Is Secession Unconstitutional?
I had a political epiphany regarding secession and the U.S. Civil War.
I had a political epiphany this week regarding secession and the U.S. Civil War.
People like to say that the Confederacy was traitorous and treasonous because they were rebels. The idea is that they rebelled against the standing and duly elected U.S. government because they weren’t allowed to secede.
Often left unsaid or generally avoided by many people is that the Founders were also traitors because they too were rebels
At any rate, I long agreed with the idea. My position could be summed up as “So?” with a sweeping gesture toward the rebellion committed by the Founding Fathers.
But I also held for a long time that states were allowed to secede, based on Lincoln’s 1848 speech regarding Mexico as well as the 10th Amendment. The former says in pertinent part, “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.”
And I never saw the nonsensical dichotomy of those two positions.
If they were allowed to secede, then they weren’t traitors. It’s not treason to do something you’re allowed to do, right? “But hold on, Bob. Where does The Constitution say that a state can secede?”
The answer is that it doesn’t. But it also doesn’t prohibit a state from seceding. And under the 9th Amendment, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
And because the federal government wasn’t given the power to kick a state out of the Union, nor were the states forbidden to do so, that power, according to the 10th Amendment, was reserved to the states.
This journey along the secession rabbit trail was triggered by a Reddit post in the Libertarian subreddit. It linked to a Substack piece that talks about the debatable idea that the secession question was answered by the Civil War and Texas V White. I don’t think we should consider it settled, not if we’re intellectually honest about the idea.
(Side note: Who knew the author of the Pledge of Allegiance was a Christian socialist? They left that part out of my public education.)
And according to this piece at the Mises Institute, even Thomas Jefferson supported secession.
Do I think secession is likely? No, not likely. Could it happen? I think it could, and that it could even happen peacefully. But I don’t think it’s probable. It’s an interesting thought experiment though.
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Previously Published on Bob Mueller, Writer and is republished on Medium.
