I was doing some reading today and came across a (frustratingly vague) reference to this very scenario. From what I could gather, the governor got in a bit of tiff with the feds and decided screw it, we’re outta here…he apparently barricaded himself in his office for a month or two and announced North Dakota’s secession from the union.
So what’s the deal? Anyone know what he was so pissed off about? Even the state history on ND’s official website only makes reference to his being involved in “campaign law violations” and has no mention of seceding. And how did it all get resolved? Obviously North Dakota’s still around to house Titan missiles and have the Coen brothers make movies about it…
The secession proposal rates an entry in the Footnotes to History page (an “overview of ephemeral states,
micronations, secessionist states, and every other kind of country you never heard of in high school.”):
Actually, my curiosity is now at least mildly aroused. I wonder if anybody else has more info on this incident. Any North Dakotans out there? Does this mean y’all put “Fergit, hell!” bumper stickers on your cars up there?
The truth is North Dakota did not try to secede, our Governor did.
Governor William Langer was convicted of defrauding the Federal Government, and the state Supreme Court declared Lt. Gov Ole Olson the new Governor.
Governor Langer declared North Dakota independent, declared martial law, and barricaded himself in the Governor’s mansion, demanding a meeting with the Supreme Court.
He eventually relented and went to jail. He was released, appealed his conviction (which he eventually won), and got re-elected. He later served as a Senator.
So the truth is, North Dakota never tried to secede, our Governor just got a little crazy when he was convicted of a crime.
Interesting stuff, northdakotatroy. You might not have noticed that you are adding to an 11-year old thread, although new data is always welcome. And speaking of welcome, welcome to the SDMB.
I hope you’ll stick around for more than one post, and join us in the Pursuit Of Knowledge, otherwise known as Fighting Ignorance (It’s taking longer than we thought).
Waitaminute, are you telling me that the population of North Dakota is so starved for amusement that they elected a governor who tried to make the state secede, and when he finished with that, they elected him again? And we trust these people with nukes? Oh, god, we’re all going to die aren’t we.
Well, ya gotta understand that North Dakota is home to cattle, wind, land, wind, tumbleweeds, grass, rocks, wind, cattle, snow, heat, and wind. The people who live there have looked upon the grim, dead face of a nuclear winter and dubbed it January; the prospect of being blasted does not frighten them as much as the idea of watching Southerners trying to drive on ice amuses them.
I can’t apologize for someone else’s rudeness, but I can explain. For a long time, this board wasn’t indexed by search engines, and the board culture came to regard deliberate or inadvertent resurrection of long-dead threads as something of a faux pas. The thread got labeled a “zombie” (because someone brought it back from the dead) and we’d all make fun of the person who didn’t notice it was ancient.
Since the board began to be indexed by Google/Yahoo!/whatever, we’ve had a lot of zombie resurrections happen by simple ignorance that a) the thread even was 11 years old or whatever and b) the board culture says don’t drag these up for no good reason.
So I can’t apologize for silenus, but I can at least explain some part of his rudeness…
