Separatist Movements in USA

Second Vermont Republic

Second Vermont Republic (SVR) is a secessionist group within the U.S. state of Vermont which seeks to return to the formerly independent status of the Vermont Republic (1777–91). It describes itself as "a nonviolent citizens' network and think tank opposed to the tyranny of Corporate America and the U.S. government, and committed to the peaceful return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic and more broadly the dissolution of the Union." The organization was founded in 2003 by Thomas Naylor, a former Duke University economics professor who published the book The Vermont Manifesto that same year.

In 1987, University of Vermont professor Frank M. Bryan, who in the past served on the Advisory Board of Second Vermont Republic, co-authored with Bill Mares OUT! The Vermont Secession Book, a tongue-in-cheek scenario for secession that begins with the exploding of bridges connecting Vermont with its neighboring states.^[5] In 2010 Vermont alternative weekly Seven Days wrote that Bryan had "turned his back on secession."

In 1989, Bryan, with John McClaughry, president of Vermont's Institute for Liberty and Community and who, during the administration of Ronald Reagan, was Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Office of Policy Development, authored a call for the restructuring of Vermont democracy in their book The Vermont Papers, Recreating Democracy on a Human Scale. In it they propose replacing the structure of Vermont towns with decentralized shires that maintain more local decision-making akin to British county councils. The ideas put forth in this book were not reliant upon, nor called for, Vermont's separation from the federal union.

In a September, 2006 Los Angeles Times story about Second Vermont Republic, John McClaughry said, "This really is a good-natured cult. Intellectually, they've got some horsepower, but mostly this is the whole left-wing litany, seen through an interesting prism." Secession, said McClaughry, "is not going to happen, and no one believes it is going to happen." However, in June 2007 Bryan stated that "the cachet of secession would make the new republic a magnet" and "People would obviously relish coming to the Republic of Vermont, the Switzerland of North America."

The "independence" flag adopted by the Second Vermont Republic is similar in design to the Green Mountain Boys regimental flag flown by those who supported creation of the first Vermont Republic.

In January 2005 the Second Vermont Republic claimed it had 125 card-carrying members. Members of the Second Vermont Republic subscribe to eight principles: political Independence, human scale, sustainability, economic solidarity, power sharing, equal opportunity, tension reduction and mutuality.

The Second Vermont Republic hosted a "radical consultation" in Middlebury, Vermont in November 2004 which resulted in the creation of the Middlebury Declaration and the establishment of the Middlebury Institute. In April 2005 members of Second Vermont Republic started the Vermont Commons quarterly publication. In November 2006 its representatives attended the First North American Secessionist Convention in Burlington, Vermont which brought together secessionists from a broad political spectrum. The convention issued the Burlington Declaration.

In May 2008 Feral House published Thomas Naylor's book Secession: How Vermont and all the Other States Can Save Themselves from the Empire. Author Kirkpatrick Sale wrote the foreword. Professor Walter E. Williams of George Mason University writes it is a "serious examination of our God given right of self governance and that right’s implication for secession. Dr. Naylor has made a persuasive case of the identical response to today’s ‘train of abuses’ that led the Founders to secede from King George’s tyranny."