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A couple of months ago, @zeke5123 started a discussion about secession and the right to self-determination, and suggested that such a right was likely contingent, rather than absolute. In response, I wrote an analysis of the most famous writing on the topic of secession...and then posted it just after the following week's CW thread went live, which was very poor planning on my part. I hope the following is sufficiently interesting to justify a repost.
I've remarked before that I think the American Revolution should be more properly understood as an example of secession, not revolution. After all, the most famous document promulgating and defending the American position is the Declaration of Independence, and the choice of title is appropriate.
The part that comes before the famous "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." is the following:
This is a document about secession and self-determination. Next is the really famous bit (I'm adding numbers in brackets to highlight an internal list):
A clear statement of fundamental principles, but one key point later on is that Jefferson isn't claiming that these principles are a departure from English tradition, but that the Crown has been egregiously violating English tradition. The list doesn't end at three items:
"Alter or abolish" covers many potential approaches, from reform to secession to complete revolution. Which approach is justified in which cases?
This, I think, is the start of the answer to your question--the right of self-determination in terms of fully reforming/seceding/revolting must reach a threshold of severity in terms of provocation. The reasons matter, and the weight of tradition matters. "Light and transient causes" are not enough, and so:
When there is a longstanding pattern of abuse aimed at fundamental liberties, some variation of reform/secession/revolution is justified, and even morally compulsory. Note that Jefferson is not merely concerned with rejecting the old, abusive system, but also the necessity of replacing the old system with a new government that will properly "secure these rights." He is justifying a transition from a very bad system to a better system--tearing down the old and stopping at anarchy is not acceptable.
What follows is a bill of particulars, listing the offenses of the British Crown according to Jefferson, which amount to "a long train of abuses and usurpations...evinc[ing] a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism...." The details of this list are instructive, but outside the scope of this comment. After the list, Jefferson argues that the leadership of the American States has done its due diligence, and tried to fix the situation by attempts at reform, before proceeding to secession:
We have appealed to both the Crown and the British People for redress; neither provided it. As a result, we're walking away from this toxic relationship, but we're not going to kill your cat out of spite--we just want to go our own way. Note that Jefferson doesn't merely say that the behavior of the British Crown has been grievously bad, but that the American representatives have been particularly patient and prudent--there's an implied standard of conduct for the secessionists that continues in the final paragraph:
Jefferson wraps up with the final requirement for secessionists who are doing things correctly--you need to make your case. Not just that the suffered abuses have been so terrible, but also that you've tried lesser means and are only escalating when those means have failed, and that your judgment and restraint are being offered for consideration to both "the Supreme Judge of the world" and "the opinions of mankind." Are your reasons sufficient, or just "light and transient causes"? Do you have a plan for self-government, such that you can responsibly join the community of "Independent States"? Have you "Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms" and are you confident in the "rectitude of [y]our intentions"?
Any secessionist or revolutionary worth their salt will answer yes to those questions with confidence--such is human nature. But Jefferson clearly isn't claiming that 'we've investigated our own motives, and found them acceptable,' he's appealing to God and man to be his judges.
In my view, Jefferson adequately makes his case as to the justice of the American secession from Britain. I think other secessionary movements are a mixed bag--some meet the various thresholds of behavior and others do not. In this framework, there isn't an unfettered "right to self determination" by a given identifiable subgroup of a larger political unit, but extreme cases may present a duty to reform an abusive government, or seceed from it, or overthrow it.
I am strongly in favor of secession rights in principle, but as usual the real world is messy and complicated. In practice, if territory B secedes from territory A, territory B will then usually contain a subset of people who never wanted to secede from territory A to begin with but were overruled either through voting or through violence. The loyalists during the American Revolution, for example, who were sometimes violently persecuted. Or pro-Spanish-unity people in Catalonia. Etc.
One might also question the morality of, say, a territory that was a net benefactor of federal aid for years then seceding without making up for it by paying for what it had gained through its previous association with the rest of the country.
These are issues in which what is right and what is wrong is very complicated and reasonable people can disagree.
Certainly, though, the anti-secession argument against the US South during the Civil War has never made sense to me. The South was just doing the same thing that the 13 colonies had done 80 years ago. Yet it is pretty common in online arguing to see people say some version of "they were traitors who tried to break up the Union and they got what was coming to them". Which is just silly given how the US got started to begin with, unless the person making the argument is fine with also condemning the American Revolution, which they usually don't seem to do for some reason.
Well, yes, that's the argument that secession is never justified, which Jefferson rejects. What I'm claiming here is that the question isn't solvable at the meta level--you must engage with the object-level dispute concerning why this group wants to secede from the larger polity.
Jefferson's bill of particulars (the section that I skipped past, but is available in the link to the original) bears a remarkable and not-at-all-accidental similarity to the provisions of the Bill of Rights. When the early Americans were debating whether to ratify the Constitution, which would create a more centralized authority than that created by the Articles of Confederation, a common concern was avoiding the abuses of the previous system under the British Crown. Each of the first eight Amendments instructs the new federal government that it is not allowed to abuse the people in the following ways, which were all things that the Founders had suffered in living memory. The Bill of Rights isn't a random collection of priorities generated by philosophical musing, but a set of very practical, real-world concerns during that period.
At the object level, the American Revolution was about whether comprehensive and systemic violations of what later became the Bill of Rights was sufficient to justify secession.
Also at the object level, the American Civil War was about whether actual or potential violations of Southerners' right to own slaves was sufficient to justify secession.
If the argument above is correct, and justified secession is contingent on the object-level dispute, then I see no inconsistency in describing the secessionary movement that gave rise to the American Revolution as justified, and the secessionary movement that gave rise to the American Civil War as not justified. In my view, this is an easy call, though different people may form their own opinions as they wish.
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