There were three independence movements in America prior to the War to Prevent Southern Independence (1861-1865).  The American Revolution was a war of secession to gain independence from the British empire.  The New England Federalists plotted to secede from the union beginning with the Jefferson presidency (1801) and culminating with their Hartford Secession Convention of 1814 where in the end they decided to remain in the union, confident that New Englanders could control and dominate it (and they of course were right).

A mostly forgotten independence movement is the 1850s secession movements in “the middle states” – New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland – where there was a widespread desire to secede from the Washington, D.C. empire.  (See William C. Wright, The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States).  These states contained secessionists who wanted to join a Southern confederacy, form their own confederacy of states, and to just allow the South to secede in peace.  New Jersey had the largest secession movement, followed by New York City and New York state’s Hudson Valley.

The most popular position was to allow the Southern states to secede in peace, giving the lie to the refrain by “mainstream” historians that there was “unity” in the North regarding the invasion of the South in 1861.  Edward Everett, the vice presidential candidate of the Constitutional Union Party in 1860, said that “To expect to hold fifteen States in the Union by force is preposterous . . . too monstrous to be entertained for a moment.”

The majority of Maryland’s state assembly favored peaceful secession but in1861 the Lincoln regime imprisoned all of them, thereby prohibiting them from meeting to discuss the issue of peaceful secession.  At the time most Marylanders believed that forcing a state at gunpoint to remain in the union and governed by Washington, D.C. would destroy the founders’ concept of a voluntary union.

Fernando Wood, the mayor of New York City at the time, wanted the city to secede from the state and the U.S. and become a free trade zone.  (The Republican party, on the other hand, wanted to increase the average tariff rate from 15% to the 50% range).  The New York state legislature issued a resolution on January 31, 1861 condemning the use of force to force the Southern states to remain in the union.  Horatio Seymour, a former governor of New York, supported the creation of an independent “Central Confederacy” that would also secede from the Washington, D.C. empire.  New York Times editor Henry J. Raymond favored peaceful secession as did New York Tribune editor Horace Greeley.

Pennsylvania being a steel industry state, the Republican party there was strongly protectionist and pro-Lincoln, but the state Democratic party supported peaceful secession.  William C. Wright wrote that “The leadership of the [Pennsylvania] Democratic Party as well as most of its rank and file favored a policy of no coercion.”

New Jersey, “more than any of the other five Middle Atlantic states, said William C. Wright, supported the creation of a Central Confederacy” and its congressional delegation supported peaceful secession of the Southern states, as did a large majority of the state’s newspapers.

Delaware had strong support for a Central Confederacy as well, but Lincoln ordered the Federal army to occupy the state and, as with Maryland, prevent the state legislature from discussing the issue.  The “First State” was prevented from declaring the union to be voluntary under threat of bombardment by its own federal government.

What all of this shows is that: Secession was the very principle of the American Revolution; the New England Federalists, led by George Washington’s Secretary of State Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts,  understood this when they strategized over and plotted peaceful secession for thirteen years; at the outset of the War to Prevent Southern Independence everyone understood the union to be voluntary and not coerced, as with the twentieth century Soviet Union.

Lincoln dreamed up a new and ahistorical view of the American constitution and forced his view on the country at gunpoint.  His theory, as summarized by legal scholar James Ostrowski, is as follows:

1. No state may ever secede from the Union for any reason.
2. If any state attempts to secede, the federal government shall invade such a state with sufficient military force to suppress the secession.
3. The federal government may require all states to raise militias to be used to suppress the seceding state (or states).
4. After suppressing the secession, the federal government may rule by martial law until such time as the state accepts permanent federal supremacy.
5. After the secession is suppressed, the federal government may force the states to adopt new state constitutions imposed upon them by federal military authorities.
6. The president may, on his own authority and without consulting any other branch of government, suspend the Bill of Rights and the writ of Habeas Corpus.

If conservative self-proclaimed constitutionalists believe that all of this is constitutional, then they obviously possess a different constitutional document than you and I do.  Moreover, the reason why all of the above is essentially a forgotten part of American history is that it flatly contradicts the Official History concocted by the victors after the War to Prevent Southern Independence.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/07/thomas-dilorenzo/americas-forgotten-independence-movement