A Letter: Comparison of Secession of the Baltic States to the Southern States

A Letter: Comparison of Secession of the Baltic States to the Southern States

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is a letter written in 1990 responding to Mr. Howard Ruff about an article that he wrote for his newsletter, “The Ruff Times.”]

    In your speech for Bush to give Gorbachev, your analogy with the Southern States fighting for freedom and independence fails on all points. Gorbachev is correct. He is analogous to Lincoln. The Soviet Union is analogous to the United States. The Baltic States are analogous to the Southern States.
    True, South Carolina voluntarily entered the Union. It had the right under the Tenth Amendment to voluntarily leave the Union. Nowhere did (and nowhere does) the United States Constitution deny a State the right to secede. Moreover, both Virginia and New York entered the Union on the expressed condition that they could leave it at will. Until 1861, almost every political scientist and political philosopher in America believed that a State had the legal right to secede freely in peace.
    True, South Carolina did not subject its ordinance of secession to a plebiscite. Some Southern States did, although their plebiscite would not qualify under your criteria because they were undemocratic in that they did not allow women or Blacks to vote, but what State or country did allow women and Blacks to vote in the mid-nineteenth century? South Carolina’s secession convention was popularly elected to consider secession as were all the other secession conventions in the other Southern States. Even without a plebiscite, the support, sacrifice, and loyalty shown by a majority of the woman and Blacks of the South for the cause of Southern independence showed that secession did have popular support even among the disfranchised.
    If denying women and Blacks the right to vote is to deny legitimacy to political action, then the action undertaken by Lincoln and the North would have to be illegal because neither woman nor Blacks were allowed to vote for or against Lincoln or other Northern political leaders. In fact, following your theory that secession is illegal unless supported by a plebiscite in which women and Blacks are allowed to vote, the founding of the United States was (and remains) illegal and unacceptable. The secession of the colonies from Great Britain was not supported by any plebiscite. Not only were women and Blacks not allowed to vote on the question, but neither were white male property owners. To follow your democratic argument to its logical conclusion, everything that the United States did politically before 1920 was illegal because women did not have the right to vote.
    False, Lincoln did not wage war to end slavery. Midway through the war when ending slavery became politically expedient, he did issue his Emancipation Proclamation. However, not only did he not have any legal authority to issue the proclamation, he did not free a single slave with it. His proclamation proclaimed freedom to slaves in areas under the control of the Confederate army while excluding slaves in areas under the control of the Union army.
    Lincoln opposed secession by the Southern States for many of the same reasons that Gorbachev opposes secession by the Baltic States.  Both lusted for power and empire. Still, more important, both wanted the wealth of the seceding States. Lincoln said that he did not care if the Southern States seceded if the United States continued to collect the taxes (tariffs).
    The modern Baltic States came into being in 1917/1918 when they seceded, with the help of Germany, from the Russian Empire just like the Southern Confederation came into being when several Southern States seceded from the United States and then formed the Confederate States of America. During World War II, Russia conquered her lost provinces of the Baltic States and reincorporated them into the Soviet Union just like the United States conquered the Southern States and reincorporated them into the United States. After 1940, the Baltic States became conquered territories just like the Southern States after in 1865. The Baltic States had less of a legal right to secede in 1917-1918 than the Southern States had in 1860-1861. The Baltic States have just as much or just as little right to secede as the Southern States have today.
    If the United States were to support the Baltic States, they would have to admit, if they were at least slightly honest, that they were wrong in subjugating the Southern States in 1861–1865. The Southern States had (and still have) just as much right to leave the United States as the Baltic States have to leave the Soviet Union.
    Another reason that the United States offer no support to the Baltic States is quid pro quo. Russia supported the United States in their suppression of Southern independence. Now the United States can return the favor by supporting the Soviet Union in its suppression of Baltic independence.
    Perhaps the most important reason that the United States refuse to support the Baltic States drive for independence is that the official foreign policy of the United States has been since World War I, and still is, to support and expand communism and the Soviet Empire at all cost to freedom. [With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States have replaced their support of the Soviet Union with support of China and have made China an industrial giant.]
    The United States should show the Soviet Union and the rest of the world by example how to treat secession. They should let the Southern States create a free and independent confederation of free and independent Southern State and let them go in peace and friendship. Then the Soviet Union could learn how to let go of the Baltic States. All that the United States have shown the Soviet Union and the rest of the world is how to stifle freedom and independence by stifling secession. [As events turned out, the reverse is true. The Soviet Union allowed the Baltic States to secede in peace and friendship. Thus, it gave the United States the example to follow in the treatment of seceding States. Will the United States learn from the now-defunct Soviet Union about the proper treatment of secession?]
    Gorbachev is correct in claiming that he is acting like Lincoln. The argument that he is not acting like Lincoln is an untenable, unconvincing, and invalid argument. To admit that Lincoln was a despot and his suppression of Southern independence was tyrannical and to argue that when Gorbachev emulates Lincoln, he is nothing more than a despot copying Lincoln’s tyrannical methods, is much more tenable, cogent, and valid.

Copyright © 1990, 2019 by Thomas C. Allen.

More political articles.