Secession is the formal withdrawal of a group from a political entity. The process begins once a group proclaims an act of secession. A secession attempt might be violent or peaceful, but the goal is the creation of a new state or entity independent of the group or territory from which it seceded. Threats of secession can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.
Hashim Thaçi (left) and then-US Vice President Joe Biden with the Declaration of Independence of Kosovo
Northern Cyprus
September 1999 demonstration for independence from Indonesia
A girl during the Nigerian Civil War of the late 1960s. Pictures of the famine caused by Nigerian blockade garnered sympathy for the Biafrans worldwide.
Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1869), was a case argued before the United States Supreme Court in 1869. The case involved a claim by the Reconstruction government of Texas that United States bonds owned by Texas since 1850 had been illegally sold by the Confederate state legislature during the American Civil War. The state filed suit in the United States Supreme Court, which, under the United States Constitution, has original jurisdiction on certain cases in which a state is a party.
Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase
Associate Justice Robert Grier
The Chase Court in 1868.