Secession

se-sesh'un, in American history, withdrawal from the union of states. The theory that a state retained the right to withdraw did much, no doubt, to gain the consent of the various states to form the "more perfect union." The doctrine of secession has nothing unholy about it. It has been popular at one time or another in various sections of the original thirteen states. Dissatisfaction with the War of 1812, on account of which their ships lay rotting in harbor, led the Federals of New England to make threats of withdrawal. In 1832 South Carolina, angered by the imposition of a tariff favorable to New England interests, took preliminary steps to leave the Union. In 1860-61, following the election of President Lincoln, the following states seceded:

These states formed a confederacy February 4, 1861. After the attack on Fort Sumter, four more states seceded.

Opposition to secession was strong in some of these states. The federal government took no official notice of the several ordinances of secession. So far as official recognition went, the armies of the South were treated as bodies in armed rebellion, orderly mobs. The stronger part of the nation prevented secession by force of arms. The idea of secession is not confined to the United States. Early in the seventies British Columbia threatened to secede from the Dominion of Canada unless the building of the long promised Canadian Pacific should be agreed upon definitely. In 1906 West Australia, the third state in size of the Commonwealth of Australia, passed an act of withdrawal, the cause being the apparent abandonment of a promised east and west transcontinental railway. The stigma that rests on American secession arises from the impossibility of separating the issue from the policy of African slavery.