declaration of independence – Lynn Brown Writer

USA Flag Ripped In Half

Actually, every educated person at the time of the Civil War understood that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution supported secession. Since a union is built on voluntary cooperation for the pursuit of common goals, a member can also leave (secede) from the group if its needs are not being met, if it feels manipulated, if terms of the contract have been broken by the other party, or if the contract no longer serves the needs of the seceding member.

Texas declared the right to secede from Mexico because the contract between them had been broken by Mexico. Independence was declared on March 2, 1836. People in the United States approved. Texas must have felt confused when seceding from the United States during the Civil War for the same reason was harshly denounced!

Oh, well, but that was seceding from Mexico. Did anyone secede from the United States before the Civil War? No, but some New England states threatened to secede in 1803 and 1814.

And then there was secession within a state. During the Civil War, New York City seriously considered seceding from the United States to establish a separate State from New York. It would then declare neutrality and trade with both the USA and CSA!

Also, the United States didn’t object to West Virginia seceding from Virginia during the Civil War because that was to the advantage of the U.S.A. In fact, it was planned by the Lincoln administration.

When I was a child, we said the Pledge of Allegiance daily. Remember the word “indivisible?” Have you ever thought about that?

The first draft of the Declaration of Independence written by Thomas Jefferson contained a 168 word section lambasting King George III for slavery in the colonies. Here it is:

“ He [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither, this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain, determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, & Murdering the people pon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. (Library of Congress)

This didn’t even make it to the whole Continental Congress, only to a select committee. Jefferson said north and south representatives voted to remove it. Apparently, the only states willing to accept it were the Mid-Atlantic States!

Some people jump to the conclusion that it was removed because those states participated in the shipping and sale (north) or use of slaves (south, mostly). They give no support to their opinion. It could also be because the representatives, still hoping for a peaceful separation, felt Jefferson’s language too extreme.

By the way, notice Jefferson’s use of the word “men.” This answers the question of what “men” means in “all men are created equal.”