- cross-posted to:
- shermanposting@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- shermanposting@lemmy.world
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Secession - a political separation.
Succession- the inheritance of property of titles in a specific order
Both come from the Latin root “cedere” which means “to go” but with different modifiers.
Ooooh, I was so confused.
I spelled it correctly - the meme maker didn’t. I am innocent, your honor!
No mercy. You are hereby sentenced to 12 years of living in Mississippi!
Guilty as hell! Throw him into the deepest dungeon!
I’m going to allow this
Explanation: During Sherman’s March To The Sea during the US Civil War, Union troops gathered in the statehouse of Georgia once the state capital was taken and held a mock vote repealing Georgia’s ‘secession’ from the Union.
The “secession was illegal” argument is hard to defend in a country that had illegally seceded from Britain less than a hundred years earlier. There were certainly reasons to oppose that particular succession but “illegal secession is, as a matter of principle, wrong” seems like a silly one to me.
A key thing to always keep in mind is that legality isn’t morality. Sometimes the right thing to do is also illegal. Now, succeeding because you want to own other humans definitely isn’t moral, but the act itself could be sometimes.
Morality is never the law. Sometimes people try to force their morality into law, but that can’t work for everyone because everyone has different moral guidelines.
Legality always boils down to who has the ability to enforce their dictates through violence. The Slavers rebellion didn’t have the power to make their bullshit legal. Whereas the colonies did have the force to make their legal.
Ultimately the strong rule over the weak but even then it was considered in bad taste to do so without layering some abstract moral principles on top first.
I actually do believe in moral principles despite being facetious, and I think opposition to slavery is a very powerful principle. I’m a lot less impressed by preserving the union. Frankly I don’t understand how it motivated ordinary northerners to fight. If they weren’t abolitionists then why did they care whether or not the southern states seceded?
The preservation of the Union was powerful for several reasons:
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This was at the height of 19th century nationalism - the sense of the ‘nation’ as a singular ‘tribe’ was an emotive call. To hear that others would turn against your ‘tribe’ and take what it, and your family, had spent generations building, was a very deep and real offense. There is a sense that this ‘national project’ falling apart entirely would render meaningless generations of work and idealism and sacrifice.
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There was a serious suspicion that allowing secession would mean the complete dissolution of the Union. I don’t remember if it was Grant or Sherman who said it, but one of those two generals noted that allowing secession would ultimately reap the reward of total national chaos, a la Mexico (which had been having civil wars and insurrections like they were going out of style).
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The fact that secessions was quite explicitly due to the fact that a democratic election didn’t go the Southerners’ way was deeply offensive to democratic and republican norms of Americans at the time; and the fact that many secession votes were held under armed guard by secessionist militias was, furthermore, an additional offense that gave a very real sense that the plantation class was dragooning the South into a war for the plantation class’s interests. Not coincidentally, this was largely the view of Southern Appalachia, where slaver power was weak, and Unionist guerillas were widespread.
Also, I’d like to note that a great many volunteers for the Union were ardent abolitionists even at the start, and that abolitionist sentiment actually became significantly stronger as the war wore on. There’s a really great letter from an enlisted Maine boy at the start of the war I like to bring up:
What a splendid cause is this on which we are engaged. I think it is the grandest that ever enlisted the sympathies of man. Nobler even than the Revolution for they fought for their freedom while we fight for that of another race. I firmly believe that the doom of slavery is fixed and if it is not wholly rooted out by the present war, measures will be taken to wipe it out forever. If such an event can be consummated by any sacrifice of mine, it shall be cheerfully made. I could die for this as readily as I could lie down to rest at the close of a day of wearisome toil. Men have called this age dull. They can do so no more … War is bad, heaven knows, but slavery is far worse. If the doom of slavery is not sealed by the war, I shall curse the day I entered the Army, or lifted a finger in the preservation of the Union. Of the old Union we have had enough and more than enough.
It’s strange to compare the sentiment you describe in section 1 to what I feel in the present day. I’m interested in the well-being of the USA, because I live here, because I have a lot to be grateful for, and because I believe in (what I consider) the American ideal. But I’m also acutely aware that there are many people very different from me in this country. People who don’t want the same things as I do; people who wouldn’t like me; people whom I wouldn’t like. If they wanted to secede, I wouldn’t be shocked. I might even support them in the unlikely circumstances where their plan was workable in practice. Am I just unusually receptive to that sort of thing (I lean libertarian so I tend to sympathize with people who insist on doing things their own way) or am I part of a broader post-nationalist movement?
(Off topic but funny, IMO: When someone joked about seceding after an election didn’t turn out the way that most people in our region wanted, a friend of mine replied that rather than seceding from the union, we should secede the union from us. We would stay the USA and former rest of the country would have to find some new identity.)
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The thing is that Lost Causers still try to argue the ‘legality’ of secession; that, by law, the Union should have just let them go.
I’m not familiar with the specifics of their argument (frankly I don’t really want to know) but the Constitution conspicuously lacks an exit clause.
Edit: If I had to argue for legal secession, I would say that people have a natural right to self-government, and therefore to secession if they feel that their interests are not represented adequately in the national government. A natural right cannot be abrogated even willingly and any agreement that purports to do so is invalid, in the same way that a person’s right to self-determination prevents him from rightfully being made a slave in any circumstances, even if he were to willingly sign a contract to that effect. But that’s probably not what they’re going for…
