ABSTRACT
The United States of America became the first modern nation-state born of secession when it broke off from the British Empire in the 1770s, and it came near to being the first to die of secession nearly a century later. The example of the American Revolution was important, for it was a breakaway colonial rebellion led by people who shared with the ‘mother country’ common traditions of language, religion, law, and custom. It was essentially over conflicts of material interest, which originated in rather mundane disputes over the right to tax and the prerogatives of local government. All of this was, of course, justified by much broader Enlightenment principles of natural rights and the right of a people to govern itself and enjoy sovereignty as an independent nation-state. Though the specific list of grievances, the ‘long train of abuses’ in Jefferson’s words, were particular to the American situation, the Declaration of Independence issued in 1776 became a template for hundreds of similar separatist movements ever since (Armitage 2007). It was essentially this formula that the southern states adapted to their rebellion in the 1860s.
