Secession in the United States

Secession, as it pertains to the United States, is the formal withdrawal of a state or territory from the federal union. After the thirteen English colonies declared their independence and formed the United States in 1776, there were several threats to secede from the republic, but no state followed through. In the nineteenth century, a growing economic and cultural divide between the North and South caused a national crisis and led to the secession of eleven Southern states in 1860 and 1861. The resulting Civil War killed hundreds of thousands of people and threatened to tear apart the United States. The North's victory preserved the Union, but calls for secession continue in some areas into the twenty-first century.

Early Attempts at Secession

The fledgling United States may have been born from thirteen British colonies, but those colonies did not begin as a united entity. The colonization of North America occurred gradually when various groups with differing agendas were granted land by the king of England. Virginia was founded by entrepreneurs seeking to capitalize on natural resources; Massachusetts was colonized by religious reformers fleeing persecution; New York was a Dutch colony absorbed by the English; and the Carolinas and Georgia were rural, agriculture-based regions.

When disputes over taxation and control of the colonies raised tensions between England and America, the situation deteriorated into conflict in 1775. Uniting against the British, the thirteen colonies declared their independence in 1776 and agreed to join together in a "league of friendship." Each new state was granted the sovereignty to govern itself while at the same time being under the protection of a central government with relatively little power. The arrangement caused problems from the start. Since each state established its own laws, interstate commerce was problematic. The states were also overwhelmed in dealing with citizen rebellions, and the weak federal government was powerless to act.

Threats of secession were common. Even while the founding fathers were discussing the formation of the new country, South Carolina threatened to secede over the taxation of slaves. In 1784, a year after the Revolutionary War ended, four counties in North Carolina declared their independence. The counties were unhappy with their treatment at the hands of North Carolina's leaders and formed the State of Franklin. Their petition for statehood won a majority in Congress, but not the two-thirds margin needed for ratification. Franklin maintained its independence for four years before its effort collapsed in 1788. The counties returned to North Carolina and became part of Tennessee in 1796.

In 1787, Congress addressed the problems of the new government by convening the Constitutional Convention. They created a new Constitution, which established the three branches of government and two-house system of representation the United States has used since. The Constitution strengthened the federal government but also maintained states' rights. Two of the issues it did not address were slavery and the right to secession.

Disputes between the states and federal government continued, as did the occasional talk of secession. In 1814, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Hampshire met in Hartford, Connecticut, to protest the United States' involvement in the War of 1812 and discuss leaving the Union. The states were unhappy with the government's decision to go to war with Great Britain, one of New England's primary trading partners. The convention presented Congress with a declaration asking the federal government for aid and a change in the rules for declaring war, but it did not take any action on secession. In 1832, a dispute over economic tariffs prompted South Carolina to defy the federal government and declare the tariffs null and void. President Andrew Jackson threatened military force if South Carolina did not abide by the federal law, but a compromise resolved the issue.

Conflict Between North and South

While part of the same nation, the Northern and Southern sections of the United States had deep fundamental differences. Slavery was at the center of much of the division. During the founding of the Constitution, Northern and Southern states argued over slavery's role in government representation. Even though slaves could not vote, Southern states wanted them counted as part of the population to increase Southern seats in Congress. Northern states felt since the South treated slaves as property, they should not be counted at all. The two sides reached a compromise to count three-fifths of the slaves in each state toward representation in Congress.

Geography and economics also played a role in the regional division. The more populated urban areas of the North were highly industrialized with smaller amounts of available farmland. Economic conditions and the influx of immigrants made slavery in the North obsolete. All the Northern states had banned slavery by 1804, and a burgeoning abolition movement was beginning to take hold there.

The South was largely rural, with large farms used to grow tobacco and cotton. They needed people to work the farms, and slaves had been used in that capacity since the early seventeenth century. The Southern states considered slavery an institution and essential for maintaining their economy.

The westward expansion of the United States drove a further wedge between the North and South. As new states were being added west of the Mississippi River, Northern abolitionists wanted slavery banned in the new territories. They felt an increase in the number of slave states would tip the balance in the Senate in favor of the South. Southerners feared more free states would increase Northern influence.

In 1819, the territory of Missouri petitioned for inclusion to the Union as a slave state. At the time, the United States was evenly divided between eleven free states and eleven slave states. Missouri would give the slaveholder states a majority in the Senate and raised Northern fears of slavery's expansion into the western territories. After a bitter debate, lawmakers reached a deal known as the Missouri Compromise in 1820. Missouri would be included as a slave state, but Maine would also enter the Union as a free state to maintain balance in Congress. The law also set a geographical boundary declaring slavery illegal in any land north of a certain latitude in the new territories.

The compromise may have diffused the situation, but neither side was happy with the results. Southern states resented congressional interference in what they saw as their right to make their own laws; Northern states criticized the deal for allowing even a limited expansion of slavery. Disputes over the issue continued to grow in the subsequent decades, particularly after the United States acquired more western land from the Mexican War in the late 1840s. A leading voice for Southern interests, South Carolina senator John Calhoun, argued in Congress that the North was imposing its will on the South and trampling on its way of life. He maintained that the Constitution gave states the right to nullify a federal law if it acted against their interests. Calhoun also began to call for secession if the North continued to threaten Southern institutions. Calhoun helped galvanize Southern support for secession and continued to be a force in the Senate until his death in 1850.

That same year, representatives from the slave states met in Nashville, Tennessee, to formulate a response for what they called "northern aggression." They agreed upon several points reaffirming their constitutional rights but decided to hold off a formal vote on secession. In 1854, Kansas applied for admission as a state and ignited a new battle over slavery. In response, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed residents in those territories to vote on whether to permit slavery. Both states eventually voted to become free states but only after a bloody fight between pro- and anti-slavery forces in Kansas.

The battle over Kansas helped form the Republican Party in 1854. The Republicans were staunchly opposed to slavery and its expansion in the territories. Many party members were abolitionists and Southerners worried if the Republicans gained the presidency it would mean the end of slavery in the United States. After the Republicans lost by a narrow margin in 1856, Southern states threatened to secede if a Republican was elected in 1860. Even though the Republicans claimed they did not intend to abolish slavery, many Southern states began preparing to secede from the Union.

Southern fears were realized during the election of 1860, when Republicans made significant gains in Congress and Abraham Lincoln was elected president. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina made good on its threat and became the first state to secede from the United States. In the ensuing weeks, six more states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas—also voted to leave the Union. Calling themselves the Confederate States of America, the leaders drafted a constitution and elected their own president. They felt that like the founding fathers of the American Revolution, they too were standing up against an unjust tyrannical system.

Upon his inauguration in March 1861, President Lincoln attempted to appease the border states to keep them in the Union. The Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861, however, convinced Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina to remain united with the South, and by June 8, eleven states had seceded. Four border slave states—Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri—stayed loyal to the Union cause, as did several of Virginia's western counties, which split from Virginia to form the state of West Virginia.

President Lincoln refused to recognize the Confederate states and promised to preserve the Union. He began organizing an army to put down the insurrection, and by the end of 1861, hundreds of thousands of Americans were engaged in battle. By the time the Civil War ended with a Northern victory in 1865, an estimated 625,000 people were killed and an assassin's bullet fired by a Southern sympathizer had claimed the life of President Lincoln.

Modern Secession

In the wake of the Civil War, slavery was abolished in the United States and a divisive rebuilding process was implemented in the South. Over time, the Southern states were brought back into the fold and readmitted to the Union, although resentment lingered in the South for years. Any questions over the legality of secession, however, were put to rest by Lincoln's decisive stance on preserving the United States.

Still, dissatisfaction with the federal government did not end with the Civil War, and other attempts at secession have occurred in the years since. However, these have tended to be on a smaller scale and have been more an attempt to form a new state rather than to separate from the nation. Such a move would require approval from that state's legislature and from the United States Congress—approval that is unlikely to happen.

In 2013, voters in eleven northern Colorado counties led an unsuccessful attempt to leave the state and join neighboring Wyoming. In 2015, a drive to have secession placed on the ballot in Texas was also rejected. In northern California, rural residents who feel ignored by the state government have been leading a campaign to break away and form the State of Jefferson. The idea of forming the State of Jefferson has been considered since the 1940s but has picked up steam in the twenty-first century.

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