In 1861, Abraham Lincoln blockaded the south. This fact is not contested by anyone.
In 1863, Abraham Lincoln deported former United States Representative Clement Vallandigham from Ohio to the Confederate States of America. This fact, too, is not contested by anyone. Read those two uncontested facts, then read them again – and the following may dawn on you: Abraham Lincoln knew the South was an independent confederacy, and outright acknowledged their sovereignty with these two moves. Let’s us delve into this a bit! Blockading ports is an act of war. There is no question about this. A blockade involves two nations at war, and blockading southern ports – unilaterally and without even having the support of congress – was inherent recognition of the Confederate States of America as a sovereign nation at war with the United States. I am not the first person to realize this (though I did years before this article was written), but it’s a fact that has been brushed under the rug for obvious reasons.
This blockade went even beyond just a recognition of the south as sovereign – if not for a single faulty bit of machinery, this act of war nearly drew England into the war against the United States, which almost certainly would have overwhelmed the Union and ended the war rather quickly in favor of the Confederacy. The only potential counter to the fact that blockading is an act of war is to admit that Lincoln, under the impression the Confederacy was still part of the United States and his jurisdiction, blockaded a massive swath of his own territory, endangering millions of his own innocent citizens in the process and denying them nearly every single constitutional right enshrined in the Bill of Rights (which, of course, he did eventually accomplish throughout the war, in spades).
So did this blockade prove Lincoln recognized the sovereignty of the Confederate States of America? Or that Lincoln was a cold tyrant and traitor to his own people with absolutely no regard for the lives or livelihoods of his own people and with willful action to deprive them of both? I suppose this can be debated – the single greatest hypocrite to ever live, or just a plain old genocidal despot? So allow us to move on to finite, conclusive, indisputable evidence that Abraham Lincoln, the man who kept the Union together freshly bathed in the blood of more dead Americans than every single US war combined, from 1776 until today, did it all while overtly acknowledging the sovereignty of the Confederate States of America.
In 1863, Union General Ambrose Burnside issued General Order No. 38, which declared that anyone who speaks out against the war or in any manner supportive of the Confederacy was guilty of treason, would be arrested immediately, would be imprisoned, deported to the South, or even executed for treason. Because who needs the Constitution, anyway? And who needs a legislative process when soldiers simply get to make new laws on the fly that potentially carry the death sentence? Wasn’t Lincoln’s America great, everyone? Needless to say, Vallandigham was a former US legislator willing to name the Union genocide machine for what it was – “one of the worst despotisms on earth” – and for doing so, not only was he arrested, but he wound up proving for all of posterity that Lincoln himself realized the sovereignty of the Confederacy by deporting a man from the United States of America….to the Confederacy. Were you taught any of this in school? Perhaps in passing, the blockade was mentioned; but unless you specifically studied the history of American naval warfare, it’s unlikely you’re familiar with this piece of history. Has the name Clement Vallandigham been brought up in any high school textbook in the last 100 years? Not to my knowledge, and almost certainly not, because not only does it display the sheer insanity and tyranny of Lincolnian rule, but explicitly refutes Lincoln’s entire purported justification for the war – that secession was inherently impossible, and that the entirety of the Confederate States of America were actually just rogue Union states.
Secession is, inherently, a human right. Secession is the right to live free of tyranny – a fundamental human right. Unions of states are only made by contract, and no contract is infrangible; if one party violates the contract, the other party may declare the contract void or seek damages – often both. If you purchase a vehicle and then simply stop making your payments, your car will be repossessed, and you will be sued for the balance due. If you’re contracted to build someone a house within 12 months, and have ten bricks in the ground 18 months later, that contract will be nullified by any court, and there will likely be some form of financial restitution as well.
In 1789, thirteen states signed a contract with one another and with the newly formed concept of a federal, central government that was very severely limited in scope and power, by design; once the federal government violated that contract, any and all parties inherently had the right to walk away from said violated contract. This was known to Jefferson and Madison (the two most significant authors of the Constitution), the five states that comprise New England when they debated seceding at the Hartford Convention, and everyone in early America – who had all just violently seceded from Great Britain in an actual civil war. Jefferson reiterated the right to secession in 1799, 1803, 1804, and 1816. When George Washington quashed the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 (the earliest civil war-esque occurrence after the Declaration of Independence), Jefferson wrote the following to Madison:
“I expected to have seen some justification of arming one part of the society against another, of declaring a civil war the moment before the meeting of that body which has the sole right of declaring war, of being so patient of the kicks and scoffs of our enemies, and rising at a feather against our friends, of adding a million to the public debt and deriding us with recommendations to pay it if we can.”
Well, would you look at that – it sure sounds like Thomas Jefferson shooting down every justification made for Abraham Lincoln unilaterally declaring war on the South over 65 years before it ever happened.
Secession is inherently legal, and was recognized as such by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison – the two men more responsible for the Constitution and, indeed, the entire existence of the United States than any others. It was acknowledged by early Americans, including state Governors. But, most importantly to the modern American, raised under the delusion that secession is an unfathomable act as settled by Abraham Lincoln, it is imperative to realize that Abraham Lincoln himself recognized the legitimacy of secession by slipping twice and clearly acknowledging the Confederate States of America as an entity entirely independent of the Union. Lincoln’s War may have murdered 750,000 Americans and washed their blood away in to nearly every river east of the Mississippi, but it did not manage to wash away the stench of overwhelming hypocrisy and lies that characterize the entire life and political career of “Honest Abe”. The day has finally come when some folks are beginning to realize this. Secession movements are popping up all around the Forcefully United States, led by the NHexit movement for New Hampshire Independence, Calexit in California, and with growing presence nearly everywhere else. Nearly half a million people now support Texit. People are unhappy, and more people grow more disgruntled, disenchanted, and disenfranchised with the federal totalitarians every day. The time is nigh, and the responsibility is, as always, with the people to stand up and do something about it. Support your local secession movements, push your elected officials to nullify any and all federal laws within your state, and regain control from the tyranny that has replaced the United States of America.
Separate.
