The founding of a nation-state must decide where its powers belong. In a nation where the dichotomy of centralization and decentralization proponents exists it is confronted with black or white propositions that actually create shades of gray tugging on both trends.

 The United States Constitution was written to be a strongly centralist document with a smattering of decentralist characteristics. Some of the founding members thought that it lacked balance until the Bill of Rights satisfied their arguments against ratification.

 The powerful disembodied voice of Thomas Jefferson is often called upon to self-empower a group or a state to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…” and that “they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” Moreover, in 1816, Jefferson wrote, “I would rather the States should withdraw, which are for unlimited commerce and war, and confederate with those alone which are for peace and agriculture.”

 Yet, what the Declaration of Independence did was to trigger a breakdown of decentralization by convincing the separate colonies of the necessity of a strong union. As a consequence, in due course, an unequal balance of power existed between a strong centralized federate and states’ rights.

 When the Green Mountain citizens were still part of the New Hampshire Grants during the Revolutionary War, they were known to the British forces as the “most active and most rebellious race on the continent.” Subsequently, when Vermont broke away from the New York and New Hampshire colonies, it created its own sovereign nation in 1777 that remained as the “Vermont Republic” until 1791. Even so, Vermont was deemed the “reluctant republic” because too many Vermonters favored being part of the newly forming United States and wanted to be the “fourteenth star,” so much so, that when Ira Allen designed the Great Seal of Vermont it bore a “14 branched pine tree.”

 It was at the start of the Civil War when the Ordinance of Secession was drafted and ratified by the southern states that an American secessionist movement was put to the test. The question in southern states of whether or not a fair cross-section of opinions would unify the commitment to secede was the undoing of Virginia. Some opponents of Virginia secession wanted to remain in the union to preserve the legacy that Virginians played in the formation of the United States. Unionist delegates helped to defeat a motion to secede. However, after the capture of Fort Sumter by the North, Virginia then “voted to declare secession from the Union pending ratification of the decision by the voters.” Still, the voters in twenty-six western counties in Virginia rejected the approved referendum to secede that led to the creation of the state of West Virginia. West Virginia didn’t join and was not seated in the Confederacy.

 The post war road to disunion and secession had and has to this day difficulty overcoming the stigma of that ultimate national conflict between decentralists and centralists during the Civil War. Opponents of secession relate it to an awful, bloody national conflict so that the word “secession” has a quick turnoff feature.

 Whether or not the history of the Vermont Republic gives modern Vermonters an edge in any secessionist movement remains to be seen. In a state with separatist leaning tendencies the internal dialogue and defense of either centralization or decentralization is somewhat similar to the union of states it wishes to break away from. Therefore, keeping the peace after a successful secession can evolve to conflicting internal political and social processes.

 In any case, the 2007 annual Vermonters Poll at UVM “showed that thirteen percent of eligible voters in Vermont supported secession.” It’s likely that some of the “silenced” nonvoters may also favor secession. Moreover, the January 10, 2011 issue of Time Magazine named the “Second Vermont Republic” as one of the “Top 10 Aspiring Nations” in the world.

 Bent on “downsizing the USA,” and as foremost among secessionists’ states, does our Second Vermont Republic have anywhere near at hand the resources, the mobilizing power, to right the state of the unbalance of power that exists today?

 The powers, it turns out, belong to the legislature or any administrative body that sits at the voting pleasure of the community of people. Short of a rebellion, peaceful or not, the breakaway force needed to secure the confidence and support of a state majority to “decentralize” and, therefore, downsize the economic and political network that currently makes this state operational, is a remote possibility.

 Vermont is a good example where secession could break down, not unlike the effect that the Virginia secessionist referendum had on splitting its borders into Virginia and West Virginia. Vermont is a state with a top heavy population where the residential economy and political life is far more depended on a centralized structure to bring them necessary resources than a decentralized Southern Vermont might need.

 The picturesque jigsaw puzzle that makes up the pluralism of America is not sufficiently commodious to accommodate full-blown harmony. The people, the states and the federation are a shifting map that delineates a permanent state of civil strife. Even if a state seceded from the union the civil strife within that state continues by those in the state who were opposed to secession and the reasons behind it.

 What we have is a failure to secede. Not a single instance of modern secession has been successful. If the history of secession is going catch up with itself what we need is a daring act that can sustain itself to such a degree that it becomes the benchmark for other secessionists to follow. No such benchmark exists; such is the power of centralized domain and control.

 When any state is consensually and lawfully tied to a union of states who are guilty of oppression and unspeakable crimes against humanity does it have the moral prerogative to legally or otherwise break those bonds and create for themselves a new sovereignty? When does the first step to disunion become a reality?

Vidda Crochetta lives in the Wantastiquet river basin in Southern Vermont and is a historical novelist, poet, lyricist and opinion commentator for various print and online publications.