After looking at Washington, the Father of Our Country, one must now look at the man who wrote the document that so profoundly set the groundwork of this nation and stated the ideals that the United States was to be founded upon.
Many who claim secession to be a right claim that Thomas Jefferson set the basis secession and that it has been a part of American political tradition since the beginning. However, those who attempt to give credence to this argument do a great disservice to Jefferson, and propogate what at best can be described only as a half truth.
The United States was indeed founded on the basis of secession, for that is exactly what the thirteen American colonies did: they seceeded from the British Empire, declaring themselves to be a free and independent people, free of what they saw as a tyrannical government 3,000 miles away in which they had not an ounce of representation. However, this is where the similarities between the Revolutionary era and the Civil War decade come to an end. Where Jefferson gave credence to secession, he set specific parameters for it. In the Declaration of Independence, he states that "whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these Ends [liberty], it is the Right of the People to alter it or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and Happiness."
So, when a form of government becomes destructive to liberty, then secession is allowable. But Jefferson would not be one to use it as a first resort, but more as a last, fail safe option. In the case of a repressive government, when all other options have been tried and have failed, it is okay. But what if it is just a matter of political disagreements and partisan strife? Would Jefferson had said that okay, since there isn't any agreement, nor is there likely to be, is secession a viable option? It can be posited that no, he would not have said that secession was an acceptible recourse of action. He made this quite clear in a letter to John Taylor of Caroline in 1798.
Taylor, a prominent Virginia politician, had written a letter to Jefferson, voicing his frustration over the success of the New England and the recent passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts. In his frustration, he makes the suggestion that Virginia and North Carolina should secede from the Union and throw off the yoke of New England. Jefferson writes back, admonishing Taylor and urging caution. He says that in a "free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties [i.e Republicans and Federalists] and violent dissension and discords; and one of these...must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time...But if on a temporary superiority of one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no federal government can ever exist." To put it simply, Jefferson is saying that party system is a natural result of a republican form of government, and if because one party is more powerful than another, it is no reason for the lesser party to threaten to leave and form its own country. To split the Union because of party differences was to show the world that the great experiment in self government had been a total failure. Jefferson uses the idea of common heritage, just as Washington does, to get his point across. In his First Inaugural, he says that "every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists."
So, how would Jefferson have handled secession? Jefferson was the first president to have this thrown at him, when debate over the Louisiana Purchase caused threats of secession from the New England states. To anwer this question, one need only look once more at his First Inaugural, when he said that if there were "any among us who wish to dissolve the Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it." Jefferson, it seems would try to talk to those disunionists, and try to reason with them to get them back into the Union. Jefferson was, after all, an idealist, so he was not one to use forceful coercion in order to get a person or a group of persons to see things his way.
Jefferson saw American as having been built upon the idea of political liberty and the right of the people to voice their dissent if they wanted to. He was not for the suppression of ideas, and he would not, without just cause or provocation, try to force anyone back into the Union. We will never know how he would have handled secession if it had happened, because the threats that were made during his time as Chief Executive were empty and came to nothing. But he would not have stood idly by, that is for certain. Secession, in Jefferson's mind, was only a last resort option, one to be taken only when all other recourse had been attempted. Jefferson, like Washington, believed in the efficacy of the Union.
Next: James Madison
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