Counting on ‘safety in the voice of the people’

“A Meeting of the citizens of Forsyth County, irrespective of party, will be held… to take counsel together on the alarming condition of the country.

“South Carolina has seceded from the Union. Commissioners from Alabama and Mississippi are now at our State capital inviting North Carolina to do the same thing. A great question is now before the people — no less than Union or Disunion.

“Believing that there is safety in the voice of the people, all our fellow-citizens, without regard to party, are earnestly invited to attend.”

(signed) MANY PEOPLE

— From a placard announcing “Public Meeting at Winston…On December 29th, 1860” 

Such apprehension about secession wasn’t unique to these “MANY PEOPLE.” North Carolina would become the last state to join the Confederacy, reluctantly seceding on May 20, 1861.

 

Obama re-election re-energizes N.C. secessionists

“We petition the Obama administration to:

“Peacefully grant the State of North Carolina to withdraw from the United States and create its own NEW government….”

— From We the People: Your Voice in Our Government

At last check, North Carolina was one of 21 states to have post-11/6 secession petitions listed on the White House’s We the People site.  The North Carolina petition has attracted 18,082 signatures  — still far behind the total for the former Lone Star Republic.

I was surprised how many of these petitions have attracted support from nonresidents. Are they hardcore expats, who have changed their addresses but not their state loyalties? Or might they be of the “Better Off Without ‘Em” school?