NYcarbineer
Diamond Member
It is only Legal if everyone agrees. Already established by the Civil War and a Supreme Court ruling, if you want to leave the Union it takes an act of Congress to do so.
If the Seceding Southern States had not committed acts of war against the Union, it is not 100% clear that President Lincoln would have sought to fight them.
Having done so and gotten that reaction, however, from the Union, the Civil War got fought and the South lost.
History is written by the victors to a large extent.
This does not mean that the basic premise of secession as a reaction to the willful violation of the precepts of the Constitution by the Federal government is invalid.
And one test would be: if (I'll pick on Texas again) Texas were to decide at some point in the not too distant future that they had had enough of the "Union," and were terminating the relationship, does ANYBODY really think this Nation would again choose to go to war over it?
Personally, I doubt it.
I do not advocate for Secession. I think we need to keep up the struggle to improve the Union -- all the time. But it seems dangerously naive to just assume Secession can't happen -- or that it won't. The rumblings have begun. The rumblings are valid in my opinion to the extent that the complaint is that the Constitution is not being honored BY the Federal government.
I have never accepted the response that "there's nothing that can be done about it." In my view, the Federal government had best get its shit together PDQ. What is the point of ignoring warnings?
Not to, in a sideways manner, lend credibility to any of this nonsense, but it's at least worth mentioning that most US states are composed of U.S. possessions. They weren't granted independence when they were granted statehood.