Not really, no. Secession is defined as "to withdraw formally from membership in an organization, association, or alliance." The implication is that the act is legal. Under circumstances where the action is illegal, then it is most properly defined as rebellion or revolution.
As far as the treatment of the South from the North, I don’t agree with you. Lincoln, and Johnson and Grant understood that without a quick healing, there would have been a guerilla war in the South for years.
I would ask you to point to a single major rebellion in history where the people suffered less and were incorporated back into the body politic faster than the Southern states were.
And quite frankly, the destruction that the North visited upon civilian centers and private property in the South that was not miitarily engaged in the Rebellion was criminal. So the South suffered quite enough to be “punished”. The South did not rise again for almost one hundred years.
About the same time that the South was engaged in her rebellion, a rebellion in China was finishing that had cost over 50 million lives and which had devestated whole sections of the country. Please do not tell us how the poor South suffered for her actions.
The people in Washington DC who form our government do not have unlimited license to rule us just by virtue of being elected or appointed legally.
Nor do the states.
In history there is many a time when the existing authority is challenged over the right to govern.
But seldom for less reason than the Southern U.S.
NS, thanks for the discussion.
Secession can also be defined as a breaking away, or seperation form an alliance. You can withdraw formally without approval of the alliance or organization. The implication of legality is simply that, an implication—not part of the definition. But, we split hairs.
My point about the reabsorption of the South into the North was that the speed of it was due to pragmatic concerns. The North was just as sick of war as the South by this time. After the 1864 election, it was obvious that the appetite for war was diminished even in the North. In the mercy shown to the South, Grant and Lincoln proved to be great statesmen and practical men.
The suffering of others, whether in China, or in history, is interesting, but not germane to the discussion. The suffering of the South was no less real, especially to them.
You cannot deny that the South suffered. Many in the North felt it was justifiable. Whether or not is was, it was horrible suffering that crippled them for decades afterwards economically. There was no equivalent damage done by the South to Northern civilian populations even when Lee invaded the North.
Your view of the shallowness of the South’s rebellion is quite evident, but to them at the time, it was the key issue of the survival of their way of life. There are endless arguments about the rightness or wrongness of their point of view, but there was something there that men died for.
That you diminish that is unfortunate. 11 States felt moved enough to rebel—no small feat at a time when the telegraph was not even in wide use, and the only communication was a newspaper with week old news for most of the country.
We are fortunate to have the prism of history and time to focus our views. They did not. They lived it.
Our leaving the Crown was successful only because we prevailed. The Civil War ended in defeat for the South because they did not.
At the beginning of those two conflicts, the end was not predetermined. If anything, the colonists had no chance to win, and the South had an even chance to win, or better.
Events proved otherwise. Events that were lived one day at a time, one life at a time.
Whether secession is legal or not has no bearing. People will do what they feel compelled to do to protect their own self interests. Except for four years, we have for 232 years managed to find common ground in spite of regional and local differences to advance our greater self interests as a free nation.
When that self interest is no longer served, all the courts in the world will not stop what comes next.