SECESSION OR DEATH!
VERMONT REPUBLIC TRIES TO PERSERVE THEIR HOMELAND

By: Sean Scallon

There's a lot of talk about secession in the aftermath of the recent presidential election. Much of it is just that, talk. But if there was a place that could potentially secede from the U.S. it is Vermont. Is this because the Green Mountain State voted 60 percent for John Kerry? No. It's because from 1777 to 1791, Vermont took its place among the nations of the world.

Born out of the struggle between New York and New Hampshire over the mountainous lands between them, the residents of what was then called New Hampshire Grants, declared its independence from both the British crown and the domineering control of New York, which was granted dominion over the area by edict from King George III in 1764. Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys, hence the French name Vermont, provided muscle to that declaration by capturing Ft. Ticonderoga. John Stark's men made sure it stuck when his forces routed those of British General John Burgoyne at Bennington, foreshadowing Burgoyne's ultimate defeat Saratoga that changed the fortunes of the American Revolution.

Vermont ratified the Constitution in 1791 to prevent the state from being swallowed up by New York. If self-preservation influenced the state's decision then to give up its independence, it's that same spirit that motivates a new group determined to reverse what happened.

The Second Vermont Republic (www.vermontrepublic.org) does not plan to run candidates in the next election nor become a political action committee. What it does intend to do is to educate the citizens of the state of their unique status of one-time independence in the past and their potential for uniqueness in the future, whether as an independent republic or not.

We're more of a movement than we are a political party," Thomas Naylor, head of the Second Vermont Republic said. "We're certainly not going to be running candidates any time soon. We're about education. Abraham Lincoln did a number on secession whether it was to wrongly declare it unconstitutional, make it politically unfeasible or to say that a small place like Vermont can't survive economically by itself. We want to change all that thinking that will ultimately lead us down the road where they day comes when town meetings across the state vote in favor of resolutions calling for secession from the United States and the state legislature calls a statewide convention to consider secession."

Such an education will include the real Ethan Allen, Vermont nationalist, selfish individualist or American patriot all in one, alongside the debate on whether Allen wanted Vermont to join the U.S., be independent or join with Canada. It also will include facts such as Vermont sending delegates to the Hartford Convention in 1815, or in 1858 Vermont was one of a dozen states that nullified the Fugitive Slave Act by refusing to allow its public officials to arrest runaway slaves.

Vermont was made from scratch. We were never a colony," Naylor said. "That's our heritage and we have to promote it. We have a big education job ahead of us and we're barely a year old. What we also hope to see is pro-secession or pro-decentralization efforts from us to more active grassroots political organizations."

If so, then the Second Vermont Republic has already had big impact in a year's time. The group's Middlebury Declaration, its written goals for Vermont independence drafted during a meeting of the group in November of 2004, has been cited in several foreign publications, particularly in Quebec where prominent play in the leading French opinion magazine LaDevoir and the CBC in Montreal allowed the group to establish contact with Bloc Quebecois and Parti' Québécois pro-secession parties from Canada. A write-up in The Nation has produced interest from around the country and, unsolicited according to Naylor, statements of intent from leftists to move to Vermont. It has spun off efforts by grassroots activists to make Vermont's Independence Day, which is Jan. 15, 1775, into a statewide holiday and to put a resolution before the spring 2005 town meetings to call for all Vermont National Guard troops to be removed from Iraq.

But to those who think this is going to be some leftist Eden declaring itself independent, Naylor will happily point out that while Kerry did indeed carry Vermont overwhelmingly, the conservative Republican governor Jim Douglas and lieutenant governor Brian Dubie won re-election, also with 60 percent of the vote. What the Second Vermont Republic comes down to, even if secession doesn't take place, is seeking an answer the question, what is the best way to preserve this unique place      .

Vermonters see themselves as unique and Vermont as a place shows the world that small is beautiful. One can live happily in a place with small churches, small towns and small businesses," Naylor said. "And yet, the National Register for Historic Places says the whole state is on an endangered list thanks to creeping development. We held off Wal-Mart for a number of years and yet that pressure for development combined with the Interstate Commerce Clause and other statutes make it hard for a state to preserve itself as it wishes to. That's why secession may be the only way out to preserve what we have. But we also have to realize that there are four Wal-Marts here, not just one. There is obviously a demand for them in this state and that's why the education aspect to the Second Vermont Republic is so important to get our residents to realize who and what they are hurting when they shop there."

Carl Horowitz, a public policy researcher who used to work for the Heritage Foundation and the Investor's Business Daily  described Vermont in an article on VDARE.com as "…the American future that might have happened." that suburban sprawl and unlimited immigration practically ruined. For those who the state is nothing more than a hippie hell, do not recognize the growing "granola conservatism," movement described by Ron Dreher in a Sept. 30, 2002 article in National Review, much of its language lifted from the pages of Chronicles magazine and is incorporated to certain extents in movements like the League of the South and the Free State Project. There are actually conservatives and libertarians who actually wish to conserve things and set down their root in within a small place to call their own. This fits in nicely with the Second Vermont's Republic's credo given in The Middlebury Declaration which I posted in an article on this site.

Indeed, the new politics out there isn't really left or right so much as it about time and space. The divisions within that politics are those believe that American future is about empire and global democracy and interdependence, and those who see the future in the little places they call home and preserving time honored values and traditions of the little place.

Just like Vermont.

"Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact."

Sean Scallon is a freelance writer and newspaper reporter who lives in Arkansaw, Wisconsin. His work has appeared in Chronicles: A magazine of American Culture. He is a regular columnist for Ether Zone.

Sean Scallon can be reached at: pchsports@rivertowns.net

Published in the December 29, 2004 issue of  Ether Zone.
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