Once, when a completely irrational relative did something commendable which was totally out of character, my grandfather declared that “even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while.” It would appear to the unjaundiced eye that the state of California has found the proverbial acorn and a committee or whatever the people to the left of Marx and Engels in that state call it, have hit upon the idea of secession. They did though take one giant step back in declaring such a move would require an amendment to our Constitution. We must excuse them for this mental lapse considering most cultural Marxists know little to nothing of history, much less the Constitution.

People who seem to know everything there is to know about how to extricate themselves from a failed marriage do have issues attempting to remove themselves from a government from which they have lost that loving feeling.

Of course, there is no mention of secession in our Constitution for the people of our founding era were well acquainted with the concept having just seceded from Great Britain and the Articles of Confederation. Perhaps that is why Thomas Jefferson in his First Inaugural Address, being fully cognizant of the ill will his election had created in the New England states with those of the Federalist persuasion, stated the following: “If there be any among us who wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” Notice, if you will, Jefferson said nothing of raising an army to invade those states or killing hundreds of thousands of folks to prevent secession from occurring.

One can be reasonably sure that the newly elected President Jefferson was also aware of the document his home state of Virginia had signed when they had ratified the Constitution in the summer of 1788. That document read in part,

“… the powers granted under the Constitution.” being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression…”

Ironic as it may seem, New York and Rhode Island placed similar statements in their ratification agreements. Considering Article IV Section II para I of our Constitution states, “The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states” all states have the right to secede, even Californians.

The leader of the New England secessionists was Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts, who had served as George Washington’s chief of staff, his secretary of war and secretary of state, as well as a congressman and senator from Massachusetts. “The principles of our Revolution [of 1776] point to the remedy – a separation,” Pickering wrote to George Cabot in 1803, for “the people of The East cannot reconcile their habits, views, and interests with those of the South and West.” “The Eastern states must and will dissolve the Union and form a separate government,” announced Senator James Hillhouse. Similar sentiments were expressed at the time by such prominent New Englanders as Elbridge Gerry, John Quincy Adams, Fisher Ames, Josiah Quincy, and Joseph Story, among others.

The New England secession movement gained momentum for an entire decade but ultimately was abandoned at the Hartford Secession Convention when the war of 1812 ended. Throughout this struggle, wrote historian Edward Powell in Nullification and Secession in the United States, “the right of a state to withdraw from the Union was not disputed.”

Now, one might ask themselves how Abraham Lincoln managed to get the whole thing so wrong in 1861? This is a most relevant question considering Lincoln stated the following in 1848, “Any people whatsoever have the right to abolish the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right.” Lincoln biographers and idolators never seem to get around to quoting this particular speech. Of course, in 1848, Lincoln was not bound to the industrialists of the North who had profited greatly from the institution of slavery* and their economically debilitating confiscatory tariff. Funny how the passion for other people’s money changes things in the eyes of a politician.

Ironically, even one of the abolitionists agreed with the Southern states when it came to secession. On December 17, 1860, abolitionist Horace Greeley wrote, “if tyranny and despotism justified the American Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861″** Then again in February of 1861 Greeley wrote, “Nine out of ten people of the North, were opposed to forcing South Carolina to remain in the Union, for the great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration . . . is that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed. Therefore, if the southern states wanted to secede, they have a clear right to do so.”

Similar statements were made by newspapers all throughout the North on the eve of the war, and are perhaps best represented by an editorial in the Kenosha, Wisconsin Democrat, which on January 11, 1861, wrote that “Secession is “the very germ of liberty” and declared “the right of secession inheres to the people of every sovereign state.”

“If military force is used,” the Bangor Daily Union wrote on November 13, 1860, “then a state can only be seen as a subject province and can never be a co-equal member of the American union.”

Most of the top military commanders in the war (on both sides) were educated at West Point, where the one course on the U.S. Constitution was taught by the Philadelphia abolitionist William Rawle, who taught from his book, A View of the Constitution, what Ulysses S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, and others were taught about secession at West Point was that to deny a state the right of secession “would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed.”

Lincoln never attended West Point, but he supported secession when it served his political plans. He warmly embraced the secession of West Virginia from Virginia, which was a violation of our Constitution*** and was glad to permit slavery in West Virginia (and all other “border states”) as long as they supported him politically. If, as was true in Missouri, the government did not support him, Lincoln simply invaded that state militarily and replaced the legislature, an act of Treason.****

After the war, Jefferson Davis was imprisoned in the harshest of conditions but was never tried for treason, and for good reason: The federal government knew that it had no constitutional case against secession, as Charles Adams described in his brilliant book, When in the Course of Human Events. After his release from prison, Jefferson Davis wrote what would have been his legal defense of secession in the form of a two-volume book, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.

The centralization of governmental power not only leads to the looting and plundering of the taxpaying class by the parasitic class; it also slowly destroys freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas. One of the first things every tyrannical government does is to monopolize the educational system in order to brainwash the young and bolster its political power. As soon as Lee surrendered at Appomattox, the federal government began revising history to teach that secession was illegitimate. This was all a part of Lincoln’s “revolution” which overthrew the federal system of government created by the founding fathers and put into motion the forces of centralized governmental power.

Peaceful secession and nullification are the only means of returning to a system of government that respects rather than destroys individual liberty. As Frank Chodorov wrote in 1952: “If for no other reason, personal pride should prompt every governor and state legislator to take a secessionist attitude; they were not elected to be lackeys of the federal bureaucracy.” Of course, California does not mind being the lackey of Hillary Clinton, it is Donald Trump they object to leading that federal bureaucracy.

So, it does appear that the blind hog which is the Marxist state of California has indeed stumbled upon an acorn. We shall see if they have the mental acuity and foresight to eat it.

IN RIGHTFUL REBEL LIBERTY

*Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery.

**New York Daily Tribune

***Article IV Section III

**** Article III Section III