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"Perhaps
the best evidence of how American history was rewritten, Soviet style, in the
post-1865 era is the fact that most Americans seem to be unaware that "Independence
Day" was originally intended to be a celebration of the colonists’
secession from the British empire. Indeed, the word secession is not
even a part of the vocabulary of most Americans, who more often than not
confuse it with "succession." The Revolutionary War was
America’s first war of secession.
America’s
most prominent secessionist, Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration,
was very clear about what he was saying: Governments derive their just powers
from the consent of the governed, and whenever that consent is withdrawn, it
is the right of the people to "alter or abolish" that government
and "to institute a new government." The word "secession"
was not a part of the American language at that time, so Jefferson used the
word "separation" instead to describe the intentions of the
American colonial secessionists.
The Declaration
is also a states’ rights document (not surprisingly, since Jefferson
was the intellectual inspiration for the American states’ rights
political tradition). This, too, is foreign to most Americans. But read the
final paragraph of the Declaration which states:
That these United
Colonies are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that
they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown and that all
political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and
ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as free and independent states,
they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances,
establish commerce, and do all other things which independent states may of
right do (emphasis in original).
Each colony was
considered to be a free and independent state, or nation, in and of itself.
There was no such thing as "the United States of America" in the
minds of the founders. The independent colonies were simply united for a
particular cause: seceding from the British empire. Each individual state was
assumed to possess all the rights that any state possesses, even to wage war
and conclude peace. Indeed, when King George III finally signed a peace
treaty he signed it with all the individual American states, named one by
one, and not something called "The United States of
America." The "United States" as a consolidated, monopolistic
government is a fiction invented by Lincoln and instituted as a matter of
policy at gunpoint and at the expense of some 600,000 American lives during
1861–1865.
Jefferson
defended the right of secession in his first inaugural address by declaring,
"If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this 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 to
combat it." (In sharp contrast, in his first inaugural address,
Lincoln promised an "invasion" with massive "bloodshed"
(his words) of any state that failed to collect the newly-doubled federal
tariff rate by seceding from the union).
Jefferson made
numerous statements in defense of the defining principal of the American
Revolution: the right of secession. In a January 29, 1804 letter to Dr.
Joseph Priestly he wrote:
Whether we remain
in one confederacy, or form into Atlantic and Mississippi confederacies, I
believe not very important to the happiness of either part. Those of the
western confederacy will be as much our children & descendants as those
of the eastern, and I feel myself as much identified with that country, in
future time, as with this; and did I now foresee a separation [i.e., secession]
at some future day, yet I should feel the duty & the desire to promote
the western interests as zealously as the eastern, doing all the good for
both portions of our future family which should fall within my power.
In an August 12,
1803 letter to John C. Breckinridge Jefferson addressed the same issue, in
light of the New England Federalists’ secession movement in response to
his Louisiana Purchase. If there were a "separation" into two
confederacies, he wrote, "God bless them both, & keep them in the
union if it be for their good, but separate them, if it be better."
So on July 4
stoke up the grill, enjoy your barbecue, and drink a toast to Mr. Jefferson
and his fellow secessionists. (And beware of any Straussian nonsense about
how it was really Lincoln, the greatest enemy of states’ rights,
including the right of secession, who taught us to "revere" the
Declaration of Independence. Nothing could be further from the truth.)
Thomas DiLorenzo
Thomas
J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the
author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about
Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His
latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed
the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.
Article
originally published on www.Mises.org. By
authorization of the author
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