of, say, Texans would bomb Texas cities, killing their own friends, neighbors and family. If the president really gave such an order, I think the military would be torn apart as some generals refused to obey such orders, maybe even stood with the secessionists.
Side note: Whenever this question comes up on a forum, you can always count on someone posting, "No, a state can't secede from the union, because the Supreme Court ruled that's illegal." Is the silliness of that argument not obvious? If a state was so fed up with the federal government that it was ready to secede, if they had lost all respect for the moral and legal authority of the federal government, do you really suppose they would abandon such a plan because that same federal government said they're not allowed? I can think of many good arguments against seceding, but that isn't one of them.
Secession takes time. If there is a catastrophic development how quickly can things develop?
Pick the states with the most internal conflict red/blue. Who would stop the looting and rioting?
Who has the most guns the progressives or the conservatives? Which group of people would first attempt to form a force of vigilantes or milita? How could this develop into a war between the states?
The way to avoid these scenarios is to enact Citizenship Checkout: 100% tax credit to 18+ year US citizens who renounce their citizenship & prove they have left at a foreign US Consulate. Please call your US Reps & ask them to sponsor such legislation. Trump should campaign on it: "if you really don't like it here, vote for me & we'll pay you to leave if you want to."
Far fewer radical leftist laws would be passed if most of the leftist radicals left.
Look up A Great State series by Shelby Gallagher. She wrote about this years ago with WA, CA, OR becoming 'sanctuary states' and the chaos that ensued.
Good post. A top-rated pollster found that Texas regular voters are 66% in favor of Texas independence, and only 7% of Americans think fedgov should attack a seceding state. Texas is ready to lead the red states out of the Union https://redstatesecession.org/poll-66-of-texas-voters-want-to-secede
Maybe I am simple minded, but I think several points have not been given a fair shake. First off, Social Security is effectively bankrupt and rapidly dwindling, so I do not expect that's going to sway many people deeply offended by the state of the nation. Secondly, I believe there are a great many people who are fed up paying for this, that, and the other thing, mostly boondoggles or what they consider wasted money in other states and would eagerly tell the other states to clean up their own messes or pay for their own projects - interstate roadways, the massive amount of monies poured into New York State waterways, for instance. People are fed up with the usurpation of the Federal Government. The way the Feds have abrogated any and all responsibility for their legally and Constitutionally required immigration role and have actually prevented states who try to enforce the Law of the Country to the terrible detriment of the people of those states and others - 12 year old girls raped and murdered, not only by illegal aliens but by boys claiming to be girls. Then there's the court and prison system which defends the criminals while criminalizing the law-abiding citizens. You never even touched on the unbridgeable divide between Red and Blue. There is not one single issue Dems and Cons can agree on except that we can not agree on anything. Dems think it's ok to mutilate children and support the Minor Attracted People. Republicans point to the founding documents and the requirement for God in our system of Government, whereas Democrats read "freedom of religion" as "freedom from religion". The concerns you do mention are, in my opinion, rather simplistic. Military bases, machinery, and weaponry belong to the state in which they sit. Possession is 9/10ths of the Law. Each state has it's own military, though it's soldiers are spread across the globe. There is no reason to believe trade between secessionist states and United States should suffer, it works just fine in Europe. Waterways are clearly natural resources and damming or diverting them would be an overt and immediate act of war, the responsibility being on the party that engaged in such nonsense. The simple and unignorable fact on the ground is, this country is already divided and has been for decades, as far back as Nixon's Impeachment. We are not a union, we are a continental prison where the political class, educator class, media class live on the ramparts watching everyone else behave as two prison gangs in the yard. We need to divide.
I am not sure of the numbers of others, or the strength of their convictions, but my thought is that if the electoral college is somehow eliminated, and we go to straight nationwide vote count, that people who live in "fly over country" would soon feel compelled to revolt because they would essentially become slaves to the citizens of the big, mostly coastal, cities. America as a collection of states would be wiped out, so whether you call it a secession or not, people like myself would fight to escape that. My franchise would become worthless, and I would choose not to live in a nation like that. "Live Free of Die..."
Having just finished Allen Guelzo's /Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War/, he concludes that after-the-fact "rational analysis" is a waste of time, the more so that--as he demonstrates, to my satisfaction at least--both sides acted with impeccable rationality within the epistemological and hermeneutical frameworks they had to hand.
And lest you think this was driven by extremists or low-information people, there's a famous description by Joshua Chamberlain--then a professor at Bowdoin College--of his dinner with a similarly erudite and scholarly Southerner in 1859. He describes the evening as a feast of wit and spirit (my words, paraphrasing his), at the conclusion of which he took the view that civil war was inexorable.
Historically, war has always been the product of miscalculation: regardless of the other causes, each side misperceives in some way the resolve, capability, or resilience of their adversaries, and conclude that war is a low order of probability. And most of the time, they're right. Unfortunately, sometimes they're spectacularly wrong. I could cite any number of examples but I'll stick to the Civil War.
Guelzo argues that the South was deeply committed to the slave system, and became more so over the course of time. Consequently they brandished secession every time they perceived some action by the North as a threat to the "Peculiar Institution" as they came to call it (side note; Guelzo persuasively argues that the events of the Hartford Convention in 1814 made it difficult for the North to dismiss these Southern threats...the more so that prior to the Civil War the issue of secession had never been litigated or otherwise constitutionally laid to rest).
This approach worked out pretty well for the South in 1820 (Missouri Compromise), 1850 (Compromise of 1850), and 1854 (Kansas-Nebraska Act) but not so well in 1833 (Nullification Crisis) or--of course--in 1861. By then, the 1857 /Dred Scott/ decision threatened to make any future political compromise impossible, especially if--again, as Guelzo suggests--Taney intended to use future cases to eviscerate the anti-slavery laws in the free states as well.
Well, if "Historically, war has always been the product of miscalculation," then it's good for more people to be aware of what the likely consequences of a war and/or secession might be. The more people have gamed out the possibilities beforehand, the less likely they are to make a miscalculation.
Honestly, I doubt it will make much difference, the more so that people are the captives of their own a prioris. As one of my friends likes to say, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.
But your efforts are well-intentioned, and I respect that.
You neglected to mention deciding how federal properties in a seceding state would be handled. California and Florida have numerous US military bases within their borders. THAT would be an instant point of contention.
In principle, the idea of seceding resonates with the average citizen who feels taxed and regulated to death. I get that.
But I know from the experience of living in a state where the notion of seceding pops up every decade or so. People say "hell yeah!!"
But, when you move them from the glittering generalities to the dry particulars of exactly what that would mean to their day to day existence, (forgoing their monthly Social Security payments is an item they never think about) their enthusiasm quickly evaporates like cold water on red hot asphalt.
In 1860 the federal government was tiny and the "administrative bureaucracy " virtually invisible. Southerners had tremendous liberty to create their own lives. Today, unfortunately, the lives of 95% of us are so entwined with local, state and federal bureaucracies,and the invisible interdependence that exerts on us, that few of us would be willing to embrace the sacrifices necessary to see through the first decade of actual secession.
I wouldn't want to fly from Arizona to Oregon by way of having to go through the international gate at Sky Harbor. No thank you. We could conduct a "quiet secession", from DC at least, by taking federal agencies to federal courts at every opportunity over the onerous burdens of the administrative state. And by electing liberty-loving legislators to office at every turn.
I believe the author is absolutely correct that, even if secession went peacefully, there would be many practical questions. One could imagine an amicable split where the two new nations divided up assets and debts. And one can imagine a bitter conflict if they argued about everything, like a messy divorce. Like, maybe the seceding states would agree that they would continue paying social security benefits to seniors within their borders. And maybe not. Maybe the two sides would agree to peaceful trade. And maybe not. Etc.
Yes, the big question is, What would the Feds do? My guess is that they would send federal marshalls to arrest the government leaders who declared they were seceding -- the governor or whomever. At that point the question would become, what would state law law enforcement and the state militia do? If they supported the marshalls and helped them arrest the governor, or stood aside while they arrested the governor, then the secession is over. But what if they said no and defended the governor? Would the marshalls shoot it out with state police?
And super big question: Would the Feds order the army in? And if they did, what would the army do? I find it hard to imagine that a US miliitary unit made up mostly of, say, Texans would bomb Texas cities, killing their own friends, neighbors and family. If the president really gave such an order, I think the military would be torn apart as some generals refused to obey such orders, maybe even stood with the secessionists.
Side note: Whenever this question comes up on a forum, you can always count on someone posting, "No, a state can't secede from the union, because the Supreme Court ruled that's illegal." Is the silliness of that argument not obvious? If a state was so fed up with the federal government that it was ready to secede, if they had lost all respect for the moral and legal authority of the federal government, do you really suppose they would abandon such a plan because that same federal government said they're not allowed? I can think of many good arguments against seceding, but that isn't one of them.
Secession takes time. If there is a catastrophic development how quickly can things develop?
Pick the states with the most internal conflict red/blue. Who would stop the looting and rioting?
Who has the most guns the progressives or the conservatives? Which group of people would first attempt to form a force of vigilantes or milita? How could this develop into a war between the states?
The way to avoid these scenarios is to enact Citizenship Checkout: 100% tax credit to 18+ year US citizens who renounce their citizenship & prove they have left at a foreign US Consulate. Please call your US Reps & ask them to sponsor such legislation. Trump should campaign on it: "if you really don't like it here, vote for me & we'll pay you to leave if you want to."
Far fewer radical leftist laws would be passed if most of the leftist radicals left.
A thought-provoking treatise of the possibility of "secession" by states. Thanks for adding to the national conversation.
Look up A Great State series by Shelby Gallagher. She wrote about this years ago with WA, CA, OR becoming 'sanctuary states' and the chaos that ensued.
Good post. A top-rated pollster found that Texas regular voters are 66% in favor of Texas independence, and only 7% of Americans think fedgov should attack a seceding state. Texas is ready to lead the red states out of the Union https://redstatesecession.org/poll-66-of-texas-voters-want-to-secede
I gave my thoughts on some of your questions on my Substack, but more thoroughly on my website https://redstatesecession.org/partition-of-the-u-s-is-the-peaceful-way-out-of-the-upcoming-troubles
Maybe I am simple minded, but I think several points have not been given a fair shake. First off, Social Security is effectively bankrupt and rapidly dwindling, so I do not expect that's going to sway many people deeply offended by the state of the nation. Secondly, I believe there are a great many people who are fed up paying for this, that, and the other thing, mostly boondoggles or what they consider wasted money in other states and would eagerly tell the other states to clean up their own messes or pay for their own projects - interstate roadways, the massive amount of monies poured into New York State waterways, for instance. People are fed up with the usurpation of the Federal Government. The way the Feds have abrogated any and all responsibility for their legally and Constitutionally required immigration role and have actually prevented states who try to enforce the Law of the Country to the terrible detriment of the people of those states and others - 12 year old girls raped and murdered, not only by illegal aliens but by boys claiming to be girls. Then there's the court and prison system which defends the criminals while criminalizing the law-abiding citizens. You never even touched on the unbridgeable divide between Red and Blue. There is not one single issue Dems and Cons can agree on except that we can not agree on anything. Dems think it's ok to mutilate children and support the Minor Attracted People. Republicans point to the founding documents and the requirement for God in our system of Government, whereas Democrats read "freedom of religion" as "freedom from religion". The concerns you do mention are, in my opinion, rather simplistic. Military bases, machinery, and weaponry belong to the state in which they sit. Possession is 9/10ths of the Law. Each state has it's own military, though it's soldiers are spread across the globe. There is no reason to believe trade between secessionist states and United States should suffer, it works just fine in Europe. Waterways are clearly natural resources and damming or diverting them would be an overt and immediate act of war, the responsibility being on the party that engaged in such nonsense. The simple and unignorable fact on the ground is, this country is already divided and has been for decades, as far back as Nixon's Impeachment. We are not a union, we are a continental prison where the political class, educator class, media class live on the ramparts watching everyone else behave as two prison gangs in the yard. We need to divide.
True crux of what is commonly called "The Civil War."
The secession of the southern (and other) states!
Slavery was already on its way out.
Needed a useful squirrel.
Usurper are liars.