Secession and American Federalism (Essay‪)‬

THE BEGINNING OF THE twenty-first century saw a mostly unremarked development of considerable significance: for the first time since the founding of the Confederate States of America, the United States once again had an extensive secessionist movement. In 2003, author Thomas Naylor founded the movement for a Second Vermont Republic (the first such republic of Vermont having lasted from 1777 to 1791); and in 2006 and 2007, author Kirkpatrick Sale organized two annual North American symposiums of secessionist groups. Within a year, Sale had more than thirty North-American secessionist organizations listed in his directory, the most serious of which were in Vermont, Texas, Alaska, and Hawaii. (1) Of course, it is commonplace across the political spectrum, and certainly in mainstream print and broadcast media, to dismiss such movements as quixotic self-parody. As we will see, that would be a mistake. In an article in Modern Age, "The Revolutionary Conservatism of Jefferson's 'Little Republics,'" we saw the extent to which Jefferson had emphasized decentralization and the primary political authority of the townships. We also pointed out how the ensuing several hundred years of American history represented a continuous, growing repudiation of Jeffersonian decentralism, and an intensifying nationalist centralism that culminated in the Behemoth of imperial Washington, D.C., in the early twenty-first century, with its far-flung military bases, its ever-greater national bureaucracies, and its extraordinary deficit expenditures. The twenty-first century American secessionist movement emerged out of exactly this historical context--that is, out of conscious rejection of American gigantism.