Quotes & Sayings About Secession

A South Carolina native, Miles was a lawyer, a mayor of Charleston, and a congressman. He was one of his state's "fire-eaters," a term applied to men who openly advocated secession rather than finding accomodation with the Union in the summer and fall of 1860. — Clint Johnson

So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many many other evils ... the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel. — Charles Dickens

Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible 'anarchy', why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person? — Murray N. Rothbard

From whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall some trans-Atlantic military giant step the earth and crush us at a blow? Never. All the armies of Europe and Asia ... could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide. — Abraham Lincoln

All the blood shed as a result of secession could be wiped up with a handkerchief. — LeRoy Pope Walker

The most sanctified figure in American historiography is, by no accident, the Great Saint of centralizing "democracy" and the strong unitary nation-state: Abraham Lincoln. And so didn't Lincoln use force and violence, and on a massive scale, on behalf of the mystique of the sacred "Union," to prevent the South from seceding? Indeed he did, and on the foundation of mass murder and oppression, Lincoln crushed the South and outlawed the very notion of secession (based on the highly plausible ground that since the separate states voluntarily entered the Union they should be allowed to leave). But not only that: for Lincoln created the monstrous unitary nation-state from which individual and local liberties have never recovered. — Murray N. Rothbard

Secession withdraws the State out of the reach of the usurped powers — Abel P. Upshur

Some non-communist parties and CPPCC members have, at CPPCC meetings or in their proposals, called for the enactment of a law against secession at the earliest date, to resolutely fight and curb 'Taiwan independence' activities in any forms. — Jia Qinglin

Many Afghan intellectuals in the United States believe that their country is best kept together. They are encouraged by the fact that no leading tribal or political figure there has called for secession. — Stephen Kinzer

Tocqueville was correct in his rendition of how the Constitution was formed, but he likely never dreamed that an American president would ever send an invading army to kill some 300,000 of his own citizens in order to destroy the right of secession, a right that all of America's founding fathers held as sacrosanct and that was at the very heart of the American system of government. — Thomas J. DiLorenzo

On Egdon there was no absolute hour of the day. The time at any moment was a number of varying doctrines professed by the different hamlets, some of them having originally grown up from a common root, and then become divided by secession, some having been alien from the beginning. West Egdon believed in Blooms-End time, East Egdon in the time of the Quiet Woman Inn. Grandfer Cantle's watch had numbered many followers in years gone by, but since he had grown older faiths were shaken. Thus, the mummers having gathered here from scattered points, each came with his own tenets on early and late; and they waited a little longer as a compromise. — Thomas Hardy

In all her history, from the formation of the federal government until the hour of secession, no year stands out more prominently than the year 1858 as evidencing the national patriotism of Virginia. — John Sergeant Wise

Robert T. Lincoln, the president's eldest son, who won fame as the "Prince of Rails" during the secession winter, was the only one of his children to live to maturity. He became U.S. secretary of war, minister to Great Britain, and president of the Pullman Company following brief service on General Grant's staff at the end of the Civil War. Though frequently mentioned as a Republican candidate for president, Robert shunned electoral politics. He later brought his mother to trial in a successful effort to have her committed for insanity. Robert died an extremely wealthy man at age eighty-four in 1926. — Harold Holzer

Despite the popular idea of anarchists as violent men, Anarchism is the one non-violent social philosophy. ... The function of the Anarchist is two-fold. By daily courage in non-cooperation with the tyrannical forces of the State and the Church, he helps to tear down present society; the Anarchist by daily cooperation with his fellows in overcoming evil with good-will and solidarity builds toward the anarchistic commonwealth which is formed by voluntary action with the right of secession. — Ammon Hennacy

The dictionary definition of a Christian is one who follows Christ; kind, kindly, Christ-like. Anarchism is voluntary cooperation for good, with the right of secession. A Christian anarchist is therefore one who turns the other cheek, overturns the tables of the moneychangers, and does not need a cop to tell him how to behave. A Christian anarchist does not depend upon bullets or ballots to achieve his ideal; he achieves that ideal daily by the One-Man Revolution with which he faces a decadent, confused, and dying world. — Ammon Hennacy

From infancy, I had been accustomed to hear pro and con discussions of slavery and the American Civil War. Although the British government finally decided not to recognise the Confederacy, public opinion in England was sharply divided on the questions both of slavery and of secession. — Emmeline Pankhurst

Down our way we're always had a theory that the Civil War was not brought on by Secession of Slavery or the State's Rights issue. These matters contributed to the quarrel, but there is a deeper reason. It was bought on by some Yankee coming down south and putting nutmeg in a julep. So our folks up and left the Union flat. — Irvin S. Cobb

What happened in America in the 1860s was a war of secession, a war of independence, no different in principle from what happened in America in the 1770s and 1780s. — L. Neil Smith

What happened in Pakistan was that people were told: You're all Muslim, so now you're a country. As we saw in 1971 with the Bangladesh secession, the answer to that was: 'Oh no, we're not.' — Salman Rushdie

No people and no part of a people shall be held against its will in a political association that it does not want. — Ludwig Von Mises

I gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest. Up to that time it had been the policy of our army, certainly of that portion commanded by me, to protect the property of the citizens whose territory was invaded, without regard to their sentiments, whether Union or Secession. — Ulysses S. Grant

Even amid a state of open warfare, these law-abiding men felt obligated to issue a formal document, giving a dispassionate list of their reasons for secession. — Ron Chernow

I expect to see trade wars, foreign policy disasters, a few race riots, a decrease in personal liberty, higher taxes, higher inflation and probably, economic collapse. The silver lining is, secession will probably become more feasible. — Charley Reese

If the Union was formed by accession of States then the Union may be dissolved by the secession of States. — Daniel Webster

The idea that 'if you don't like how things are going, you can just leave' is so ingrained in Texas, the secession movement is no surprise. — Gail Collins

The virtue of small government is that the mistakes are small as well ... If you want to leave a nation you think is corrupt, inefficient, militaristic, oppressive, repressive, but you don't want to move to Canada or France, what do you do? Well, the way is through secession, where you could stay home and be where you want to be. — Kirkpatrick Sale

The only way to make the Civil War noble is to make slavery the cause. It's a tough trick, though, that can only be accomplished by tying war and secession into a single indivisible lump. But it's only a trick. War and secession are not the same, and the cause of one is not automatically the cause of the other. — Mark David Ledbetter

The secession of the Southern States, individually or in the aggregate, was the certain consequence of Mr. Lincoln's election. — Belle Boyd

Saying slavery was the cause of secession isn't politically correct; it's correct correct. — Larry Wilmore

I saw in States' rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will, and secession filled me with hope, not as the destruction but as the redemption of Democracy ... Therefore I deemed that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress, and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at Richmond more deeply than I rejoice over that which was saved at Waterloo. — Lord Acton

But American statesmen have studied the constitutions of other states more than that of their own, and have succeeded in obscuring the American system in the minds of the people, and giving them in its place pure and simple democracy, which is its false development or corruption. Under the influence of this false development, the people were fast losing sight of the political truth that, though the people are sovereign, it is the organic, not the inorganic people, the territorial people, not the people as simple population, and were beginning to assert the absolute God-given right of the majority to govern. All the changes made in the bosom of the States themselves have consisted in removing all obstacles to the irresponsible will of the majority, leaving minorities and individuals at their mercy. This tendency to a centralized democracy had more to do with provoking secession and rebellion than the anti-slavery sentiments of the Northern, Central, and Western States. — Orestes Augustus Brownson

Understand this: you no longer represent your homeworlds solely. "Coruscant, Alderaan, Chandrila ... All these and tens of thousands of worlds far removed from the Core are cells of the Empire, and what affects one, affects us all. No disturbances will be tolerated. "Interplanetary squabbles or threats of secession will meet with harsh reprisals. I have not led us through three years of galactic warfare to allow a resurgence of the old ways. The Republic is extinct. — James Luceno

The great and complicated political reasons for secession, thundered about in Congress and in the state legislatures, were not their reasons, which were more like those expressed by a captive Confederate soldier, who was not a slaveholder, to his puzzled Union captors. "I'm fighting because you're down here," he said.30 — S.C. Gwynne

Secession is a deeply American principle. This country was born through secession. — Ron Paul

In 1856 ... I preferred the success of a candidate whose election would prevent or postpone secession, to seeing the country plunged into a war the end of which no man could foretell. With a Democrat elected by the unanimous vote of the Slave States, there could be no pretext for secession for four years ... I therefore voted for James Buchanan as President. — Ulysses S. Grant

As we are now engaged in this contest, all my wishes, all my desires and all the energies of my hand and heart will be given to the cause of my state. Whether we have the right of secession or revolution, I want to see my state triumphant. — Jubal Early

Lincoln replied:"There is a difference between secession against the Constitution and in favor of the Constitution. — Clint Johnson

I'm not pro-war. But I think war has been the dominant condition of humankind, and peace has been the anomaly - certainly sustained periods of peace that profit great masses of people - and I think war has worked, even awful hellish wars: worked to staunch fascist aggression in Europe, worked to preserve the Union after secession in the United States, etc. Not always, maybe not often, but to say never is to reject history in favor of a wishful unreality. — Philip Gourevitch

We may be rats in a maze as far as the Obama administration is concerned, but in Texas, we are rats with a firm knowledge of just where the button is and how to push it. It helps us put up with all the nonsense and it would do the folks in Washington well to remember that. - Tom King ("Why the Secession Talk in Texas") — Tom King

Werther identifies himself with the madman, with the footman. As a reader, I can identify myself with Werther. Historically, thousands of subjects have done so, suffering, killing themselves, dressing, perfuming themselves, writing as if they were Werther (songs, poems, candy boxes, belt buckles, fans, colognes a' la Werther). A long chain of equivalences links all the lovers in the world. In the theory of literature, "projection" (of the reader into the character) no longer has any currency: yet it is the appropriate tonality of imaginative readings: reading a love story, it is scarcely adequate to say I project myself; I cling to the image of the lover, shut up with his image in the very enclosure of the book (everyone knows that such stories are read in a state of secession, of retirement, of voluptuous absence: in the toilet). — Roland Barthes

If you persist in your purpose of secession, there will be war - a bloody and cruel war. Not only will the North fight, but she will also triumph. The experiment of secession will fail, and the South, in ruin and desolation, will bitterly repent the day when she attempted to overthrow a wise and beneficent government. — Ambrose Burnside

As long as it served his purpose, Mr. Lincoln boldly advocated the right of Secession. — Belle Boyd

Southern newspapers hungry for fodder to roil the secession debate fed their subscribers the most inciteful material they could unearth in the Northern press. Northern journals scoured Southern papers for similarly provocative reports designed to confirm hotheaded Southern disloyalty. — Harold Holzer

Secession, like any other REVOLUTIONARY ACT, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression; but to call it a constitutional right is confounding the meaning of terms ... — Andrew Jackson

Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the States are Sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again, when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a Sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever. — Jefferson Davis

Above all, don't overestimate your own power as an individual. Founders are important not because they are the only ones whose work has value, but rather because a great founder can bring out the best work from everybody at his company. That we need individual founders in all their peculiarity does not mean that we are called to worship Ayn Randian "prime movers" who claim to be independent of everybody around them. In this respect Rand was a merely half-great writer: her villains were real, but her heroes were fake. There is no Galt's Gulch. There is no secession from society. To believe yourself invested with divine self-sufficiency is not the mark of a strong individual, but of a person who has mistaken the crowd's worship - or jeering - for the truth. The single greatest danger for a founder is to become so certain of his own myth that he loses his mind. But an equally insidious danger for every business is to lose all sense of myth and mistake disenchantment for wisdom. — Anonymous

It's absurd to accuse Serbia and the Serbs for the armed secession of Croatia,. — Slobodan Milosevic

In state after state, one portentous incident after another, breathlessly reported in newspapers throughout the country in the days following the election, alarmed even confident Republicans who had insisted that a Lincoln victory could never loosen the bonds that held the Union together. As early as November 9, pro-secession placards appeared on the streets of New Orleans, calling for the formation of a defense corps of Minutemen. Dissidents unfurled palmetto flags in Charleston, where artillery saluted their appearance by opening fire with a defiant fifteen-gun cannonade. — Harold Holzer

No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy. — Abraham Lincoln