It's been a matter of settled law, ever since the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Texas v. White in 1869, that individual U.S. states don’t have the right to secede from the nation. But that hasn't stopped grandstanding state politicians, and occasionally even sitting governors, from riling up locals with talk of independence:
It happened in Alaska in the 1990s, in Texas at the height of Tea Party infl...uence, in California and Oregon today. Let's visit a town in New York that decided to secede from the Union in 1861… and then forgot to rejoin for more than 80 years.
The Confederacy was eleven states—and one extra town.
Town Line, New York is a peaceful little hamlet on the outskirts of Buffalo, less than twenty miles from the Canadian border. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, as eleven Southern states seceded to join the Confederacy, the men of Town Line met at the schoolhouse and voted 80-45 that—hey, why not?—they would secede from the United States as well.
No one is sure why this random New York village, hundreds of miles from the Mason-Dixon Line, would throw its lot in with the South. Town Line owned no slaves, obviously; most residents were German immigrants who knew no Southerners and had voted for Abraham Lincoln just months before. The Buffalo News speculated that maybe there was friction with slaves passing through on the Underground Railroad, but no one really knows for sure.
The Civil War dragged into the twentieth century in Town Line.
The Confederacy (spoiler alert!) lost the Civil War, and there is no record of either side taking any notice whatsoever of Town Line's little act of rebellion—which had no legal standing anyway, as the town, then as now, wasn't even incorporated. In 1946, a local newspaper revived the story, and the town had to admit that it had never reversed its vote. Telegrams poured in from across the country, and even President Truman wryly advised the town to hold a big barbecue in hopes of convincing the "the dissidents…to resume citizenship."
The "Last of the Rebels" finally surrender… to Cesar Romero.
On January 24, 1946, the resident of Town Line voted 90 to 23 to end its 85-year protest, in an election overseen, for promotional purposes, by Hollywood actor Cesar Romero. After the vote, the town lowered its Confederate flag for the last time. But the "Stars and Bars" stayed on the uniform of the town fire department, which called itself "The Last of the Rebels," for decades—until 2011, when the town changed the seal and finally erased the last traces of its bizarre rebel past.
Town Line, New York is a peaceful little hamlet on the outskirts of Buffalo, less than twenty miles from the Canadian border. At the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, as eleven Southern states seceded to join the Confederacy, the men of Town Line met at the schoolhouse and voted 80-45 that—hey, why not?—they would secede from the United States as well.
No one is sure why this random New York village, hundreds of miles from the Mason-Dixon Line, would throw its lot in with the South. Town Line owned no slaves, obviously; most residents were German immigrants who knew no Southerners and had voted for Abraham Lincoln just months before. The Buffalo News speculated that maybe there was friction with slaves passing through on the Underground Railroad, but no one really knows for sure.
The Civil War dragged into the twentieth century in Town Line.
The Confederacy (spoiler alert!) lost the Civil War, and there is no record of either side taking any notice whatsoever of Town Line's little act of rebellion—which had no legal standing anyway, as the town, then as now, wasn't even incorporated. In 1946, a local newspaper revived the story, and the town had to admit that it had never reversed its vote. Telegrams poured in from across the country, and even President Truman wryly advised the town to hold a big barbecue in hopes of convincing the "the dissidents…to resume citizenship."
The "Last of the Rebels" finally surrender… to Cesar Romero.
On January 24, 1946, the resident of Town Line voted 90 to 23 to end its 85-year protest, in an election overseen, for promotional purposes, by Hollywood actor Cesar Romero. After the vote, the town lowered its Confederate flag for the last time. But the "Stars and Bars" stayed on the uniform of the town fire department, which called itself "The Last of the Rebels," for decades—until 2011, when the town changed the seal and finally erased the last traces of its bizarre rebel past.
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