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Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession (such as a declaration of independence). [1] A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal is the creation of a new state or entity independent of the group or territory from which it seceded. [2]
A New Hampshire man holds a sign advocating for secession during the 2012 presidential election. In the context of the United States, secession primarily refers to the voluntary withdrawal of one or more states from the Union that constitutes the United States; but may loosely refer to leaving a state or territory to form a separate territory or new state, or to the severing of an area from a ...
At the start of the Civil War, there were 34 states in the United States, 15 of which were slave states. Eleven of these slave states, after conventions devoted to the topic, issued declarations of secession from the United States, created the Confederate States of America, and were represented in the Confederate Congress.
By December 1860 secession was being publicly debated throughout Virginia. Leading eastern spokesmen called for secession, while westerners warned they would not be legislated into treason. A statewide convention first met on February 13; after the attack on Fort Sumter and Lincoln's call to arms, it voted for secession on April 17, 1861.
Map of the county secession votes of 1860–1861 in Appalachia within the ARC definition. Virginia and Tennessee show the public votes, while the other states show the vote by county delegates to the conventions. Unionism—opposition to the Confederacy—was strong in certain areas within the Confederate States.
“If we separate from that, the people in Chicago can get what they want and the people in southern Illinois can have a community that more accurately represents us.”
An Ordinance of Secession was the name given to multiple resolutions [1] drafted and ratified in 1860 and 1861, at or near the beginning of the Civil War, by which each seceding slave-holding Southern state or territory formally declared secession from the United States of America.
The U.S. Constitution does not specifically address the secession of states, and the issue was a topic of debate after the American Revolutionary War until the Civil War, when the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that states strictly cannot unilaterally secede except through revolution or the expressed consent of the other states. [3]