Secession in Vermont
by Derek W. on December 14th, 2005
I’ts been close to 150 years since a group of southern states unsuccessfully attempted to exercise their constitutional right to secede from the Union—or as we call it today, the United States of America.
On October 28, the Vermont Independence Convention met in the state’s capitol city to once again consider the idea of secession. The event was billed as “the first statewide convention on secession in the United States since North Carolina voted to secede from the Union on May 20, 1861.”
The group’s mission? “[T]o extricate Vermont peacefully from the United States as soon as possible.”
You can read more about this event and related issues in Bill Kaufmann’s article “Free Vermont” at The American Conservative, which happens to be the best conservative publication out there today!
If you read Kaufmann’s article, you will also find out some interesting facts that you probably didn’t know! (For example, the city Montpelier is the only state capitol in the U.S. that does not have a McDonald’s fast food restaurant.)
2 Comments
Sam Ashwood
December 15th, 2005 at 1:47 pm
Good for them! It’s about time somebody remembered that secession is a necessary and inalienable right to a free society. Of course, if they ever dared attempt it, they would be dragged back in by Federal bayonets, just like the South. But at least someone is thinking about it…
Jesse
January 9th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
Thought not a Vermonter myself, I am a strong supporter of Vermont Independence and a member of the Second Vermont Republic. One of the most typical comments that people have in regards to modern secession, which Sam here brings up, is that it would simply repeat 1863 and involve a bloody war. I think that we forget sometimes that 2006 is very different from 1863 and that we have just finished a century in which the greatest empires the world has ever seen (England, France, Russia, Japan, Austro-Hungary, the Ottomans, etc) were dismembered through secession, and that more often than we tend to remember, it was done peacefully. In 1863, the great empires were just forming and the idea of secession was an anathema. International bodies exist today that did not at that time and the publicity of fighting tiny little Vermont might be more than the United States would be able to handle. This is not to mention the fact that the secession of Vermont might cause a sea-change that shifts America into a more regional place. My blog (the link above) is dedicated to doing just that by building regional identity and pride in Upstate New York.