The President Who Became a Secessionist

Can you imagine a former President arguing for splitting up the country?  Can you imagine George W. Bush advocating for restoring the Republic of Texas or Joe Biden advocating for a Middle Atlantic federation including New York, New Jersey, his native state of Pennsylvania and his home state of Delaware?  Could you imagine anything like that happening?

It already has.

John Tyler, the tenth President of the United States, of Virginia, was a classic Southern politician of the antebellum period in American history.  He supported territorial expansion of the country and was a strict constructionist who championed state sovereignty over local issues such as road and canal construction (and thus opposed Henry Clay's "internal improvements" program).  He had an impressive record with foreign affairs, having settled a border dispute between Maine and Canada with the British, expanded the Navy, and expanded trade with other countries.

Tyler's record on slavery was, shall we say, complicated.  Although he had considered slavery to be an evil and called it a dark cloud that he hoped would eventually dissipate, Tyler himself never freed any of his slaves. He was known to treat slaves humanely and abstain from physical violence against them, but that's as may be; calling a slaveowner humane is like saying that astronauts believe that the earth is flat.  Tyler considered slavery to be an issue left to the states - states' rights - and so he believed that the federal government could not abolish it, a theory that even Abraham Lincoln subscribed to upon his election to the Presidency in 1860.    

The slave states of the lower South, however, threatened to secede if Lincoln was elected President.  While Lincoln had said he would not try to do away with slavery where it already existed - because he lacked the ability or authority to do so - he did support containing slavery to where it already existed and was specifically against extending it into the Western territories.  With every state having joined the Union since 1845 entering the Union as a free state - Kansas would become the sixth free state since the annexation of Texas, which President Tyler had overseen before leaving office - the Southern states, convinced that the federal government would become more hostile to them in the future, began to go when South Carolina seceded shortly before Christmas 1860.

To avert a civil war, a peace conference was held at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. in the waning days of President James Buchanan's administration.  The Peace Conference of 1861 aimed to prevent a civil war by offering a compromise on slavery that would constitutionally guarantee it in the fifteen states that still practiced it and would restore the 36°30′ parallel north line of latitude that was the boundary between the free territories and the slave territories set by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 before its repeal in 1854.  President-elect Lincoln was happy to compromise to prevent the eight slave states still in the Union, including Tyler's home state of Virginia, from seceding, in an effort to coax the seven states of the lower South to return to the Union (none of them sent delegates to the conference).  However, while remining quiet in public, Lincoln worked behind the scenes to get Republicans to reject any compromise that would allow slavery to spread into the territories.  He would compromise on anything but that.

As a former President from a slave state, Tyler accepted the offer to preside over the Peace Conference of 1861 out of a genuine desire to preserve the Union.  When it became apparent that averting war was all but a lost cause, he became a secessionist during the conference, believing that a state with grievances against the federal government had every right to leave the Union.  

In no way am I suggesting that Tyler came to the correct conclusion on the issue of secession; the states of the lower South had clearly left the Union to preserve the sanctity of slavery, which is not a valid argument for secession.  Yet Tyler, a man who had served his country in various political offices before holding the highest office in the land, still came to the conclusion that the secession of the states of the lower South was the only viable option because there was simply no compromise that would allow the states to maintain a peaceful co-existence - not just because of slavery but because of a myriad of other issues dividing North and South, some related to slavery, others not.   Tyler, by all indications, would have gladly chosen to follow any path that would avert a breakup of the nation, but as he saw it in 1861, there was no such path.  That doesn't mean that there was no such path; it only means that Tyler himself could not find it. 

I believe, still, that the question of secession is upon us once again, and for a cause for worthier than to preserve the sanctity of slavery.  I, like John Tyler in 1861, did not become a secessionist because of the outcome of one presidential election.  Though I'd had frustrations with this country for years, if not decades, and though they had been festering for so long, I watched Trump again assume power in 2025 hoping that a healthy resistance to his authoritarian directives would help the country get through a difficult if not impossible time.  After only two months of Trump Mark Two and the pathetic positions Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer assumed, I looked at how the federal government had been failing us Americans for over forty-five years and I decided, on my own, that a federal system trying to govern an ethnically, politically, and geographically diverse land mass 3.8 million square miles in area could not work.  The system had left too many of our citizens relegated to a poor quality of life, and lawmakers and the President - not just the current President, any President, really - had made themselves too beholden to corporate interests.  The country's quality of life was circling the drain, the citizens had lost their faith and trust in the establishmentarian institutions that run this country, and Trump himself was already dismantling the administrative state and would soon desecrate Washington to make it resemble 1930s Berlin, and at a time when most American cities look like Berlin after the war in May 1945.  Trump also made it clear that he did not consider alliances with countries such as Canada and Denmark worthy of his time and pursued a foreign policy of xenophobic zeal that led to withdrawals form international treaties and agreements that he, his corporate supporters, and especially his allies in the technology sector did not like.  The attempt to name the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and name Lake Ontario Lake America - now both endorsed by two tech companies offering mapping services run by CEOs who don't want to be appended with concrete shoes and deposited in the depths of said bodies of water by MAGA zealots - are bookends to everything Trump has done so far to turn America into a lampoon-worthy basket case.  (Will he rename the Strait of Juan de Fuca between Washington State and Canada's Vancouver Island the Strait of America because of an aversion to Spanish place names  - although explorer Juan de Fuca was not Spanish, he was Greek - his name was Ioannis Fokas before he Hispanicized it when he went into service for the king of Spain?) 

Clearly, give everything that has happened in the past nineteen months and what is likely to happen in the months to come, this nation cannot go on.  Too much of this country has already been lost.  It became apparent to me as early as March 2025 that we could never find the path that would lead us to a better place and would allows us to leave Trump behind - there was no path.  Now, as with Tyler in 1861, there may have been a path I simply did not see, but I still believe that there was simply no path.  There still isn't.  Kamala Harris had run a presidential campaign of joy and optimism meant to generate excitement and also a sense of community among Americans - a sense of community not seen since the country came together in the aftermath of 9/11 - but the rejection of her presidential bid in favor of a felon convicted on 34 counts forfeited our last chance to save These States from Trump and MAGA.  Democratic states beleaguered by MAGA and its cruelty, from ICE raids and assassinations to denial of federal funds for infrastructure projects and alleviating national disasters, with such cruelty having been endorsed by a Republican Congress happy to abet Trump in his outrages, have led me to conclude that Democratic states at the mercy of Trump and MAGA must secede - not to preserve the sanctity of slavery, of course but to preserve freedom, and to provide for a new birth of freedom that Lincoln had hoped would prevail once the Union won the Civil War.  

I also believe that the secessionists of the 1860s stole the right to leave the Union for the purpose of preserving slavery and elitist government.  I say, as I always have, that the Democratic states should steal it back.  A conference like the Peace Conference of 1861 - not to preserve the nation but to allow states to separate from it and possibly negotiate a national divorce  that breaks up the Union into ten or twelve countries that allow nations with more accessible governments that are more accessible to the people - is the only possible, and worthy, solution.  Therefore, I take pride in the words, "I am a secessionist."

A postscript on John Tyler: When President Lincoln called for 75,000 military volunteers to put down the Southern rebellion that began with the attack on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina in April 1861, Virginia, angered by the notion of the federal government using force against the seceding states, left the Union, followed by Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.  Tyler accepted a provisional seat in the in the Congress of the Confederate States of America and was elected to the Confederate House of Representatives later that year.  He died in early 1862. 

Secession: Take Two

In May of this year, I wrote a sample ordinance of secession of the 2025 New Jersey legislative calendar that gave the reasons for seceding from the United States in response to Donald Trump's numerous crimes.  Sadly, the number of crimes he's committed since then has grown exponentially.  I stepped back from my advocacy from secession while I waited to see the outcome of the gubernatorial election in New Jersey.  Now, as we prepare to enter a new year - a year in which New Jersey will have a new governor, Rebecca Michelle Sherrill, and a year in which Trump could try to illegally invalidate enough of the midterm congressional elections to keep the Republicans in control of Congress - I have written a slightly revised version of my original sample secession ordinance from May.

* 

STATE OF NEW JERSEY CALENDAR YEAR 2026 

ORDINANCE OF SECESSION 

To dissolve the Union between the State of New Jersey and other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of The United States of America." 

WHEREAS, the United States of America on the fifth day of November, in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and twenty-four, had elected a multiple-charged and multiple-convicted felon (henceforth to be referred to as "The Leader"), to return to the office of President of the United States, in violation of Section 3 of the fourteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States that prohibits those who have participated in or directed insurrection or rebellion against the Government of the United States from holding public office of the United States; and  

WHEREAS, The Leader, upon taking anew the office of President of the United States, has unilaterally withdrawn from international agreements and organizations, has illegally eviscerated the bureaucratic institutions of said Government in violation of oversight and authority of the Congress of the United States and of the Constitution of United States; and 

WHEREAS, the Federal Government, per orders from The Leader, has used illegally acquired power to deport migrants, has committed crimes against humanity in foreign locales, and has adversely amended rules and regulations in various bureaucracies by executive fiat and without proper procedure, and

WHEREAS, many of the States that have entered into Union under the compact entitled "the Constitution of United States of America" have been adversely affected and injured by such violations of The Leader, which the Congress of the United States has refused to counteract per its Constitutional authority; and 

WHEREAS, the State of New Jersey, having entered into this compact on the eighteenth day of December in the year of our Lord One thousand Seven hundred and eighty-seven upon her own free will, and now is forced to bear witness to efforts by The Leader to breach said compact with intent to cause adversity to States whose Electors did not cast their ballots for him in the Election for the Presidency and the Vice Presidency of the United States having just transpired in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and twenty-four, and 

WHEREAS, it is the responsibility of the Government of the State of New Jersey to remedy adverse and most likely illegal actions of The Leader that go largely unchallenged at the Federal level of Government; 

 NOW THEREFORE BE IT ORDAINED, by the Governor, the Assembly, and the Senate of the State of New Jersey and the People of the State of New Jersey, that the Ordinance adopted by us in Convention, on the eighteenth day of December in the year of our Lord One Thousand Seven hundred and eighty seven, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and also all Acts and parts of Acts of the Legislature of this State, ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; and 

BE IT FURTHER ORDAINED, that ratifications of Treaties and entrances into Agreements with various Nations under the Constitution of the United States of America, will remain in force between the State of New Jersey and said Nations, and that ratifications of Treaties and entrances into Agreements under said Constitution illegally invalidated by The Leader, a point of reason for repealing ratification of said Constitution and subsequent amendments, will also remain in force between the State of New Jersey and said Nations, and 

BE IT FURTHER ORDAINED, that the union now subsisting between New Jersey and other States, under the name of "The United States of America," is hereby dissolved.

*

Ladies and gentlemen . . . The UNION is DISSOLVED!

When (and When Not) To Secede

It was 165 years ago today, Thursday, December 20, 1860, that South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union in response to Abraham Lincoln's election to the Presidency.

". . . that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'The United States of America,' is hereby dissolved."

Today I am advocating for New Jersey - or California, Massachusetts, New York, or one of the other heavily Democratic states adversely affected by Donald Trump - to take the first step of secession in the hope of triggering a mass withdrawal from the Union that will necessitate the breakup of the United States and a new arrangement for the fifty states that will result in new republics and possibly some of the states becoming provinces of Canada. 

The reasons for secession are quite clear - abuse of Immigration and Customs and Enforcement agents, illegal disruptions and contractions of government services, suppression of individual and civil liberties, crimes against humanity . . . I could go on.  To respond to those who say that secession is unconstitutional, I would argue that Trump's unconstitutional actions and the failure of the other branches of government to check him render that annoying inconvenience moot.  Again: If what Trump does is not unconstitutional, nothing is unconstitutional.  Not even secession. I admit that the chances of any state seceding are slim, but I would argue that states have plenty of reasons to secede today . . . though they have fewer reasons to secede than the slave states of 1860 and 1861 had not to secede.

Empty threats are a leitmotif of American politics (though I would argue that not all of Trump's threats are empty), and the governors of the slave states of the lower South repeatedly threatened to secede throughout the summer and autumn of 1860 if Abraham Lincoln were to be elected President.  Then Lincoln was elected.  And then nothing happened for six weeks.  The slave states suddenly found themselves having to consider whether they should actually make good on their threats to secede, and President James Buchanan urged all fifteen of the slave states to wait and see what Lincoln would do once he took office in March 1861.  In the meantime, the Southern states weighed their options.  There were already plenty of reasons for them to remain in the Union.

First of all, Lincoln, though he won a majority in the Electoral College and won the most popular votes of any of the four - yes, four - major candidates of the 1860 presidential election, was very much a minority President, having won only 39 percent of the popular vote.  As with Barry Goldwater in 1964 or George McGovern in 1972, more than six out of ten voters thought Lincoln was too dangerous and radical to occupy the White House, but thanks to a four-way campaign - the Democrats fielded two nominees,  U.S. Senator Stephen Douglas from the North and Vice President John C. Breckinridge from the South, and there was also John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party - Lincoln was able to squeak through.  Lincoln's position was so precarious that he barely defeated Douglas in New York; had he lost that state, he would have been denied an electoral majority and Congress would have had to select the next President and Vice President.

Second, throughout the 1860 campaign and after the election, Lincoln promised that he would not try to abolish slavery where it already existed; he did not have the constitutional authority or the political support to do that.  He only promised to stop the spread of slavery in the territories that had not yet become states.  Therefore, Southern politicians should have been reassured that slavery could remain legal in their own states.  

Third, the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, which guaranteed slaves as property under the terms of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, was the law of the land.  The President of the United States could not and cannot change a Supreme Court decision.

Fourth, even though the Democrats were badly divided over slavery - hence two 1860 Democratic presidential candidates, one from the free North and one from the slaveholding South - they had nonetheless elected majorities to both houses of the 37th Congress that would convene in the first half of Lincoln's term as President.  The majorities, based largely in the South, could block any legislation or presidential initiative that the Southern states opposed.

Despite these reasons for not seceding, however, the slave states of the lower South saw Lincoln's election as the first shot across their bow from a purely northern party, the Republican Party, that represented the fastest growing regions in the country - the Northeast and the Midwest - which would soon overwhelm the Southern states in the House with their greater populations and in the Senate with the likely ban on slavery in territories waiting to be admitted into the Union.  The even balance of free and slave states had been upset in 1850 with the admission of California as a free state; the subsequent admissions of Minnesota in 1858, Oregon in 1859, and, in 1861 prior to President Lincoln's inauguration, Kansas as free states meant that, theoretically at least, the slave states would be outvoted in the Senate.  The states of the lower South decided that, if they didn't leave the Union immediately, they would never have the chance to do so again and would forever remain subservient to the North.   Fatuous reasoning, to be sure, but that's how Southerners felt at the time.  So, just before Christmas 1860, South Carolina, which had attempted to nullify a tariff law in 1832 because of its dependence on foreign trade and had caused a disunity crisis for President Andrew Jackson to confront, naturally became the first state to secede from the Union.

The house was divided.

Mississippi was the second state to secede and the first to secede in the new year of 1861.  Ironically, one of its two U.S. Senators, Jefferson Davis, had proposed that the slave states could remain in the Union and form a self-governing dominion within the American commonwealth.  But when his state left the Union, he resigned his Senate seat and returned home from Washington.  Then the rest of the lower South followed, in this order: Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and, at the beginning of February, Texas.  The seven new republics weren't independent for long; they soon formed the Confederate States of America, with Jefferson Davis as its President.  Eight slave states took President Buchanan's advice and waited to see what Lincoln would do as President.  Then, after Fort Sumter was fired upon, President Lincoln called for 75,000 Army volunteers to put down the rebellion.  Angered at the call for military action, Virginia left the Union, followed by Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee.  They too joined the Confederacy, and the Civil War was on. 

I don't advocate a second civil war to break up the United States when I call for my state of New Jersey to secede.  I call for enough states to secede in order to facilitate a conference not unlike the one that was held in Washington in February 1861 to avert civil war, and, this time, agree to a national divorce and not use military action to dissolve the Union.  Because when Fort Sumter in Charleston was attacked by the Confederacy, it led to a bloody conflict, and no one recalled what President Jackson had said during the 1832 Nullification Crisis: "Disunion by armed force is treason.  Are you ready to incur its guilt?"   

America: Let's Call It a Day

I need to post this map again.

After seven weeks in the White House, Donald Trump has dismantled American governmental agencies and destroyed our alliances with Canada, Mexico and the European Union, and even our once-special relationship with Great Britain.  Congressional Republicans won't do anything to stop him, and  congressional Democrats can't do anything to stop him - and even if they could, Democratic leadership is so weak and spineless that their efforts to stop Trump would backfire as soon as they got started.

I know that folks like Robert Reich are arguing that we should not despair and keep up the fight against Trump, and there is growing antipathy to Trump among the American people, but let's face it; Trump and Elon Musk wouldn't be doing what they are doing if they didn't think they could get away with it.

At the risk of sounding cynical, I think the United States should cease to exist. This is not an attitude of doom or  despair - as I see it, it's our only chance of survival.  Even if one assumes we can survive another four years of Donald Trump and he leaves office as scheduled, a hypothetical Democratic President who takes office in January 2029 will be unable to repair the damage Trump has caused or rebuild the institutions or even the foreign alliances that Trump has destroyed.  We're not respected anymore, we're trusted anymore . . . we're not America anymore.

This country is too big to be united on anything and it never will be united in anything but name. Let's stop pretending that New England has anything in common with Texas or that California has anything in common with the Great Lakes states. Breaking up into ten or twelve separate countries and going our separate ways would enable the states of the current Union to co-exist without living with each other. Florida can be as pro-Trump as it wants to be - heck, he lives there - while a Middle Atlantic commonwealth can be as liberal as it wants to be. But we can't be the United States of America anymore. 

I want out.  I want a divorce.  Let's call it a day.