by Berry Craig

Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president, wasn't a big fan of
secession.

After 11 Southern slave states exited the Union and started the Confederate
States of America in 1860-1861, the Great Emancipator led the country to
victory in the Civil War, which returned the wayward states to what Lincoln
called their "proper relation" with the rest of our federal republic.

Secession talk is back, just as our nation prepares to observe the
sesquicentennial of the Civil War starting next year, the 150th anniversary
of Lincoln's election. This time the "secesh" are some Republicans from
Texas, an ex-Confederate state.

Gov. Rick Perry fired up the disunionists. At a tax day tea party rally last
April, he wouldn't dismiss the possibility of his fellow Texans getting so
mad at the federal government that they might secede.

"We've got a great union," he said. "There's absolutely no reason to
dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American
people, you know, who knows what might come out of that."

By "Washington," Perry meant President Barack Obama and the Democrats.

Larry Kilgore, who wants the governor's job, flat out says the Lone Star
State should leave the Union. He also says he hates the American flag and
the U.S. government.

Kilgore, who is running against Perry in the 2010 Texas GOP primary, is a
darling of the pro-secession Texas Nationalist Movement. So is Debra Medina,
another secessionist and Republican gubernatorial hopeful.

I teach history. Kilgore, Medina and the "nationalists" sound like the
secessionist "Fire Eaters" of 1860-1861, who included Sen. Louis T. Wigfall
and his fellow Texan, John A. Wharton, a future Rebel general. (Medina is
chair of the Republican Party in Wharton County, which is named for the
Confederate commander.)

Wigfall, Wharton and like-minded white supremacists wanted a new government
of the white folks, by the white folks and for the white folks, complete
with slavery and the Good Lord's blessing. Kilgore, Medina and their
nationalist fans claim they're not racist. But, not coincidentally, all the
secessionists seem to be white people.

In Lincoln's day, a majority of white Southerners were pro-secession. Obama
faces only secessionist talk - bluster is more like it - from a tiny
minority in just one state. More than a few Texans - including Republicans -
think Kilgore, Medina and the nationalists are nut jobs.

Still, there are parallels between white Southerners' reactions to Lincoln's
election and how many of their descendants feel about our first African
American president.

The Confederate states forsook the Union because the white guys who ran them
feared Lincoln and his "Black Republican" party aimed to free the slaves.

Of course, not every white Southerner who voted against Obama is a racist.
But Obama, by far, received his lowest vote percentage from whites who live
in the ex-Confederate states (26 percent - including 26 percent in Texas --
to 43 percent nationally).

Also, I didn't hear Perry hint at Texas secession while President George W.
Bush - a Republican and former governor of Texas - lived in the White House.
The Texas Nationalist Movement seems to have gotten noisier since Obama was
sworn in as president last January.

No president was more despised in the white South than Lincoln, who did put
slavery on the road to extinction. Obama seems to be edging out Lyndon
Johnson as second most hated. A lot of white folks in Dixie still loathe LBJ
- a Texan - claiming he betrayed his race and his region for supporting
landmark civil rights bills in Congress in the 1960s.

Anyway, I have no doubt that Perry and his party's national bigwigs would be
in high dudgeon against a Democrat who dissed Old Glory and the government
like Kilgore did. But mum seems to be the word from the GOP brass about
Kilgore. (Perry is trying to keep him at arm's length but would love to peel
off some nationalist votes.)

Maybe the Republican honchos don't feel the need to "mess with Texas"
because the secessionists are just a few wackos. But my guess is the GOP big
shots are keeping quiet about the secessionists because they don't want to
rile other uber-right-wing Southern whites who have been a big chunk of the
GOP base since LBJ made the Democrats the party of civil rights activism.

In Texas and elsewhere in the former Confederate states, the Republicans are
largely what the Democrats used to be: the white people's party. Lincoln
must be spinning in his tomb.

Of course, Kilgore has no chance to beat Perry, whose real competition is
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Medina is also a long shot. Texas is among the
reddest of the Republican Red States. So either Perry or Hutchison would be
the favorites to win the general election, too.

On the other hand, primary voters often are more gung-ho than general
election voters. True believers like Texas nationalists - and their
"birther," "deather" and "Obama's-a-Muslim-socialist-Nazi" kin -- turn out
big for primaries. So Kilgore and Medina may do better than expected against
Perry and Hutchison.

Meanwhile, based on what they're saying, Perry and Kilgore might have slept
through history class in school. More likely, they're fudging history to
suit themselves, a common practice among extremists, right-wing or
left-wing.

Perry says Texas joined the Union in 1845 with the understanding it could
leave whenever it pleased. Baloney. No state got an opt-out clause when it
got a star on Old Glory.

"You go ask Sam Houston what he thought about secession," Kilgore
challenged, metaphorically speaking, at a recent rally. It was the one
outside the Texas capitol where he pointed to Old Glory flying over the
building and yelled, "I hate that flag up there." He added, "I hate the
United States government."

Houston was a staunch Southern Unionist like his friend, President Andrew
Jackson. Houston loved the U.S. flag and the U.S. government. He opposed
secession when he was governor of Texas in 1861. He warned that the North
would win the Civil War and destroy the South, according to the Handbook of
Texas Online.

Houston reluctantly went along with disunion "rather than bring civil strife
and bloodshed to his beloved state," the handbook explains. "But when he
refused to take the oath of loyalty to the newly formed Confederate States
of America, the Texas [secession] convention removed him from office."

While Kilgore and Medina preach secession, Perry probably thinks that
blathering about "state sovereignty" and "states' rights" is enough red meat
for the GOP faithful to get himself renominated. "States' rights" was the
old white Southern code word for the right of a state to have slavery and to
keep black folks separate and unequal from white folks.

Of course, no state is sovereign. The federal government is. The Civil War
settled that.

Kilgore's rant for secession and against the American flag and government
can be viewed on The Texas Observer's blogsite --
http://www.texasobserver.org/blog/#post-1369. Medina raves on camera, too.

I'm proud to say that between 90,000 and 100,000 sons of my native Kentucky
- white and African American - donned Yankee blue and fought to help Father
Abraham preserve our Union in 1861-1865. Many lost their lives under the
flag that Larry Kilgore hates.

"Under the auspices of Heaven, and the precepts of Washington, Kentucky will
be the last to give up the Union," is chiseled on the marble block the
Bluegrass State donated for the Washington Monument in 1850. We
Presbyterians - the "Frozen Chosen" - don't usually do "amens." But I'll
"amen" the sentiments on that historic stone.