For argument's sake, say that the illegal immigration issue has not been resolved, and a majority of voters of states in the Southwest, feeling inundated and isolated, are moved by a demagogue with a rousing message of secession.
Crittenden strongly denounced secession in his annual messages to the legislature in 1848 and 1849.
If nothing else, Mr. Vallone said, a pro-secession vote "would send a strong message to New York State that they have to stop treating us like an unwanted stepchild".
Gordon-Reed points out that while the Lincoln-Hamlin ticket might have been considered geographically balanced in 1860, "having Johnson, the southern War Democrat, on the ticket sent the right message about the folly of secession and the continuing capacity for union within the country".
"After the one-two punch to our community from the recent casino and gas drilling decisions, my office received many emails, phone calls and messages from constituents calling for a Southern Tier secession from New York State," Republican State Senator Tom Libous, who represents the counties included in the secession effort, said in a statement to VICE.
Goodheart's exhilarating account leads us through the months between Abraham Lincoln's election to the presidency in 1860 — followed quickly by the secession of the Confederate States — and July 4, 1861, when Lincoln delivered his first message to Congress, laying out the case for war.
Five days after the shooting at Charleston's historic Emanuel AME church, the city's mayor, Joe Riley, said the presence of the Confederate battle flag in front of the statehouse "sends mixed messages" and that the symbol of a failed attempt at secession by the pro-slavery southern states should be relegated to "its appropriate historical context".
He defined withdrawal from Muhammad's coalition as ingratitude to or denial of God (the concept of kufr); thus he gave secession (riddah) cosmic significance as an act of apostasy punishable, according to God's revealed messages to Muhammad, by death.
They had been fighting for five years when, in 1994, the wily speaker of the State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, suddenly discovered that without a "home rule message" -- a formal request from the city -- the Legislature could not consider a secession bill.
Seward advised Johnson to state, in his first annual message to Congress, that southern states meet three conditions for readmission to the Union: repeal of secession, repudiation of the war debt incurred by the rebel governments, and ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.
