What does the term Secession mean?

The term derives from the Latin “secedere,” meaning merely an act of withdrawal, which is what “secession” meant until the 19th century. One could speak of the soul seceding from the body, or of seceding to the drawing room, or of seceding from the town to the country. When did “secession” cease to be a neutral term of withdrawal and become the name of a substantial political act? Intimations of a change occurred in 1733 when the Scottish Church split. Those who left called themselves “seceders,” and their church the “Secession Church.” This church lasted nearly a century before splitting, but was soon reunited in 1829 under the paradoxical name of the “United Secession Church.” Here the term “secession” means not simply withdrawal but a religious-political act whereby a people dismember a religious jurisdiction to form one of their own. It also means the celebration and remembrance of that act by naming the new way of life the “Secession Church.” For the first time the term acquires substantial moral connotations. To be a seceder is a good thing. Though not strictly political, this religious-political connotation was familiar to an American Protestant culture for over a century, before it began to take on political connotations. The Oxford English Dictionary locates the first political use of the term in a statement by Thomas Jefferson in 1825 that colonies had seceded from the British Union.

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