Secession?

 Rally for Texas Secession on March 2 (Texas Independence Day), 2011 

in Austin

 Since the election last week, there are now petitions for secession flying around the internet with petitions and letters and new movements, etc.  To no one's surprise, Texas leads the effort with the most successful petition drives.

Texas is a special case, though I think some states could make a stronger argument for secession.  Texas was an independent republic for about 9 years from 1836 to 1845, recognized only by the French who had imperial designs on Mexico.  The only other state with a similar history is Vermont.  On the other hand, Hawaii was an independent kingdom, centuries old, recognized as a sovereign state by nearly everyone, and came into the United States through subversion and military conquest.  It seems to me that they have the strongest case for secession.

Texas seceded once before in 1861 to join the Confederacy.  The legislature and a special convention to consider secession put the issue up for a popular vote.  Secession won by a landslide.  The only other Confederate state where secession won with a higher margin was South Carolina.  Sam Houston refused to swear allegiance to the Confederacy, and was deposed as governor.  And the rest is history.  There were large parts of the state population that opposed secession and resisted Confederate rule, especially among the German towns of the Texas Hill Country, and in North Texas (where my Unionist ancestors lived in Waxahachie and Midlothian).

Since the early 1990s, there has been a small vociferous independence movement in Texas.  They are now bitterly divided into factions with many of their founders in prison for minor acts of terrorism.  They have almost no popular support in the state, at least until last Tuesday.

I don't think secession will happen.  Texas is not the same place it was in 1861, and has far more to lose by leaving the USA than by staying.  There are enormous military facilities in Texas: Fort Hood, Fort Sam Houston, Fort Bliss, Lackland Air Force Base, Corpus Christi NAB, etc.  They certainly wouldn't fold like Fort Sumter after a night of bombardment by artillery.  And if they close down and leave, that would devastate the state's economy.
A big part of the Texas economy depends on defense contracting.  Just ask Ross Perot who got rich off government contracts, or big defense contractors like Texas Instruments.

Also, if Texas voted to secede, it would split apart.  The very Latino southernmost part of the state (San Antonio south to the Rio Grande) voted overwhelmingly for Obama and has always been reliably Democratic.  They would not go along with any secession, and certainly would not return the territory to Mexico.  Most of urban Texas would not go along with secession.  A new Republic of Texas would not have the same borders as the State of Texas.

There's no guarantee that the petroleum industry would stay in Texas.  Multinational corporations have no national loyalties and they don't like political instability.  They could and probably would leave Houston rather than take their chances with an independent, and divided, Texas.

If we go back and read the original 1861 Declaration of the Causes of Secession in Texas, we can find plainly stated what drives all of this nationalism:

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

The aim of Texas Secessionists was and is to found their own little Orange Free State for a separate white tribe.

The left frequently is accused of sedition and treason, but in practice, only the right can bring it off.  The far-right monarchist generals who commanded the French military decided in 1940 that they would rather live under German occupation than under the French Third Republic.

***

For awhile now, some people in this very polarized country have talked darkly about a second civil war.  I've heard this from both the right and the left.  The right sees it as an opportunity for independence and revenge against enemies real and imagined.  The left sees this as a kind of purgative apocalypse in which the scales fall from the eyes of the oppressed and they see the true nature of their condition for the first time, a very fond wish.
In both cases, I would say, "Be careful what you wish for."

The first Civil War was bad enough.  Anyone remember that the total number of deaths from that war was around 625,000?  The Civil War remains the deadliest conflict in American history.

What would a second Civil War be like?  I think it would be nothing like the first one.  The USA would split, not into 2, but into 4 or more warring factions.  The splits would not be along state lines as in the first.  States themselves would split up.  This second Civil War I think would look a lot like the civil war in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.  Instead of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, we'd have a series of civilian massacres and counter-massacres.  It would be war by terrorism.   Instead of Billy Yank versus Johnny Reb, there would be no clear armies of blue and grey.  There would be a host of separate paramilitaries with their own political ambitions. This second Civil War would end with no clear winner, but with foreign intervention and a peace settlement imposed by foreign powers that would keep the USA permanently divided.

Detail of the Lincoln Memorial showing part of the list of states 

EXTRA:

The sources of most of these secession petitions remain mysterious, but one of them has been identified, the former owner of a "topless carwash", Derrick Belcher of Chunchula, Alabama.

"Derrick B.,” the man who started a petition seeking Alabama’s withdrawal from the U.S., is a truck driving, knife collecting former owner of a topless car wash who describes himself as “an absolute Libertarian.”
Derrick Belcher, 45, of Chunchula, said in an interview late Monday that secession may be the only way to save working Americans from crushing debt, burdensome federal regulations and rising taxes.
“I don’t want to live in Russia. I don’t believe in socialism,” said Belcher, an operations manager for a Mobile trucking company. “America is supposed to be free."

Remarkable that after 20 years, so few people seem to have gotten the news that the Cold War is over, and that the Soviet Union is no more, that Russia is now an oligarchic state where capitalism in its rawest form runs wild, where a newly powerful Orthodox Church effectively uses the power of the state to enforce church teachings and advance its interests.

Also remarkable is the idea that patriotism ends at the business ledger.  God Bless America, until the profits turn to losses.

Hat tip to JoeMyGod.