# Can Vermont secede? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 7, 2004, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-vermont-secede/278489 "2004-12-07T03:52:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-vermont-secede/278489/21 "2004-12-07T17:12:13Z")
> [@JerH](#): > > Of course, it’s hard for liberals to hold their position, since none of them have firearms. You’ve obviously never been in a typical Vermonter’s home. Vermont has some of the most lax gun control laws in the nation. Concealed weapon permit? Doesn’t exist. Any law-abiding citizen (non-felon) over the age of 16 can carry a concealed gun around on the streets if they want to. ---
**Author:** ![Malodorous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e47774/32.png) [@Malodorous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malodorous)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-vermont-secede/278489/22 "2004-12-07T17:44:17Z")
> [@bouv](#): > > You’ve obviously never been in a typical Vermonter’s home. Vermont has some of the most lax gun control laws in the nation. Concealed weapon permit? Doesn’t exist. Any law-abiding citizen (non-felon) over the age of 16 can carry a concealed gun around on the streets if they want to. I went to HS in VT, and during deer season it wasn’t unusual for kids to bring the carcases of the deer they had shot to the school in their pickup trucks to show thier friends. Politically the state is very liberal, but culturally its a long way from San Francisco. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-vermont-secede/278489/23 "2004-12-07T18:09:42Z")
> [@constantine](#): > > This is exactly what the civil war was all about: does a state (or group of states) have the right to leave the union. The answer was no. And NOT JUST because they lost the war, but because every Supreme Court decision has been consistent on this point: the states are not sovereign nations and they don’t have the right to pull out of th union. Do people has rights that supersede the rights of states or nation-states? The Court may have ruled that the right to succession is unconstitutional but I remember that by signing the Declaration of Independence, the delegates were committing treason. I think that the will of the people should always ultimately pervail, even if it means revolution or otherwise. I wonder if member states of the European Union can secede and I don’t see why non-sovereignty of Vermont or any other state would make a difference. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-vermont-secede/278489/24 "2004-12-07T18:18:12Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > The treaty and admission process for Texas, however, allows the Texas State Legislature to draft statehood provisions for up to five states to be composed of portions of Texas, and Congress would be obliged by its own agreement to consider the request seriously. It remains with Congress to decide whether or not to admit any new state, but Texas has the privilege of requiring Congress to consider the request, where in any other case it’s up to the total discretion of Congress, its members, and its committees. I wish I had a cite, but I thought that while this right was originally granted to the then independent Texan nation, that it was rescinded upon their “readmission” after the Civil War. I realze “readmission” is the wrong word here since the Civil War of course determined that the Confederate states actually never left the Union, but I’m not sure what word to use. ---
**Author:** ![brianmelendez](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/65b543/32.png) [@brianmelendez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brianmelendez)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-vermont-secede/278489/25 "2004-12-07T18:56:01Z")
> [@OldGuy](#): > > I wish I had a cite, but I thought that while this right was originally granted to the then independent Texan nation, that it was rescinded upon their “readmission” after the Civil War. I realze “readmission” is the wrong word here since the Civil War of course determined that the Confederate states actually never left the Union, but I’m not sure what word to use. No, “readmission” is the correct word. Following the Civil War, the Union ruled the seceding states through military governments – first operating under direct Presidential authority, later under the Reconstruction Act of 1867 – which slowly organized civilian governments who held power at the occupying forces’ sufferance. Congress denied seats to senators and representatives from those states until they had complied with certain conditions – such as ratification of the 14th amendment – and been formally readmitted to statehood under the Reconstruction Act. Congress eventually did readmit each seceding state. From Eric Foner, _A Short History of Reconstruction_ (1990): > [@](#): > > Rejecting talk of “conquered provinces” or states reverting to territories, moderates [in the 39th Congress] adopted a constitutional position not unlike the President’s. While indesructible, the states had forfeited some of their rights by attempting secession; for the moment, they remained in the “grasp of war.” Johnson has used similar reasoning to appoint provisional governors and require states to ratify the Thirtenth Amendment. Moderates believed the same logic empowered Congress to withhold representation from the South until the essential rights of the freedmen had been guaranteed. Pp. 109-10. > [@](#): > > In its final form, the Reconstruction Act of 1867 divided the Confederate states, except Tennessee, into five military districts under commanders empowered to employ the Army to protect life and property. And without immediately replacing the Johnson regimes, it laid out the steps by which new state governments could be created and recognized by Congress – the writing of new constitutions providing for manhood suffrage, their approval by a majority of registered voters, and ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment… The bill established military rule, but only as a temporary measure to keep the peace, with the states assured a relatively quick return to the Union. P. 122. I had never heard that whatever right Texas may have enjoyed of dividing into five states was impaired by the act readmitting Texas after the Civil War. (The issue was mentioned in, but not impaired by, the Compromise of 1850 – after Texas’s statehood, but a decade before the Civil War.) But that proposition seems dubious since, as **Polycarp** explains, that “right” wasn’t particularly formidable. Texas couldn’t (and can’t) _unilaterally_ admit four new states carved out of its current territory: it could (and can) only ask that Congress accept its wish to that end, if it ever expressed such a wish. See [Texas into 5 states?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=159651) ---
**Author:** ![vetbridge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5e925/32.png) [@vetbridge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vetbridge)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2004, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-vermont-secede/278489/26 "2004-12-07T19:44:32Z")
Maybe we could trade Vermont for Puerto Rico and a coupla draft picks to be named later. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2004, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-vermont-secede/278489/27 "2004-12-08T01:56:28Z")
The misconception about Texas having the power to split into five states at least springs from language in the act of admission, which to the uninitiated, appears to confer special powers. This new claim on behalf of Vermont lacks even that much as a foundation. Here is the [very unexciting act of Congress](http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/statutes/vt03.htm) which admitted Vermont to the union in 1791. This was the first time Congress exercised its power under Article IV Section 3 to admit a new state. And here is the [equally unexciting petition sent to Congress by Vermont’s Constitutional Convention](http://www.usconstitution.net/rat_vt.html), in which the delegates asked for admission and explicitly acknowledged that the Union “shall be binding on us, and the people of the State of Vermont, forever.” So **E72521** , tell your coworker he will have to do better. We like errors we have to work a little harder to rebut! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-vermont-secede/278489.md?page=1)