The Right of Secession

The Right of Secession

Michael T. Griffith

2006

@All Rights Reserved

What about the right of secession? Did the South have the right to secede? Thomas Jefferson clearly indicated he would allow a state to leave the Union, even if he didn't agree with its reasons for wanting to separate. President John Tyler likewise believed a state had the right to leave the Union. So did President John Quincy Adams. The Northern Federalists' Hartford Convention declared in 1814 that a state had the right to secede in cases of "absolute necessity" (Alan Brinkley, Richard Current, Frank Freidel, and T. Harry Williams, American History: A Survey, Eighth Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991, p. 230). None other than President Ulysses S. Grant (1868-1876), who was also the commanding general of all Union armies at the end of the war, said he believed the founding fathers probably would have allowed the South to go in peace. Grant stated,

If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers. (The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Konecky & Konecky, 1992, reprint, p. 131)

Grant also said he believed that if any of the original thirteen states had attempted to secede from the Union under the Articles of Confederation, their right to do so would not have been challenged. Said Grant,

If there had been a desire on the part of any single State to withdraw from the compact at any time while the number of States was limited to the original thirteen, I do not suppose there would have been any to contest the right, no matter how much the determination might have been regretted. (The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, p. 130)

The Declaration of Independence says people have the right to sever existing political ties with other peoples and to take their place among the family of nations.  It also says governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed" and that people have the right to form a new government when they believe they need to do so, "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."  It may be said with complete accuracy that the Declaration of Independence is a secession document.  Our founding fathers signed the declaration in order to proclaim their independence from England and to declare that they had a natural, God-given right to break their political ties with England and to establish their own government.  If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, then the Confederacy was certainly a legitimate government, since Southern citizens overwhelmingly supported secession and the formation of their states into the Confederate States of America.

This is just a small part of the evidence that shows the South had valid grounds for believing it had the right to peacefully leave the Union. In offering this evidence, I don’t mean to imply that I support secession in our day. My intent is merely to show that the South had just cause for believing secession was legal. A thorough treatment of the legality of secession can be found in attorney John Remington Graham’s book A Constitutional History of Secession (Louisiana: Pelican Publishing, 2002).