Quotes About Secession

Lincoln replied:There is a difference between secession against the Constitution and in favor of the Constitution.

A South Carolina native, Miles was a lawyer, a mayor of Charleston, and a congressman. He was one of his state's fire-eaters, a term applied to men who openly advocated secession rather than finding accomodation with the Union in the summer and fall of 1860.

Flag committee chairman Miles did not agree with that sentiment. He opposed adoption of this design and wrote:There is no propriety in retaining the ensign of a government which, in the opinion of the States composing this Confederacy, had become so oppressive and injurious to their interests as to require their separation from it.It is idle to talk of 'keeping' the flag of the United States when we have voluntarily seceded from them.

Understand this: you no longer represent your homeworlds solely. Coruscant, Alderaan, Chandrila ... All these and tens of thousands of worlds far removed from the Core are cells of the Empire, and what affects one, affects us all. No disturbances will be tolerated. Interplanetary squabbles or threats of secession will meet with harsh reprisals. I have not led us through three years of galactic warfare to allow a resurgence of the old ways. The Republic is extinct.

Davis and Stephens hewed to the same line: Southern states seceded not to protect slavery but to vindicate state sovereignty.

The principal form of property in the South was, of course, slave property. Southern states had seceded because they feared that the Lincoln administration would interfere with the institution—despite the president's repeated assertions, well into the war, that he had neither the intention nor the power to do so.

The most successful of the nations of the world are those who do not fall into the lure of secession but who, through thick and thin, forge unity in diversity.

The war was fought to prevent the secession, not to free the slaves. People who took up arms in the South did so because they were being invaded.

Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'Tis time to part.

Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! This cyclonic issue of secession was to be settled a third of a century later, not by the mighty Webster, the gifted Clay, or the famous Calhoun, but by an awkward, penniless, obscure driver of oxen

Southern newspapers hungry for fodder to roil the secession debate fed their subscribers the most inciteful material they could unearth in the Northern press. Northern journals scoured Southern papers for similarly provocative reports designed to confirm hotheaded Southern disloyalty.

Will you marry me now? Or will you at least think about it? I'll march soon enough, now that Virginia has seceded, I know that. We'll be going off to whip those boys in blue. Let me carry the memory of your love into battle with me!

The Civil War had been about something other than states' rights after all. It began as a war to force or prevent the breakup of the United States.

The same cultural values which caused secession were also partly responsible for its eventual defeat.

It is… easy to see why Authority frowns on Friendship. Every real Friendship is a sort of secession, even a rebellion… Hence if our masters… ever succeed in producing a world where all are Companions and none are Friends, they will have removed certain dangers, and will also have taken from us what is almost our strongest safeguard against complete servitude.   C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Down our way we're always had a theory that the Civil War was not brought on by Secession of Slavery or the State's Rights issue. These matters contributed to the quarrel, but there is a deeper reason. It was bought on by some Yankee coming down south and putting nutmeg in a julep. So our folks up and left the Union flat.

That depends on how Washington reacts. Every state joined the Union voluntarily; they should have the right to leave it again if the Federal government no longer represents their best interests.

majority of the men who held political office and led the movement for a separate southern nation were planters or substantial slaveholders,

Everett's quick conversion to the war cause after Sumter was just as typical of the North as had been his confusion during the secession winter.

Once one concedes that a single world government is not necessary, then where does one logically stop at the permissibility of separate states? If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as in a state of impermissible 'anarchy', why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighbourhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?

If Canada and the United States can be separate nations without being denounced as being in a state of impermissible 'anarchy,' why may not the South secede from the United States? New York State from the Union? New York City from the state? Why may not Manhattan secede? Each neighborhood? Each block? Each house? Each person?

We tend to forget that an estimated three hundred thousand white southerners, many from the border states, fought for the Union side, and that four border states never seceded.