Here is an email I recieved the other day from a fellow delegate to the Southern National Congress.
This is from this April 1, 2009.
You All,
Secession has suddenly become a viable option in surprising places.
The Georgia Senate recently voted 43 - 1 for a nullification and secession resolution (endorsement of the ideas). I am serious. I just learned about this in today's Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A very large headline, "Georgia Senate endorses radical idea" for the extremely liberal columnist Jay Bookman's piece caught my eye. It is so revealing of trends and possibilities that I quote it in full:
"It wasn't quite the firing on Fort Sumter that launched the Civil War. But on April 1, your Georgia Senate did threaten by a vote of 43 - 1 to secede from and even disband the United States.
It was not an April Fool's joke.
In fact, Senate Resolution 632 did a lot more than merely threaten to end this country. It stated that under the Constitution, the only crimes the federal government could prosecute were treason, piracy, and slavery.
'Therefore, all acts of Congress which assume to create, define or punish [other] crimes . . . are altogether void, and of no force,' the Georgia Senate declared.
In other words, in the infinite, almost unanimous wisdom of the Georgia Senate, Michael Vick is being imprisoned illegally, Bernie Madoff should serve no time for stealing $60 billion and the Unabomber must go free. In fact, the federal penitentiary in Atlanta should be emptied of its inmates. [my comment: Of course, the States would handle these crimes.]
But wait, there's more.
The resolution goes on to endorse the theory that states have the right to abridge constitutional freedoms of religion, press and speech. According to the resolution, it is up to the states to decide 'how far the licentiousness of speech and of the press may be abridged." [my comment: This was the original purpose of the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the U. S. Constitution), the limitation of federal power, not state power. Under the Bill of Rights to the U. S. Constitution, the States were in charge of protecting personal liberties, because the State governments were closer to the people and therefore more easily controlled by the people. States could violate the Bill of Rights, or enact and enforce tougher laws protecting personal liberties, as they saw fit. For example, Massachusetts and Connecticut violated the First Amendment (freedom of religion) by having State churches (the Congregational Church (the Puritans) until the early 1830s., and this was perfectly constitutional.] The States had their own Bill of Rights.
The resolution even endorses 'nullification,' the legal concept that states have the power to 'nullify' or ignore federal laws that they believe exceed the powers granted under the Constitution. That concept has a particularly nasty legacy. It helped precipitate the Civil War, and in the 1950s and early '60s it was cited by Southern states claiming the right to ignore Supreme Court rulings ordering the end of segregation. [my comment: The concepts of State interposition and nullification were articulated by none other than Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the famous Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. James Madison is considered by many historians as the most important contributor to the authorship of the U. S. Constitution (though Clyde Wilson disagrees); Thomas Jefferson of course was the author of the Declaration of Independence and of the Virginia Declaration of Religious Freedom. In fact, he requested for his tombstone only those two accomplishments and his being the father of the University of Virginia, a principal motive for the founding of which on his part was so that Virginia youth would have a college to attend which taught Southern principles rather than having to attend the alien Yankee institutions of Harvard and Yale and Princeton and their like. He did not consider his being President of the United States to be as important as the above three accomplishments. This speaks volumes as to what an ardent State Rights man Thomas Jefferson was.]
Finally, the resolution states that if Congress, the president or federal courts take any action that exceeds their constitutional powers, the Constitution is rendered null and void and the United States of America is officially disbanded. As an example, the resolution specifically states that if the federal government enacts 'prohibitions of type or quantity of arms or ammunition,' the country is disbanded.
In other words, if Congress votes to restore the ban on sale of assault rifles, the United States is deemed to no longer exist.
This, your Georgia state Senate voted 43 - 1 to endorse.
Now, to be fair, the resolution passed because it was snuck unnoticed onto the Senate resolution calendar on the 39th day of the 40 - day legislative session, when senators were trying to handle dozens of bills and scores of amendments. Most did not have an opportunity to read the six - page resolution, which in its description claimed to merely affirm 'states' rights based on Jeffersonian principles.' [my comment: a true description]
However, those who introduced and sponsored the measure have no such excuse. Presumably they read and understood what they asked their fellow senators to endorse. And those sponsors include some of the most prominent members of the Senate -- Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers of Woodstock [an Atlanta suburb], Senate President Pro Tem Tommie Williams, Transportation Committee Chairman Jeff Mullis of Chickamauga [my comment: Jeff Mullis is a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV)], and Chief Deputy Whip John Wiles of Cobb County [a major Atlanta suburban county], among others. [my comment: all of these gentlemen are Republicans]
The resolution they sponsored is part of a radical right - wing national movement -- a similar resolution was introduced in the Georgia House but not voted on. It has been introduced in legislatures all over the nation, and has passed in both chambers in Oklahoma [my comment: Oklahoma is a Southern State, rightfully included in Congressional Quarterly's 13 State South as the Southern region of the U. S. The other CQ major U. S. regions are the Northeast, the Midwest, and the West.] and one in South Dakota.
And while the Georgia resolution is legally meaningless and was passed without debate or even knowledge of most senators, it has had an impact. It has been hailed by, among others, those fighting the conspiracy to create a single North American country, by the Confederate States Militia, by the John Birch Society, and the League of the South, which still pines for the cause of an 'independent South' and believes that 'Southern society is radically different from the society impressed upon it by an alien occupier.'
You have to question the judgment of those who would have any truck whatsoever with such nonsense, and who would jeopardize the reputation of the Georgia Senate to lend aid and comfort to such radical causes and fringe groups."
As to the League of the South being a "fringe group," so too were the early Christians and the early American Revolutionaries, and their ideas were extremely radical.
Then, in looking through the morning newspapers to see how the media is treating yesterday's tea parties, I found this amazing assessment of the rally in the capital of Texas in the New York Times:
"In Austin, Tex., Gov. Rick Perry energized a crowd of almost 1,000 by accusing the Obama administration of restricting states' rights and vaguely suggesting that Texas might want to secede from the union."
At the Southern Garden History Society meeting in Camden, South Carolina earlier this month, a Texas lady argued the case for secession to Dr. James Kibler of the University of Georgia English Department, thinking he needed convincing. This is quite ironic, as Dr. Kibler is one of the most ardent secessionist I have ever known, with the possible exception of Dr. Michael Hill, President of the League of the South.
Perhaps the Lone Star State, an independent nation from 1836 until 1845 when they willingly joined the federal union, will lead the way back to Southern freedom. But as you know, Texans are like South Carolinians, they are a very proud people, and sometimes overstate their importance. (I actually don't think the Carolinians do, after learning about South Carolina over the years) Another Texan at the Southern Garden History Society meeting asserted that Texas could secede because they were an independent nation once, intimating that we cannot. Every one of the thirteen original American States were an independent nation (this was true from 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was adopted on behalf of all the States acting in unision, and under the Articles of Confederation which were adopted and sent to the States in 1777 and agreed to by all of the States and went into force in 1781 (Maryland was the last holdout) until the ratification of the 1787 Constitution by the requisite nine of the original thirteen States on 21 June 1788. Every Southern State that seceded was an independent nation from the time of secession until joining the Confederate States of America. California was once an independent nation, the "Bear Flag Republic," the reason the bear is on the California State flag. Vermont was an independent Republic. Every State has the legal right to secede from "the union," whose purpose is to provide for the general welfare and the safety and happiness of the people (Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence), not to be perpetual, which is an impossible and arrogant assertion (nothing human is ever perpetual).
Here is how C. Herman Pritchett, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, described the independence of the States under the Articles of Confederation in his book, The American Constitution (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), which was a textbook I had under Dr. James C. McClellan in his Constitutional Law Course at Emory University during the school year 1967 - 1968: "As the Articles truthfully stated, it was a league of friendship entered into by sovereign states [i.e., nations]." The Articles' Congress could not even levy taxes; it had to make a "requisition" on each State, and each State was free not to pay the "requisition," and many did not. James McClellan was a noted constitutional scholar who co-authored a book with Russell Kirk, author much earlier of The Conservative Mind, 1953, the seminal work of post World War II American Conservatism. Though from Michigan, Russell Kirk devotes a very positive chapter in The Conservative Mind to Southern Conservatism, focusing on John C. Calhoun and John Randolph of Roanoke.
Secession is as American as apple pie. It was the method by which the thirteen original colonies freed themselves from British rule, by declaring their independence and seceding (separating) from the British Empire. The American Revolutionaries justified their secession from the British Empire by citing the ways in which the British govenment had breached the social compact of the people that their government should be for the common good (Pritchett, p.
. With the development of an American legal doctrine of secession, based in part on the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of Madison and Jefferson, Southern secession in 1860 and 1861 was on much firmer legal ground than the secession of the American colonies from Britain in 1776, when loyalty to the King was the cement that held the British Empire together and for which no precedent for overturning had been established. In other words, the American Revolutionaries were true traitors to the Crown, but the Southern Secessionists of 1860/1861 were true adherents of the principals and precedents and legal establishments of the American Founding. The mere de facto Northern crushing of the South's hopes for independence in 1861 - 1865 does not in the least vitiate the constitutionality and legality of secession of American States. A constitutional amendment prohibiting secession was never adopted. The legal case against secession rests only on one U. S. Supreme Court opinion, rendered soon after the War, under the partisan influence of the Radical Republicans. That case was Texas v. White (1869). We all know how little regard the U. S. Supreme Court has for precedent. As one famous U. S. Supreme Court Justice said early in the twentieth century, the Constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means, showing how fickle are the federal judiciary's interpretations of the Constitution. And should a constitutional amendment, or a new Constitution, ever prohibit secession of a State, the original American doctrine justifying the Revolution would come into play: "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [the welfare, safety and happiness of the people], it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government . . . ." Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence.
Deo Vindice,
Bill Cawthon
