Originally Posted by
ZILCHMONGER
Supreme Count has been wrong more than one. This was one of those times.
Now, kindly go fuck yourself. I know you can.
When the Confederate states seceded in 1861 and were then defeated in the Civil War, the argument is that they demonstrated that you can't secede from the Union. The 1869 Supreme Court case Texas v. White (Texas! Always Texas.) determined that the secession was never actually a real thing in the eyes of the federal government. The Confederate States of America wasn't an independent country any more than your house is its own country simply because you say it is. "The Constitution, in all its provisions," the justices wrote, "looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States."
But this argument has a flaw: What if the Confederacy had won the Civil War?
Had the federal government lost the war, some accommodation would necessarily have been made to allow the states their independence. Sure, the government could have kept saying that Alabama and Georgia and Texas were still part of the U.S. in the way that nations insist on rights to disputed territories, but those states would have ignored that claim. There's no right to secede and no process to secede -- but if you secede and then beat the United States militarily, the dynamic changes.
It is my considered opinion that while there was "no right to secede" there was no formal prohibition either.
Bookmarks