At the risk of turning this into a one-note blog, I refer you to this book review in the WSJ about another alleged secession effort:
Such is the legend of what became known as the “Free State of Jones,” a county deep in Mississippi’s piney woods. The area was one of many pockets in the state where dissatisfaction with the Confederacy boiled for much of the war, but only Jones County was elevated by folklore, especially in the decades after the war, into a scene of noble rebellion.
Reviewer Michael Ballard, a Civil War historian, gives The State of Jones a mixed opinion, asserting Jones County wasn’t so much an independent state with an organized government as it was a rag-tag concentration of Confederate deserters.
But it begs the question: Why are American autonomy movements in the news so much? Apparently in a world of recession, socialized industry, central planning, and overreaching presidencies, secessionism is hot.
