Grant defeated Lee, the Confederacy crumbled, and the idea of
secession disappeared forever, or at least that's what the conventional
wisdom says. Secession is no historical irrelevance. Quite the contrary,
the topic is integral to classical liberalism. Indeed, the right of
secession follows at once from the basic rights defended by classical
liberalism. As even Macaulay's schoolboy knows, classical liberalism
begins with the principle of self-ownership: each person is the rightful
owner of his or her own body. Together with this right, according to
classical liberals from Locke to Rothbard, goes the right to appropriate
unowned property.
In this view, government occupies a strictly ancillary role. It
exists to protect the rights that individuals possess independently — it
is not the source of these rights. As the Declaration of Independence
puts it, "to secure these rights [life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from consent of the governed."
