According to Texas v. White,
So yes. There is a way. Texas v. White only deals with unilateral secession.
The issue in the case was whether Texas was a state. If Texas was not a state, then the federal courts would not have had jurisdiction to hear the case. After dispensing with a rather marginal issue, the court said:
Thus Texas, as the plaintiff, benefited from the Court’s finding that its secession was void. Indeed, its bill assumed as much.
Let’s hear it. So far nobody here seems persuaded.
Would it allow a state to take federal property and eject the Feds? It’s not like the federal government isn’t already there. Any armed insurrection would be a crime.
Which entity would be seen as responsible for the bloodshed?
I’ll second that.
This reflects a common misapprehension that there is some kind of “invisible law” and that the written law is only a reflection of it. But the simple fact is that the law is what the law is - if the Constitution and Congress and the Supreme Court says something’s a law then it is. Secession is against the law because it the people who had the authority to make the laws said it was - it doesn’t matter whether they were right or wrong or what their motives were. So while you can argue about whether or not secession should be illegal, you can’t meaningfully argue whether or not it is illegal.
It’s not that definition of ‘civil’.
“The War Between the States” or “American Civil War” (other countries have civil wars) are fine. “War of of Northern Agression” is unnecessarily provocative and implies no Southern culpability in the Civil War. Lincoln didn’t just up and decide to march into Dixie.
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“War of Northern Aggression?” Wow-people still call it that?
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In fact, the South shot first!
Yes! CJ Chase implies in Texas v. White that just as the federal government can allow new states to join the US, it can allow states to leave through a similar procedure i.e. a vote in the federal legislature.
Up front, I admit I’m overstating the case here to make a point.
- Right now, there’s a small but vibrant secessionist movement in Hawaii, led by descendants of the original Polynesian natives of the island. These are people who can say, with some justice, “White imperialists stole our land and deposed our monarchy without any justification. Since then, they’ve turned ourt land into a tourist trap, and everybody has gotten rich except us. Well, we’ve had enough. We want our island back, and we want out of the U.S.”
So far, they’re not a powerful force in Hawaiian politics, but ethnic Polynesians are the poorest Hawaiians, and demographically, they’re the fastest growing ethnic group. What if they BECOME a powerful secessionist movement.
2) There’s also a sizable nationalist, pro-indepoendence movement in Puerto Rico- not nearly enough to make up a majority, and not nearly enough to win any of the recent Puerto Rican elections, but large enough to be important.
Now, suppose that, one of these days, Puerto Rico were to vote to join the Union (they’ve invariably voted to stay a Commonwelath, so far, but humor me). Now imagine further that all the benefits Puerto Ricans expected to receive from statehood never materialize.
Hypothetically, if Hawaiians or Puerto Ricans tried to secede, how many mainlanders would be eager to use military force and to shed blood to keep them (especially since world opinion would likely be wholly with the secessionists)?
Not many, I’d wager.
Are you really thinking that 100% of either population would want to secede? :dubious: Of course not. Thus, in each case, there’d be a large & significant group of citizens who fight to stay in. The point is PR can leave any time it wants to- the people don’t. Only the “natives” (most of whom aren’t al that “native”) would want to leave in HA, and they are a small minority. The rest of the islands citizens (many of whom were born right there and are thus just as much natives as the dudes claim claim to be the 'real natives" based upon a rather small % of blood) don’t want to leave. In fact, not even all the so-called “natives” want to leave either. I think it’s something like 10% of the population would like independence?
The "military force’ required would be a few hundred marines, and it’d be bloodless or nearly so. But it’d never come to that anyway.
But in any case- either scenario is extremely unlikely. Nor would world opinion be with the secessionists- except so far as a good % of the world would like to see the USA get a black eye. No nation in the world can even come close to matching the USA militarily or economically.
Not unless they voted a referendum and got 2/3rds of the Senate to vote to allow it…which I doubt they could do. (note: I’m no lawyer…this is what I THINK they would need to do to legally leave the union). There is no way the South could have gotten the 2/3rds vote…and I’m not even sure if a valid statewide referendum would have gotten sufficient votes in most states prior to the Civil War to allow them to move forward (could be wrong about this…I have no idea just a guess that it was a small slave owning minority that were pushing to leave the union).
Lincoln was a genius though…he put it all on the South. They could have backed down and allowed in shipments to the fort…and things would have stayed peaceful. Or they could go to war (I suppose their third option would have been to sit tight, but I think THEY felt with Lincoln’s election that the tide was turning). They chose to go to war though and pretty much gave the North the moral high ground (as if they didn’t have it anyway, since the core reason for war was slavery…well, whether new states would be slave or free, or would even have a choice).
The funny thing is that Lincoln, when he was first elected, wanted simply to maintain the status quo. He and the Republicans merely wanted to leave the south dieing on the vine as far as slavery went by simply not allowing any new slave states. They knew that eventually slavery in the south would die out. But the south pretty much forced their hand by leaving the union and going to war, and this changed Lincoln’s whole plan. Its a shame he died when he did and that Andrew Johnson (one of our worst president…if not THE worst) took over a fucked it up so badly.
Why can’t a state secede if they want too? What use having a union if states can simply secede whenever and however they want too? Its not like states were brought into the union at gunpoint (even Hawaii wasn’t forced into the union). They volunteer to enter the union knowing full well what that means…and that once they are inside its very difficult bordering on impossible to leave. Its not like other states haven’t thought about it even before the Civil War btw…I believe several New England states nearly seceded during the war of 1812. Had they tried to actually leave I believe Madison would have sent troops there as well to keep them in the union.
-XT
First of all, you are correct that Texas v. White did not directly address state voting right, but it did give Constitutional backing to Congress’ belief that the Southern states had lost voting rights until readmitted into the Union by Congress. In fact, the XIth article of impeachment against Andrew Johnson dealt with this very issue in regards to the XIVth Amendment. Basically Johnson said the southern states had been readmitted but voted against it thus the XIVth Amendment did not pass. Congress said nope, the southern states were not readmitted and could not vote therefore the amendment had the necessary 3/4 of the states permitted to vote. Texas v White would uphold the idea that the states were in rebellion and thus never legally left the US, but still lost their rights within the Federalist system until the Feds restored them. The reconstructionist governmnets of the South would later ratify the XIVth Amendment making it unquestionably the law of the land.
False Analogy. The US is made up of the sovereign political entities known as states who subrogate some of their powers into a centeral government for the benefit of all. There is no USA without the states. At least three of these states (Texas, California, and Hawaii) were independent nations before joining the US.
Political subdivisions within the state (counties and cities) are formed by the state for varying levels of local control. These were created by the state and many states do have legislation describing how a section of a county or a city can seceed from their political unit.
As for your second point, if states knew that they could not leave the US when they joined, can you please explain how there was a serious issue with the Northeast threatening to seceed during the War of 1812 and that no founding father (including James Madison “the author of the Constitution” and sitting President) recognized the fact you bring up?
So was segrgation until Brown v. Board of Education. I don’t think anyone is questioning the current status of legality of secession (it’s not), but rather if the US would willingly let a state seceed on moral grounds [for example, to undo the annexation of the Kingdom of Hawaii (see Public Law 103-150)] or if Texas v. White can be overturned like so many landmark decisions have been before (e.g. Plessy v. Ferguson).
You forgot the Republic of Vermont.
First, I said in my own post that secessionists are a small minority in Hawaii and Puerto Rico at the moment. That won’t change any time soon. I merely ask what would happen if those movements became larger.
Will they grow? Who knows- but it’s not impossible. I merely bring up two (currently farfetched) examples that would test our latter-day resolve to preserve the Union.
I’m not sure I follow you. The Court held that the secession was invalid. If anything the case supports the opposite argument. Taken to its logical extreme, Texas v. White required the representatives and congressmen sent by the defeated confederate states to be permitted to take their seats. The Court held that the secessions were void. They had no legal effect, and hence could not have deprived the seceding states of their voting rights.
Indeed, the Court held that Texas was a state in 1868, two years before Texas ratified the 14th Amendment.
How do you suggest Texas v. White gave Constitutional backing to Congress’s belief?
The Bear Flag Republic? It is to laugh. :rolleyes: Texas & Hawaii, sure. Next- many of the states currently part of the Union were created by the Federal Government out of territory it owed. Sure- not the original 13 colonies, nor Texas or Hawaii, but AFAIK, the other 35 states were created. And that’s why in 1812 some weren’t sure whether the original 13 Colonies had a right to secede. The rights of those 13 States to secede was only settled by the Civil war and later court cases.
Not true. James Madison gave his views on secession; he said that under the Constitution he wrote, states did not have the right to secede from the United States.
Cite?
From Texas v. White
But in order to the exercise, by a State, of the right to sue in this court, there needs to be a State government, competent to represent the State in its relations with the National [74 U.S. 700, 727] government, so far as least as the institution and prosecution of a suit is concerned.
Emphesis added
And a little bit later:
There being then no government in Texas in constitutional relations with the Union, it became the duty of the United States to provide for the restoration of such a government. But the restoration of the government which existed before the rebellion, without a new election of officers, was obviously impossible; and before any such election could be properly held, it was necessary that the old constitution should receive such amendments as would conform its provisions to the new conditions created by emancipation, and afford adequate security to the people of the State.
So although Texas was always a state, a government in rebellion cannot represent a state thus they are not permitted a vote in the federal government. I admit it’s a twisted way to read the Constitution, but Chase did it so that Texas (and all of the other southern states) never seceeded but did lose their rights as states until governed by reconstructionist governments.
The result of your proposal is found within the proposal itself. If the nation did not want the state in question to secede, then it would prevent the secession. If the nation wasn’t prepared to force the state to remain part of the union, it would vote to allow the secession, hence legitimizing it.