The NEW case for Secession ( POLISCI 351C Thesis)

The declaration of independence gives you the right, or rather duty, (IMO the 10th amendment makes the declaration part of the constitution) to secede from Tyranny. You are not living in a tyrannical country. And besides that, the constitution doesn't give any state the right to secede. AND It clearly gives the right to quell rebellions to the federal government.
So you can try and leave, but remember, the federal government clearly has the constitutional duty of stopping you.

Why is there no protocol for states to withdraw from the union?
Because it isn't allowed.

reply to post by schuyler


Thak you for your critique

Originally posted by Ghost375
The declaration of independence gives you the right, or rather duty, (IMO the 10th amendment makes the declaration part of the constitution) to secede from Tyranny. You are not living in a tyrannical country. And besides that, the constitution doesn't give any state the right to secede. AND It clearly gives the right to quell rebellions to the federal government.
So you can try and leave, but remember, the federal government clearly has the constitutional duty of stopping you.

Why is there no protocol for states to withdraw from the union?
Because it isn't allowed.

Ahhhh no... There is no protocol because it is not within the jurisdiction of the Constitution and federal government! The constitution is a restriction on the federal government not the states or the people. It grants no rights for it has not authority to do such. The Bill of Rights is a warning to the federal government not to mess with the rights of the people. The tenth Amendment clearly denotes that any rights NOT LISTED are left up to the states or the people. Rights existed before the constitution and the Bill of Rights was an illustration of some of the more important ones that government needs to keep thier hands off!

The federal government can do nothing but what it is specifically allowed to do by the constitution. Secession is not addressed in the constitution therefore it is left up to the states as per the 10th amendment as one of those rights not listed. The Federal government has no authority per the constitution to stop any state from succeeding. Secession is not rebellion.

Further a study of history will show that if secession of the states were prohibited by the constitution once they joined the union none of the states would have signed on to the compact.

reply to post by bo12au


Regardless of your position, this is what should be expected from any man or woman worth their salt. The argument is academic, sources are well cited and the grammar and format are as perfect as you are going to get on a forum. Thanks for the post, I'm still digesting its contents. A+ for the effort and organization.

Everyone calling the author a crackpot, at least give him due respect and put some effort into your argument. He's gone to the trouble of doing so, you doing the same should be expected.

Proud to be a native Virginian.

reply to post by ateuprto


Thank you. The posters who are flaming me clearly did not read the entire thing, three minutes after I posted it they were already letting me have it. I was expecting to have an enlightened debate on the subject, as you can see that was not the case. This was an assignment from last term, I thought I would share it with the community. And I received a 98 on this paper as well. Proud to say I hail from Alabama..and when I get out of graduate school that is where I am going back to.

US folk have bee had and taken for a very long ride!!!

reply to post by Janky Red

I think they wanted to keep slaves because they felt entitled, they felt the slaves were inferior and because slaves engage in free labor which creates a higher profit margin for the owners because it reduces overhead.

Slavery was an integral part of the agricultural economy at the time, and remained a large part of the economy even after it was abolished (read: "share-cropping"). The racism card can be played - but, in all honesty, Africa hasn't changed in the past millennium, and you can still buy slaves from African nationals looking to buy a quick buck. Again - hasn't changed. Further, slavery was nothing unique to blacks. Whites were much more readily available in the forms of orphans, migrants, and others taken from the streets of Europe and shipped to America to work in factories in the -North-.

The only thing that changed was the idea that a person could not be considered personal property and bought/sold as such. The reason black slavery gets looked at the most in our history is because blacks were considered to be some of the most valuable. Their skin is less susceptible to burn and tend to have a more robust physical build. Blacks were actually bought and sold as valuable property. There was, however, no shortage of orphans, run-aways, etc.

Slavery is only more prominent today. We call it "human trafficking" - mail-order brides, prostitutes in a lot of brothels (it's not all that uncommon, particularly in foreign countries, for the girls and women in these institutions to be, literally, slaves to the owner of the brothel) - pretty much any situation where you have someone who is being sold and/or cannot voluntarily leave their current residence and 'career.'

In either case - the point is, the federal government was telling these states that they had to give up a massive part of their economy. Which was, really, the straw that broke the camel's back - the South and North had, for quite some time, been having some massive conflicts at the federal level regarding the differences in their economic base. The National government was making many laws based on the manufacturing industry present in the populous regions that conflicted with the agricultural economic base in the South.

It's not something that can be reduced to greed - different plantation owners would compete against each other for business, and for the best slaves/servants. Likewise, their treatment differed from owner to owner. To some people - they were akin to tenants. To others, they were property. Some people treat tenants like dirt, and some people like property like dirt. History likes to highlight the extremes of any scenario.