How many secessionists are there?

By Thomas Naylor

posted May 12, 2006

The 2006 Vermonter Poll recently conducted by the Center for Rural Studies at the University of Vermont indicates that the percentage of eligible Vermont voters who favor secession from the United States could very well be the highest in the nation.

Secession is nothing new to Vermont. On January 15, 1815, less than 25 years after Vermont became the fourteenth state, it joined other New England states in signing the report of the Hartford Convention in opposition to the proposal of the Secretary of War to implement a military draft for continuing the badly mismanaged War of 1812 with England. This report was nothing less than a declaration of the right to secede.

In 1928 and 1929, a quirky little Vermont literary magazine known as The Driftwind published a series of tongue-in-cheek articles by Arthur Patton Wallace and Vermont Country Store founder Vrest Orton calling for Vermont independence. According to Orton, the purpose of such a movement would be “to constitute an Arcadia for persons of free thought, active mind, high standards, and aspirations and cultural imagination.” Orton even drafted “A Declaration of Independence for Vermont.” Chicago-based economist David Hale, who grew up in St. Johnsbury, also called for Vermont independence in a 1973 epic in The Stowe Reporter, which won an award from the New England Press Association.

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