David Densmore, who is a mechanic, helped establish the Southern Party. The Southern Party is part of an increasingly popular movement toward states' rights and the creation of a separate Southern nation. RON COCKERILLE/STAFF

Secessionist ideas gaining support

Web posted June 4, 2000

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By Margaret N. O'Shea
South Carolina Bureau

NORTH AUGUSTA - Secession is not for people who require instant gratification.

North Augusta mechanic David Densmore said he thinks about that sometimes as he works on the innards of the big rigs that put collards and grits on his table, occasionally smiling as he lifts the hood of one with a Rebel flag on the grill.

A year ago, he was on the exploratory committee for the Southern Party, which was officially born in Asheville, N.C.,in August with the goal of electing secessionists to state and local office. A longer-range goal is to send secessionists to Congress, where they can work for a separate South.

Party members like to hope they won't be part of the United States much longer.

But Mr. Densmore is not a member of the Southern Party, which is organizing with varied degrees of success in 17 states. The party's also getting mixed reviews among members of the League of the South, from which the new political party sprang. When League founder Michael Hill announced he probably will run for governor of Alabama, he didn't specify a party label at all. Neither did John Thomas Krepps, chairman of the League in Mississippi, when he announced his bid for governor there.

And the fledgling party already has been torn by power struggles.

Mr. Densmore said he still strongly believes that electing like-minded people to state and local office is crucial to creating the climate for independence from an overbearing federal government. His primary reason for not jumping aboard?

``South Carolina makes it too difficult to get on the ballot,'' he said. ``I'm just not convinced that the Southern Party is the way to go if we expect to have a Southern nation in our lifetime or our children's lifetime.''

In general, ``the South is easily the worst place in the country for ballot access to minor parties,'' according to Richard Winger of San Francisco, who publishes Ballot Access News, but, ``South Carolina is one of the kindest states in the Union.''

A minor party in the state needs 10,000 signatures to get on the ballot, but once those signatures are validated, the party can stay on the ballot if it runs one candidate every four years.

For Mr. Densmore, it would be tougher had he stayed in Mount Olive, Ala., instead of following a pastor he liked to a church in Belvedere in 1976. In Alabama, the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot is 3 percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election. To stay on the ballot, the party would have to get 20 percent of the vote.

Georgia's rules for getting on the ballot are ``the toughest in the country'' - so tough that in 57 years with that law on the books, no minor party candidate has ever run for Congress, Mr. Winger said. Georgia is more lenient when it comes to statewide offices, but a candidate for Congress has to get 25,000 signatures from within the district. In urban areas, signatures often are invalid because ``district lines are wiggly, and people don't always know what district they live in.''

A bill to change the system passed the House this year but was killed in a Senate committee.

The broader issue is what being on the ballot can accomplish, said J. David Gillespie, author of Politics at the Periphery: Third Parties in Two-Party America.

Getting votes

On the Web Read more about the Southern Party, its platform and goals, and The Asheville Declaration, which explains why it was formed, at www.southernparty.org. Find out more about secession in the United States and other countries by linking to the Global Devolution page at www.dixienet.org. The site also can take you to the League of the South's home page and the Declaration of Southern Cultural Independence.

Emotional debate over the meaning of a Confederate flag on South Carolina's Capitol dome and a similar controversy looming over the Rebel symbol in neighboring Georgia's state flag have galvanized people on both sides of the issue.

``I suspect there is enough secession sentiment in South Carolina and Georgia that a candidate on the Southern Party ticket could get 10 percent of the vote,'' said Dr. Gillespie, a political science professor at Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C. ``They could probably get 10 or 15 percent of the votes for a governor, which could have significant impact on whether a Republican or a Democrat won. In fact, the major parties would argue that a third-party vote is worse than a vote thrown away. They'd say it's a vote for the enemy - the candidate whose views are furthest from your own.''

Virgil Huston of Johnston, who also was on the Southern Party exploratory committee, agrees that ``it's virtually impossible to get anywhere with a third party.''

``Look at the Libertarians,'' he said. ``They never manage to get more than 2 percent of the vote.''

He's throwing his efforts into ``No Votes for Turncoats'' and the embryonic South Carolina Independent Party - not intended to run candidates for office but to swing votes to defeat or elect specific candidates running under other party labels.

No Votes for Turncoats is an all-out war against lawmakers who recently voted to take down the Confederate flags from the Statehouse dome and chambers of the House and Senate on July 1. Initiated by the state League of the South, it's attracting a coalition of flag devotees with vengeance on its mind.

The South Carolina Independent Party will be broader-based. Because it won't stress secession, it's expected to draw disenchanted Republicans and others who believe ``nobody really represents us,'' Mr. Huston said.

Unique South

Rebecca Barbour, a tour guide at Middleton Plantation in Charleston, was one of those disenchanted Republicans before she joined the Southern Party and became its provisional South Carolina chairwoman.

``While I do not have any fundamental problems with the (Republican) Party's platform, the reality of the situation is that they back candidates who do not adhere to that platform,'' she said. ``This is true on all levels - national, state and local. I then looked into the Constitution Party - good platform and good candidates, but they are under the misguided notion that the federal government can be reformed. I believe that corruption runs so deep and the bureaucracy is so thick that reform, if possible, would take decades or longer.

``More importantly, even a reformed federal government cannot address the needs of the unique Southern culture. Therefore, peaceful, legal secession seems to be the most logical solution. Can this be possible in my lifetime? It may not be possible in my college-student son's lifetime unless some situation occurs in this country that serves as a catalyst that causes people to suddenly wake up and acknowledge the realities of our present society and they begin to understand how far from the intents of our founding fathers we have really strayed.''

Clyde Wilson, a history professor at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, says ``nothing could be more obvious than that vast numbers of Americans are disgusted with the two-party system.''

``Somewhat more than half of them don't vote at all, and the last two presidential elections were won with 40 percent or less of the minority that did vote,'' he said. ``The system is not responding to the great mass of decent middle Americans. There is room for a maverick movement as has happened a number of times before in U.S. history.

``The difference now is that the two parties have rigged the laws so as to practically exclude competition. Both parties are exactly alike on every issue that matters to me - and both are against me.''

He cites immigration, abortion, multiculturalism, the need for decentralization of power in education ``and everything else,'' debt reduction and foreign interventionism - issues that also concern millions of voters who never considered secession as a solution.

``While there are good people everywhere, only in the South is there still a potential majority for a conservative policy and rollback of the federal government,'' said Dr. Wilson, who also is a co-founder of the League of the South.

``Do I believe there is a prospect for secession in my lifetime? I don't know. .ƒ.ƒ. The future always has surprises. I do know two things: The only way our overgrown and dangerous federal government will ever be restrained is by a return to states' rights, and states' rights can be enforced only when backed by a right and a will to secession.''

Wave of the future

If those ideas sound wild-eyed nearly 140 years after the South tried and failed to secede from the Union, they are widespread nonetheless.

For the past eight years, the Southern Focus Polls collected by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have asked whether the South would be better off as a separate nation if that could be achieved peacefully. Between 8 and 16 percent of Southerners have agreed in the various polls, and up to 9 percent of non-Southerns agreed.

When the Southern Focus Polls asked Southerners whether they would oppose secession, 7 percent said they would not. While the number sounds small, it's close to the 8 percent of people in Quebec supporting independence when the Parti Quebecois began agitating for it in 1962. By 1976, 40 percent favored independence, and in 1995, 49.4 percent voted for it.

In this country, Alaska and Hawaii both have thriving movements to be independent, and the Alaskan Independent Party has helped elect a governor, a lieutenant governor and several others. The party platform advocates separation from what Alaskans call ``the lower 48.''

California, New England, upstate New York and parts of the Northwest have secession movements under way. And the Committee of 50 States, based in Utah, is urging the states to adopt a timed-secession resolution. If three-quarters approve, ``The Ultimate Resolution'' would take effect if the federal debt reaches a predetermined ``intolerable'' level, and the U.S. government would be dissolved.

The theory is that taxpayers have the right to get rid of an economically inefficient government that does not serve their interests.

Another word for it is ``devolution,'' or decentralization of power, and globally it's played well in Scotland, Wales, Quebec and the former Soviet Union, among other sites.

That's why Dr. Wilson calls it ``the wave of the future.'' He said, ``I think most people tend to think of the past'' when talk turns to secession, ``but this really is kind of a forward-looking thing.''

The irony is that Americans applaud efforts toward self-determination in other countries but might view them on the home front as treason, say secessionists, many of who like to confound critics with a favorite quote:

``Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize and make their own so much of the territory as they inhabit.''

Who said it? Abraham Lincoln in 1848, a dozen years before 13 Southern states seceded.

Texan George Kalas of Houston, who maintains the Southern Party's Web site, has another line he likes to use: ``Lincoln was wrong. A house divided will stand. It's called a duplex.''

Reach Margaret N. O'Shea at (803) 279-6895 or scbureau@augustachronicle.com.