Description

E pluribus unum was suggested for the national seal in 1776 but national oneness has been haunted by its opposite ever since We Are Not One People demonstrates how the persistence of separatist movements in American history reveals as much about the nations politics as it does the wouldbe separatists Each chapter explores how great swaths of Americans of every ideological stripe in good times and bad in and beyond the South have disputed the nations oneness and stressed its divisibility Trumpeted in American myths mottos movies and songs separatism is omnipresent in American political culture Separatist rhetoric has shaped Americans experience of what it means to be an American and we can learn much about the durable appeal and enduring fragility of the United States from those who tried to leave it As one Vermont separatist quips leaving is as American as apple pie

We Are Not One People is a bold pathbreaking and farreaching account of disunionists from 1776 to the present who wanted as phrased in the Declaration of Independence to dissolve the political bands connecting them to other Americans