Talk:Secession in the United States

State of Jefferson

According to the article State of Jefferson, " The independence movement (rather than statehood) is instead known as Cascadia". The State of Jefferson is listed in this article under "51st state proposals and movements", but it is also listed under "Regional Secession", where it states "The State of Jefferson is a movement in and around the area of Yreka, CA to secede from the union and become an independent state". As there is no evidence to support this I propose this be removed from the article. 72.67.179.128 (talk) 23:46, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

2012 efforts?

While groups like the Republic of Texas, League of the South, Confederate Society of America and others have been working toward secession (either individual states or regionally) for many years there is a new wave of interest nationally. Should we include a section on the 2012 Secession Petitions that have been initiated by individuals in 20 states so far? Here's an article about it. Coinmanj (talk) 00:27, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I've seen four or five states so it's relevant and starting a 21st century section might be relevant. (Here's a Reason article.)

This has happened after the last 4 elections, first from Blues, now from Reds. And I know I have some WP:RS on all of them. Perhaps a section on 21st century post election secessions. By the way, secession from the union SHOULD be separated from mere secessions from a state but within the union. I'll be bold and do it soon and see what happens. CarolMooreDC 02:28, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

• I noticed know from the first and possibly second secession coming from this source and possibly stir up quite a controversy party.--GoShow (............................) 15:46, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I didn't read carefully enough to understand that this was on the white house web page, so it's more a one or two sentence addition in the chrono area, not a section at this point. Whoever gets there first. CarolMooreDC 18:37, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

There's something like 20-30 states in on it. It is not simply 4 or 5. It's about or beyond half of the entire country, and it is not restricted to states of south, north, east, or west. And, many of them achieved the necessary signatures that Obama is supposed to personally respond to the petitions. Do not downplay the fact our country is heading towards a second civil war by saying it's only 4 or 5 states when it's many more. It's about getting the federal government to back the fryk off of state rights and citizen rights, because they are breaking our country's laws left and right, ignoring the constitution, and treating states far from Washington D.C. like crud. They are also trying to make us part of the E.U. without our consent, they are guilty of high treason, handing us on a platter to foreign conquerors. (Anyone who doesn't "get" that you can conquer without combat needs to look up the United States' own history of conquering... Via BUYING territories.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.26.205.188 (talk) 19:33, 3 December 2012 (UTC)

Regionalisms in the United States (i.e. Appalachia in the South and "Deseret" by Mormons in Utah) are strong subcultures much alike Cascadia and New England. Some subcultures feel they are "nations" or provincial entities inside a nation (the USA). Both regions and states would have few individuals or groups for secession or autonomy of some kind, that's the way it is. In a federal democracy, each voluntary state decides whether or not to remain members of an unitary confederation, not forcibly banded into one. 71.102.1.95 (talk) 11:53, 23 March 2014 (UTC)

Original Research tagged section

I have removed the original research from the tagged section since little progress to address it have been made since it was tagged last month. Included in the material I deleted were large quotes from the Federalist Papers. These documents are primary sources -- the problem is that the efforts to interpret what the quoted sections really meant were original research unsupported by reliable secondary sources. While some of the interpretation may be uncontroversial and accurate (for example the discussion of Hamilton), the section on Madison drew conclusions not apparent from the material being cited. The end result of the quotes from Madison was that the wikipedia editor concluded:

Hence, by 1800, Madison held that secession was solely at the discretion of a state's People, who were in fact the state's ruling sovereigns; and that there was "no higher tribunal"—including the Supreme Court—than a state's People for determining issues of nullifying federal laws, or for seceding from the federal Union entirely.

This interpretation obviously cannot stand unless it can be attributed to a reliable secondary source. The basic idea of Madison describing the Constitution as part Federal and part National is not controversial and could be supported by relliable sources, but these source reach a much different conclusion than the wiki editor did. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 19:02, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

The IP editor who had added most of the original research earlier has returned and added more of the same. There was no edit summary and no effort to address either the previous tagging of the material or my comments above. I have reverted the edits and issued a warning to the user. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 13:28, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Dates of secession

The article states 10 states seceded on the same day, June 8, 1861, nearly 2 months after the American Civil War began on April 12, 1861.

The [article] on the Confederate States of America gives 10 different dates on which these 10 states seceded, none of which were June 8. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.174.0.229 (talk) 04:21, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal: Remove section "Secession from a State"

Proposal: I propose that the section "Secession from a State" be removed, as it deals not with secession but with separation. Secession has a specific legal meaning: not every division of a political territory is a secession. The counties that made up, e.g., Maine, Kentucky, and West Virginia, were creatures of their mother States, respectively, and had never existed as sovereignties prior to their separation from the mother States. They had never acceded to their mother States and therefore could not secede from them. They merely separated from them, with their consent (disputed in the case of Virginia & West Virginia, but settled de facto by the U. S. army, and recognized de jure by the U. S. Supreme Court). I have not boldly deleted the section because I would not oppose having it moved to a more appropriate article: maybe a new article called "Division of States in the United States". My only concern here is the correct use of the term "secession", which does not apply to the cases listed in this section. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 17:10, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

I agree with your analysis of the difference between secession and separation. I've got your back on this issue if you want to delete it and create an article stub on state separations. A less controversial way might be to change the section title and just explain the difference. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 01:16, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

I have created "Partition of States in the United States" out of the "secession from a state" section from this article, and removed that section from this article, leaving an explanatory few sentences. There is still a lot of sloppy reference to "secession" by counties, cities, etc. in this article, which should be eliminated by somebody with more time.

I edited the "Partition" article to remove careless use of the terms "secede" and "secession", but it still needs a good bit of work. In particular, I'm not sure that the creation of Tennessee counts as a partition, since that country was apparently first ceded by North Carolina to the United States as a territory, and did not proceed directly from being part of a State to separate statehood as Kentucky and Maine did. Anyway, somebody please review the new article and remove the "new article" tag if it passes muster (as it should, since it used to be part of this article). J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 22:00, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Just wanted to note here that I have redirected the Partition of States in the United States article created Jdcrutch in May 2015 to List of U.S. state partition proposals, which was already extant at the time of the above conversation and article's creation and is actively being edited and expanded. Drdpw (talk) 15:55, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

I have reverted Drdpw's redirection of Partition of States in the United States. That article is about the history of partition of States: it's not a list of proposals for partition.

As I was typing the above, Drdpw started an edit-war, undoing my reversion. I have asked her or him to quit it and put back my reversion. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 16:21, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

I’ve undone my redirect and have begun a merge discusssion. I’ve started the discussion on the article’s talk page. If anyone wishes to join in the conversation about said merge, I invite you to do so there. Thanks. Drdpw (talk) 18:23, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks to Drdpw for taking the appropriate action. I'm against the proposed merger, for reasons I give on that article's talk page. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 19:46, 22 April 2016 (UTC)

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I checked both citations, and, for the second, removed the dead link (which was still active, leading to a "Not found" page), leaving the archive link. This is the first time I've done this, so feel free to make sure I did it right. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 00:30, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

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I have checked the archive links and found that they work. J. D. Crutchfield | Talk 00:38, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Edits I just reverted

We can't state that someone inferred something, that's clearly original research. But if it helps, here's some stuff he did say:

"Professor Akhil Reed A mar has written extensively on sovereignty and secession. See Akhil Reed Amar, “'[Tie Consent of the Governed: Constitutional Amendment Outside Article V,” 94 Coluni. L Rev. (1994) 457, 507 (rejecting state’s unilateral right to secede, and finding Supremacy Clause ’’logically inconsistent with the sovereignty of the people of each slate”); Akhil Reed Amar, ‘‘Some New World Lessons for the Old World,” 58 U. Chi. L Rev. (1991) 483. 502 (“Only a national majority, not a majority of a single state or region, can lawfully dissolve the American Union”); and Akhil Reed Amar, “Of Sovereignty and Federalism,” 96 Yale L.J. (1987) 1425. 1462 (arguing that ratification of the Constitution "prospectively abolished (the pre-existing sovereign right of any non-ratifying stale to secede from its sister states] for each state People who joined the Union, thereby melting themselves into the larger common sovereignly of the People of America”)."[1]

I also think that using Madison as a primary sources is against policy. We need a secondary source for that. Doug Weller talk 12:36, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

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Edits by Audeamus42

The editor is trying to argue that Virginia somehow made its ratification of the Constitution conditional upon a right to secede. His/her source is a book review of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution" written on the MISES INSTITUTE website ([2]. This fails as a reliable sourceon two counts -- the Mises Institute is noted for pressing net-confederate views and the book itself fails to meet any scholarly standards. User Audeamus42 is also edit warring at Origins of the American Civil War using similar "arguments". He/she needs to make arguments supporting his/her case and refrain from further changes to the article until there is a consensus to do so. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:06, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Here's an academic categorially refuting Gutzman.[3]pp 118-119

Pauline Maier seems to provide the context Gutzman doesn't.[4] p.306 She seems selectively quoted at Virginia Ratifying Convention - I'm not at home so can't use my OCR and even on my laptop editing is a bit tricky. Doug Weller talk 15:19, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

List of seceding states' dates put into a table

I think that the listing of the dates that each state seceded should be put into table form instead of the list form it's in now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BenJenkins (talk • contribs) 04:01, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

Seattle

I have removed an entry to this article discussing the so-called "Capital Hill Autonomous Zone" in Seattle. The sources generally do not discuss this phenomenon as "secession from the United States" and to include it here (1) would not be supported by the sources and (2) would be a form of forbidden original research/synthesis. Moreover, even to the extent it is discussed in sources as "succession" (which I have not seen), it would be undue weight.

I'll note that some of the sources cited in the most recent edit are also not RS (Heavy.com is a low-quality aggregator; City Journal is a magazine published by a rather partisan think tank).

Per WP:ONUS, this challenged material must not be re-added absent a consensus. I am bringing the matter here for discussion. Neutrality^talk 02:49, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I support removal. In the three days since Neutrality opened this section, events have clarified that Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, now renamed Capitol Hill Organized Protest, is not and never was secessionist.

• On June 13, KOMO-TV reported protester Maurice Cola saying that what's happening on Capitol Hill was never about seceding from the United States.
• On June 15, KUOW-FM's Casey Martin reported: "They are not trying to secede from America or anything like that."
• On June 16, in reporting the new agreement between protesters and the City of Seattle to tighten the occupation area's footprint, The Stranger relayed protester Cove's hope that working openly with the city will squash the false notion that the protesters are part of a separatist movement, which fed into the right-wing ideology that protesters wanted to secede from the union. "For right-wing optics," said Cove, "it's going to be really hard to call us a separatist movement when we're right here working hand-in-hand with our city."

NedFausa (talk) 22:51, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi, while it change overtime by the GF protesters, that that proclaim Capitol Hill 'autonomous zone' is not well by its clearly not intended to 'secede' in a bigger political ambitious sense, like really unofficial secession from the US federal government, for now or never, duh. But just secede from the United States' Police system for their two important issues (systemic racism and police brutality, which wasn't resolving at all since 2014) that is still unfortunately unresolved. However, as the page still (while now is optionally called it as a occupational protest too, as the user above me pointed out, as based on recent reports) called as the original name for this moment, so lets wait out for a weeks for more sources coming out, that protesters as (may be will ruined their survival goal) completely start calling it as 'CHOP'. Chad The Goatman (talk) 01:26, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

New poll

New poll from BrightLineWatch which shows 29% support for dissolving the US into smaller entities. May be relevant for this article. feminist (talk) 04:51, 20 February 2021 (UTC)

Reference to Kansas entering the union and DC

This sentence is strangely out of place here. Unless it can be explained, it should be removed: “ Within days, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state, an issue at the time similar to the 20th and 21st-century debate over statehood for the District of Columbia.”

Nothing in the paragraph enlightens as to what this similarity might be. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sychonic (talk • contribs) 23:36, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Split?

I think this article needs to be split up. Right now, I see it covering three related but distinct topics: secession from the United States as a whole (including various independence movements such as Hawaiian independence movement), partition of states, and urban secession. Either the article should be re-organized to be more thematic, or (my preference) spin-offs created to cover the latter two. Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 23:01, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

@Presidentman: I supposed that could be a good idea, this article could be turned into a disambiguation for 3 seperate articles, State secession from the United States, Partition of US states and Urban Secession in the United States. I will need an action plan, however, before I can cast my support. Great Mercian (talk) 12:49, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

No. The article is about secession in the united states. Theres a lot of ground to cover, and those 3 themes are irrevocably intertwined. If the article is to long, it can be condensed through the normal editing process. 69.136.233.49 (talk) 12:03, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

No. I'd still want an article covering the topic as a whole tbh, but maybe condense this article if needed, and transfer more detailed content to dedicated articles as you've mentioned? - Asdfjrjjj (talk) 19:32, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I think that could be a good strategy. Presidentman talk · contribs (Talkback) 20:12, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Republic of New Afrika

Added Republic of New Afrika to the list of regional secession movements vap (talk) 00:18, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Newsweek and secession

WP:RSNP says: "Unlike articles before 2013, Newsweek articles since 2013 are not generally reliable. From 2013 to 2018, Newsweek was owned and operated by IBT Media, the parent company of International Business Times. IBT Media introduced a number of bad practices to the once reputable magazine and mainly focused on clickbait headlines over quality journalism. Its current relationship with IBT Media is unclear, and Newsweek's quality has not returned to its status prior to the 2013 purchase. Many editors have noted that there are several exceptions to this standard, so consensus is to evaluate Newsweek content on a case-by-case basis. In addition, as of April 2024, Newsweek has disclosed that they make use of AI assistance to write articles. See also: Newsweek (pre-2013)."

I think we need clearly reliable sources to bolster this. Doug Weller talk 08:29, 12 July 2024 (UTC)