CHAPTER 43

With the coalition of eight governors, the Advisory Board of mostly civilian, state, and business leaders, and the Command Council of nearly three dozen top military, business and political leaders giving unanimous ratification of the secession of Newmerica, Ben issues a declaration of Interim Martial Law throughout Newmerica.

“This law will be in effect until July first,” Ben announces, “in order to gauge federal reaction, and to allow an orderly departing of those peoples, families and other parties and entities who find it necessary or more personally expedient to remain outside of the territories during the probable assault by Federal forces, who we expect to attempt to prevent what we hope will be a clean and orderly break from the United States of America. Thank you. Godspeed to us all, and God bless you each. That is all.”

The world media explodes in a frenzy. “MARTIAL LAW declared in ‘Newmerica’ by former Marine Corps officer Ben Cannon!”

Phone lines and Internet traffic are so jammed that for the second time in a day it becomes nearly impossible to communicate over public channels. Fortunately, Newmerica forces have control of two communication satellites in a way that disguises their being piggybacked on.

But Ben knows that won’t last long. As soon as the federals find out, Newmerica forces will have to communicate through old fashioned means. Short wave radio, walkie-talkies, internal land lines and such.

Political pundits begin referring to Ben as “Jefferson Davis the Sequel.”

People sympathetic to the break are calling Ben “The reincarnation of Ché.”

Haters call him “Mao Tse Ben.”

Before the federals can shut down their communications—or try to, since Newmerica has countermeasures in place—Ben issues a final press release:

     The people of sovereign Newmerica have spoken: they want back the rights and freedoms they once enjoyed under the laws of the United States as guaranteed by the Constitution, a document signed by William Few, my great uncle six times removed. Law and precedent are on our side. Pending settlement of claims and guaranteed security of our borders, waters, lands and skies, I will step down and the governors will appoint by majority agreement a new Interim President of Newmerica. Elections will follow afterward.

     It is not my desire to be a ruler or a Caesar or a political figure. It is not our desire to make the United States our enemy. But as Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, “In order to defeat your enemy, you must be roused to anger against him.” The government of the United States of America has roused us. We want only the rights guaranteed us by the founding fathers of the United States restored to that once-great nation. I am ready and willing to fight and die for those rights, including the right to leave the union, as asserted by Abraham Lincoln when he addressed the US House of Representatives on January 12, 1848.

     We welcome in peace all who would join us. Perhaps some day the United States and Newmerica can be allies, just as America and Britain became after their historic split.

– Ben Cannon, Interim President and Commander of National Security, Newmerica Territories, dated this 1^st day of May.

The timing of the date of the official announcement is so Ben can control the news as long as possible and the Council’s plan and actions will be clear to the world: Ben Cannon is not a despot or a power-hungry madman. He merely wants order restored. And since the federal government can’t seem to do that, he will. Then he’ll go back to his business in Stillwater.

If events allow it.

Shortly after the announcement, some enterprising online reporters do some serious digging into Ben’s family history and confirm what he said in his statement: the revelation that Ben Cannon is a not-terribly distant nephew of a signer of the Constitution—himself also a war hero who commanded a Georgia militia when the Colonies were breaking away from Great Britain—comes as a surprise to most people. And it doesn’t seem to hurt the cause at all.

Ben’s mention of something quoted by Lincoln about seceding from the Union being a right also causes hundreds of millions of users to flood the internet to read what Lincoln—the president who had fought a civil war to preserve the Union—had told Congress over a century and a half ago about the right to leave the Union. It’s a statement not taught much in American schools. And people seem stunned by what Lincoln wrote:

     “Any people anywhere … have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. … Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.

     More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with or near about them, who may oppose this movement. Such minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones.”

– Abraham Lincoln, January 12, 1848; to the US House of Representatives

The gauntlet has been thrown. The United States of America has been reduced to forty-two. And Ben Cannon quoted arguably the most popular President in US history in support of the move.

The ball is now in Cole’s court.

But there is bad news on the distant horizon for Ben, from within the top echelons of his own council.

Even worse than the news of the sudden disappearance from Newmerica of his son Curtis.