# Did the South have the Right to Secede **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 4, 2000, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474 "2000-02-04T19:20:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/1 "2000-02-04T19:20:00Z")
I see two topics here. Did the South Have the legal right to Secede? Legal or not were they justified in their attempt? I think they did. There is certainly precedent for it. After all, we declared our independance from England about a hundred years before. The South did not have representative Government, and the laws of the land clearly favored Northern industry to the detriment of Southern economics. There was an arguable level of hypocrisy in the call to free the slaves, as Northern slave ownership can easily be demostrated throughout the conflict. The reasons for the secession were economic, political, and cultural. The Confederate states had some justification in their actions as they felt they were being repressed along several fronts. They were not simply fighting for the right to keep slaves. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/2 "2000-02-04T19:25:00Z")
I don’t mean this flippantly, and those who know me will know what I mean by it, but Souths don’t have rights; people have rights. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/3 "2000-02-04T19:34:00Z")
Lib: OK but “Did the collective of individuals commonly referred to as the Southern States of The United States of America, have the right to exit the union created by the collective of individuals commonly referred to as the Northern States in order to form their own union” is quite a mouthful, don’t you think? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/4 "2000-02-04T19:39:00Z")
Maybe. But by my ethic, no one governs a man legitimately without his consent. You can understand that I was compelled by my principle to draw what I believe is no trivial distinction. Forgive the intrusion, please. ---
**Author:** ![batgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/3bc359/32.png) [@batgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/batgirl)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/5 "2000-02-04T19:40:00Z")
I asked my husband, who is a lawyer, about this and he said that he didn’t think the South, (or the people of the South or the Confederacy or whatever you want to call them) had the right to secede because of what is known as the “gaurantee clause” (I’m not sure if that’s spelled correctly, I don’t have a dictonary handy). Basically, he says that it says that certain rights are gauranteed to all citizens of the United States and that by seceding at least some citizens could be deprived of these rights, therefore the United States government must intervene to see that the citizens rights were protected. Actually, his answer was a lot longer than that, but that’s the general gist of what he said. ---
**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/6 "2000-02-04T19:43:00Z")
IIRC, there was a case winding its way up to the Supreme Court to decide just that. Unfortunately, the first shots of the Civil War were fired before the case was ever heard, and the Constitutionality of it was rendered moot. ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/7 "2000-02-04T19:46:00Z")
Lib: No problem. batgirl: What an excellent point! The South however also felt this justified their action as the Union government was in default of this clause. So, legally, they were compelled to secede in order to to secure the rights which were being withheld by the Union. ---
**Author:** ![StrTrkr777](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/fbc32d/32.png) [@StrTrkr777](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StrTrkr777)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/8 "2000-02-04T19:49:00Z")
If we wanted or even still want to secede than we should dang well be able to. Those oppresive jerks in DC cannot hold us back. What was the court going to do, tell everybody to get back to being a state? We fought and we lost. Next time the North will not be so lucky (since we do stockpile many more guns now, the majority of the guns up north are owned by gangs and they are not going to be conscripted into a civil war, so we will win this time). Jeffery ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/9 "2000-02-04T19:53:00Z")
Excuse me? I’m sorry, but did someone say such-and-such is not a right because of something scribbled on a piece of paper? [aw me achin’ 'ead…] ---
**Author:** ![Cooper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@Cooper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cooper)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/10 "2000-02-04T20:06:00Z")
Flowery rhetoric of former slave owners not withstanding, rights are not demonstrably inherent, inalienable or in any way axiomatic. Rights are taken at force of arms. The south failed to secure its separation, therefore it did not have the right to do so. QED. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/11 "2000-02-04T20:29:00Z")
For the record, I have never owned a slave. Using arms to defend rights is noble; using arms to usurp them is barbaric. That’s my nonslave-owning opinion. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/12 "2000-02-04T20:40:00Z")
**Cooper** wrote: > [@](#): > > The south failed to secure its separation, therefore it did not have the right to do so. QED. Let’s examine this logic. May we also say, then, that because the Nazis butchered the Jews of Europe, that the Jews had no right to live in the first place? Brilliant. :rolleyes: * * * “Every time you think, you weaken the nation!” --M. Howard (addressing his brother, C. Howard). ---
**Author:** ![Amazingrace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8edcca/32.png) [@Amazingrace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amazingrace)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/13 "2000-02-04T20:42:00Z")
In this country, the Feds have power over the states, so the Southern States did not have the legal right to overide the Feds. > [@](#): > > There is certainly precedent for it. After all, we declared our independance from England about a hundred years before. Revolutions have been happining as long as there has been government, but this doesn’t mean it was legal. As to whether they were justified, whether it was legal or not, I think that they were justified. Unless they managed to convince most of the other States and Feds they were right in their beliefs, they weren’t going to have their way. To get what they beleived in (whether they were justified in this belief is another thread), they had to leave. It was still illegal. ---
**Author:** ![Mojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Mojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mojo)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/14 "2000-02-04T20:45:00Z")
> [@](#): > > The South however also felt this justified their action as the Union government was in default of this clause came in response to: …certain rights are gauranteed to all citizens of the United States and that by seceding at least some citizens could be deprived of these rights, therefore the United States government must intervene to see that the citizens rights were protected. I’m not following- how was the Union “in default of this clause”? ---
**Author:** ![Scylla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a5b964/32.png) [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/15 "2000-02-04T20:59:00Z")
Mojo: The Confederacy did not have the right to representative government. It was deprived by the North. ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/16 "2000-02-04T21:14:00Z")
SCYLLA: Really? When? Because I am not familiar with deprivation of the right to participate in representative govnernment being imposed on the south prior to secession and the out-break of hostilities. Please enlighten me. * * * Jodi _Fiat Justitia_ ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_North](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/65b543/32.png) [@Peter\_North](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_North)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/17 "2000-02-04T21:17:00Z")
> [@](#): > > How can the federal government be prevented from usurping powers that the Constitution doesn’t grant to it? It’s an alarming fact that few Americans ask > this question anymore. > > Our ultimate defense against the federal government is the right of secession. Yes, most people assume that the Civil War settled that. But superior force proves > nothing. If there was a right of secession before that war, it should be just as valid now. It wasn’t negated because Northern munitions factories were more efficient > than Southern ones. > > Among the Founding Fathers there was no doubt. The United States had just seceded from the British Empire, exercising the right of the people to “alter or > abolish” — by force, if necessary — a despotic government. The Declaration of Independence is the most famous act of secession in our history, though modern > rhetoric makes “secession” sound somehow different from, and more sinister than, claiming independence. > > The original 13 states formed a “Confederation,” under which each state retained its “sovereignty, freedom, and independence.” The Constitution didn’t change > this; each sovereign state was free to reject the Constitution. The new powers of the federal government were “granted” and “delegated” by the states, which implies > that the states were prior and superior to the federal government. > > Even in The Federalist, the brilliant propaganda papers for ratification of the Constitution (largely written by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison), the > United States are constantly referred to as “the Confederacy” and “a confederate republic,” as opposed to a single “consolidated” or monolithic state. Members of a > “confederacy” are by definition free to withdraw from it. > > Hamilton and Madison hoped secession would never happen, but they never denied that it was a right and a practical possibility. They envisioned the people > taking arms against the federal government if it exceeded its delegated powers or invaded their rights, and they admitted that this would be justified. Secession, > including the resort to arms, was the final remedy against tyranny. (This is the real point of the Second Amendment.) > > Strictly speaking, the states would not be “rebelling,” since they were sovereign; in the Framers’ view, a tyrannical government would be rebelling against the > states and the people, who by defending themselves would merely exercise the paramount political “principle of self- preservation.” > > The Constitution itself is silent on the subject, but since secession was an established right, it didn’t have to be reaffirmed. More telling still, even the bitterest > opponents of the Constitution never accused it of denying the right of secession. Three states ratified the Constitution with the provision that they could later secede if > they chose; the other ten states accepted this condition as valid. > > Early in the nineteenth century, some Northerners favored secession to spare their states the ignominy of union with the slave states. Later, others who wanted to > remain in the Union recognized the right of the South to secede; Abraham Lincoln had many of them arrested as “traitors.” According to his ideology, an entire state > could be guilty of “treason” and “rebellion.” The Constitution recognizes no such possibility. > > Long before he ran for president, Lincoln himself had twice affirmed the right of secession and even armed revolution. His scruples changed when he came to > power. Only a few weeks after taking office, he wrote an order for the arrest of Chief Justice Roger Taney, who had attacked his unconstitutional suspension of > habeas corpus. His most recent biographer has said that during Lincoln’s administration there were “greater infringements on individual liberties than in any other > period in American history.” > > As a practical matter, the Civil War established the supremacy of the federal government over the formerly sovereign states. The states lost any power of resisting > the federal government’s usurpations, and the long decline toward a totally consolidated central government began. Taken from a Joseph Sobran article dated 9-30-99 ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/18 "2000-02-04T21:31:00Z")
OK, I’m gonna take a crack at the question posed by the OP. Bear with me. I am a Southerner, with ancestors who fought and died for the Confederacy. Even so, I do not buy the argument by some defenders of “The Lost Cause” that the Southern States had a legal right to secede from the Union. Why not? Take a look at the Preamble of theConstitution: > [@](#): > > We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union… Note, it says “ **We the People** of the United States” are trying to form a Union, and not “Whereas the **Several Sovereign States** have determined” that a Union should be formed. And in fact, the Supreme Court has read the preamble as bearing witness to the fact that the Constitution emanated from the people and was not the act of sovereign and independent States, _McCulloch v. Maryland_,17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 403 (1819) _Chisholm v. Georgia_, 2 U.S. (2 Dall.) 419, 471 (1793); _Martin v. Hunter’s Lessee_, 14 U.S. (1 Wheat.) 304, 324 (1816). ## There you have it, in my view. “Every time you think, you weaken the nation!” --M. Howard (addressing his brother, C. Howard). ---
**Author:** ![APB9999](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB9999](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB9999)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/19 "2000-02-04T21:32:00Z")
> [@](#): > > In this country, the Feds have power over the states Actually, I don’t think that’s quite right in this context. The constitution that the South ratified gives the feds very specific rights; all others are reserved to the states. We pretty much stopped following this part of the constitution _because_ of the civil war. It’s only in subsequent times that the absolute power of the federal government over the states is pretty much taken for granted. But the legality of the situation is based less on written law than on “precedence” established since 1864, IMHO. This is a very contentious issue for me when I engage in those arguments with myself that I use to form opinions. On the one hand, > [@](#): > > We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, > that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. > That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, > That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing > its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. . I have to agree with that. It implies to me that if Southerners felt that the government wasn’t representing their interests, they had a moral right to establish a new one. Of course the “interest” they were protecting was - there’s no getting around it - the legal blessing to keep human beings as chattel slaves. It’s kind of hard to get behind that. It sullies the morality of their right to secede. It’s extremely unfortunate that the principal test of the virtues of local rule, espoused during the Revolution, were put to trial over this issue (I just read Thomas Paine’s _Common Sense_ for the first time last week, coincidentally. It’s an interesting document for this thread). So I’m conflicted. If the immorality of slavery were less clear cut, maybe my feelings would be different. And I still _do_ believe in the right of people to self determination, but as things stand, I think the South’s secession is lacking some kind of legitimacy, viz: > [@](#): > > a decent respect to the opinions > of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. When those causes include “we’re afraid the feds are going to make us emancipate our slaves” I think the world can quite rightly respond with a judgement that the divorce is inappropriate. Of course, one could argue that by the principles in the above quotes, the slaves had a right to revolt, but it wasn’t practical to do so without the assistance of their countrymen (Paine goes to great lengths in _Common Sense_to define the nation as a unit, and argues that the British occupation of Boston is an affront to Virginians and Georgians as well. All Americans must help secure liberties to all others, he argues). So the North can argue that it was securing the inalienable rights of American citizens, and the secession was just a dodge to avoid the costs this would entail. Or is that too tendentious? BTW, I’m sorry if this doesn’t really address the OP. I’m not a lawyer, but I think considerations of the principles underlying the laws are more important anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Mojo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Mojo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mojo)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2000, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474/20 "2000-02-04T21:40:00Z")
> [@](#): > > The Confederacy did not have the right to representative government. It was deprived by the North. I’m hoping you’ll amend this statement as they had plenty in the way of representative gov’t. OTOH, blacks did not have the right to representative gov’t as it was deprived by the southern states. Would you argue that individuals had the right to secede from the state? [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-the-south-have-the-right-to-secede/17474.md?page=2)