Cathy Seith, The Associated Press Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, has called on legislatures in the South to convene secession conventions.

Presidential gridlock cheers secessionists
Old South patriots: U.S. separatists see crisis as opportunity to revive movement

Jan Cienski
National Post

WASHINGTON - The nasty spat between would-be presidents over the Florida vote may be distressing many Americans, but some are greeting the political gridlock with glee -- seeing it as the harbinger of the collapse of the United States and the recreation of the Confederacy.

"The disgusting spectacle of the two major parties snarling over the red-meat presidential prize like a couple of mad dogs has made the nation the laughing stock of the international community," reads a statement from the Southern Independence Party. "Now is the time to cast them aside in the South."

Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, has called on legislatures in the South to convene secession conventions, the same type of gatherings that set off the U.S. Civil War in 1861.

"We say a pox on both their houses," Mr. Hill said of both the Republicans and Democrats. "If this isn't a crisis I'd like to know what the hell is. It is time for the state of Florida and other states to seriously contemplate secession."

The political crisis has opened new opportunities for separatists.

"On the day before the election, if you had asked me when the first state would secede, I would have said five to 10 years at the least," Mr. Hill said. "Today, I would say it could happen much quicker, particularly if this mess continues."

Mr. Hill and other Southern nationalists are also heartened by the electoral map following the presidential vote. The Northeast, Great Lakes and West Coast regions are coloured blue for Al Gore, the Democrat, while the old South and much of the West are bright red, signalling support for George W. Bush, the Republican candidate.

The Republican regions are culturally conservative, religious, pro-gun and anti-abortion, all characteristics of a reborn Dixieland, Mr. Hill contends.

"If you talk to the elites in this country, they derisively refer to this area as flyover country, where the gun nut whackos live," he said.

"There is a cultural divide here and there is a cultural war here, and it was never shown more starkly on that electoral map."

Skeptics might note Southern patriots have little to complain about with the current set-up in the United States. A Southerner, Bill Clinton, is in the White House, and two other Southerners -- Mr. Gore and Mr. Bush both qualify -- are slugging it out to replace him.

Trent Lott, a Mississippian, leads the Senate from the desk once used by Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. Tom DeLay, a Texan, is one of the most powerful men in the House of Representatives.

The South is booming economically, country music is big business and CNN rules the world's news waves from its seat in Atlanta, the city Scarlett O'Hara fled in the face of advancing Yankee forces in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.

But neo-confederates look with scorn on big business and especially on politicians who have made their peace with Washington.

"They are both Southerners but both of them are what we would call scalawags," said Mac Watters, head of the League of the South's Florida chapter, describing both presidential contenders with the word applied to the traitors who co-operated with the hated Northerners after the Civil War.

"Neither of them are sympathetic to the Southern cause. They both cater to the United Nations, feminist rights groups and pro-abortion groups."

Southerners working to split off from the United States often look to Quebec as an example of how to conduct an effective secession campaign.

"As we ceaselessly work towards that happy day [of independence] we will continue to be inspired by the Parti Québécois and the Scottish Nationalist Party, two parties advocating full independence for their region," reads the manifesto of the Southern Party, the political arm of the League of the South.

So far there isn't much need for a new Abraham Lincoln -- or even a U.S. version of Pierre Trudeau wielding the War Measures Act -- to spring to the Union's defence.

The League of the South has only about 12,000 members and the Southern Party has even fewer. Another neo-Dixie group, the Council of Conservative Citizens, a pro-white group that has been addressed by Mr. Lott and other leading legislators, has about 15,000 members scattered across the South.

While many of the ideas espoused by these groups smack of a romantic attachment to grey-clad Rebels fighting under the Confederate battle flag, anti-racism groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center warn that many apostles of secession are also white nationalists.

"That's a red herring that our opponents throw at us," drawls Mr. Hill.

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