Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone recently called for southern California to secede and form a new state: Is the state of California about to go “South”? Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Stone apparently thinks so, after proposing that the county lead a campaign for as many as 13 Southern California counties to secede from the state. […]
Archive | Secession
Whitewashing Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy
The New York Times has an article on yesterday’s celebration of the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of Jefferson Davis as president of the Confederacy: Before a cheering crowd of several hundred men and women, some in period costume and others in crisp suits, an amateur actor playing Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president […]
The 150th Anniversary of South Carolina’s Secession
At Ricochet, Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe has a post on the 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s vote to secede from the Union. I’m one of the few Americans sympathetic to the general idea of secession who is also unequivocally hostile to the secession effort undertaken by the Confederacy in 1860-61. In my view, the […]
A New Rebel Mascot for a New South – Admiral Ackbar May Replace Colonel Reb at Ole Miss
Students at the University of Mississippi have started a campaign to replace the school’s longtime mascot Colonel Reb with Admiral Ackbar, leader of the Rebel Fleet in Star Wars. Colonel Reb was retired in 2003 because “coaches and athletic boosters concluded that C. Reb and other symbols of the Confederacy hurt the school’s recruiting prospects.” […]
Why the Issue of Secession Isn’t “Settled”
In a recent post, co-conspirator Eugene Volokh argues that the Civil War did not settle the issue of the constitutionality and moral defensibility of secession. I made a detailed argument to the same effect in this 2008 post. I’m not going to restate all my analysis here. But I will say that I don’t think […]