Principalities & Powersrnby Samuel FrancisrnSecessionist FantasiesrnThroughout the first half of the presentrnyear, “secession” became the new watchwordrnfor a growing number of people onrnthe American right. Economist WalterrnWilliams has written at least two newspaperrncolumns openly advocating secession.rnJeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig vonrnMises Institute describes secession asrn”the cutting-edge issue that defines today’srnanti-statism,” and Tom Bethell inrnthe American Spectator writes that “secession”rnis “the counterrevolutionaryrnword that I have begun to hear fromrnsome of my conservative friends.” Ofrncourse, if the word were uttered only byrnconservatives, the normal folk of therncountry would never hear anything sensiblernabout it, and what makes the revivalrnof secessionism interesting if not yet importantrnis precisely the fact that a goodrnmany nonconservatives are starting tornbat it back and forth, occasionally evenrnin public.rnThere is, for example, a movement inrnthe Northwestern United States andrnWestern Canada to promote at least arnmore autonomous regional identity for,rnif not actual political separation of, thernarea called “Cascadia”—based mainlyrnon what are taken to be the region’s distinctiverneconomic interests and the constraintsrnthat membership in Canada andrnthe United States place on the pursuit ofrnsuch interests. Then there was the effortrnof Staten Island to secede from New Yorkrnlast year and a similar effort by the EasternrnShore of Maryland to secede thisrnyear, in addition to the attempts ofrnNorthern and Southern California to divorcerneach other every year. Finally,rnthere is the politically serious movementrnled by a group known as the Committeernof 50 States, which promotes a measurerncalled “The Ultimate Resolution.” Thisrnproposal would essentially fire the President,rnmembers of Congress, and federalrnjudges if and when it is approved by thernlegislatures of three-fourths of the statesrnand the federal budget reaches $6 trillion.rnIt is in essence a measure for secession,rnsince it would declare, with intendedrnlegally binding force, that the existingrnfederal government no longer has authorityrnover the states. And, on top ofrnthese several more or less serious movements,rnthere are always the Southernrnflag-wavers whose fantasies about standingrnup to the Yankees just one morerntime, if they never achieve anything concrete,rnat least perpetuate the myth ofrnsecession as a feasible alternative to thernhard work of reconquering North Americarnfrom the savages into whose handsrnthe Yankees allowed it to fall.rnSecessionism of any stripe, of course,rnhas not been a serious political movementrnsince the I850’s, and even then itrnwas difficult enough for those whornpushed it to get it to take wing. It didrnnot take wing except when the electionrnof Lincoln and the Republican Party inrn1860 made it clear to the slaveholdingrninterests of the Deep South that theirrnpredominance within a united state wasrnentering its twilight. Elsewhere in thernSouth secession was explicitly rejectedrnuntil Lincoln, either by deliberate designrnor by the most colossal blunder inrnAmerican history, called for the mobilizationrnof 75,000 troops in reaction tornthe Confederate firing on Fort Sumter.rnIt was thus the prospect of military invasionrnand conquest, and neither allegiancernto slavery nor adherence to a particularrnview of the Constitution, thatrnprecipitated the secession of the UpperrnSouth and made civil war all but unavoidable.rnWhat this little history lesson suggests,rnand what similar and less successfulrnbouts of secessionism in Americanrnhistory also suggest, is that secession isrntypically an option for losers, a path thatrnis taken or touted only when all othersrnhave been closed off, and not a choicernthat is selected because of its intrinsicrntheoretical merits or the bright practicalrnprospects it offers. As for its theoreticalrnmerits, they are admittedly considerable.rnThe theory of secession normally restsrnupon the doctrine of state sovereignty inrnthe Constitution, and the circumstancesrnsurrounding the drafting and ratificationrnof the Constitution make it reasonablyrnclear that the Framers did not intend forrnthe new federal government to be able tornuse force against the states. No suchrnpower was granted to the federal government,rnand three states at the time of ratificationrnexplicitly reserved the right tornresume their sovereignty as they chose.rnIn the text of the Constitution it is clearlyrnthe states themselves, and not thern”people,” that are the fundamental unitsrnof government, the units that are representedrnin the Senate, that elect the President,rnthat ratify amendments to thernConstitution.rnLincoln’s argument against secessionrnin his First Inaugural responded to nonernof these points. He argued mainly fromrnthe nature of a national governmentrn(thereby begging the question as tornwhether the federal government was inrnfact a “national” government in thernsense he intended), and, knowingly orrnfrom ignorance, he distorted the essencernof the secessionist argument by claimingrnthat secession would lead to anarchy,rneach seceding unit in time breaking uprninto still smaller ones because the processrnof fragmentation, once begun, could notrnlogically be halted. The obvious responsernto Lincoln’s claim is that unitsrnsmaller than the states are not sovereignrnand have no legitimate basis for assertingrnsovereignty and that units at the substaternlevel such as counties, cities, orrntownships are themselves creatures ofrnthe state government in a way that thernstates most definitely are not the creaturesrnof the federal government. Lincoln’srnpseudo-argument in fact invertsrnthe very nature of the American federalistrnsystem; designed as a system in whichrnthe federal government was created byrnthe states, the system becomes in Lincoln’srnassertions one in which the statesrnare essentially the creatures and subordinatesrnof Washington. But of course itrnwas the United States government itselfrnthat violated Lincoln’s own argumentrnwhen, under his presidency and for obviousrnmilitary reasons, it endorsed thernsecession of West Virginia from Virginiarnonce the Upper South had taken its leavernof the Union and started sharpening itsrnsabers.rnNor, apart from Lincoln’s banalities, isrnthere much in our history, either beforernor after the Civil War, to suggest that therncase for secession is a flawed one. NewrnEnglanders, the most ardent of nationalistsrnwhen the vile slaveholders of thernSouth sought to go their own way, werernAUGUST 1994/9rnrnrn