title: Stucco

text: If applied during very dry weather, the layers of stucco are sprayed with water for one or more days to keep a level of moisture within the stucco while it cures, a process known as "moist curing". If the stucco dries too soon, the chemical hardening ("hydration") will be incomplete, resulting in a weaker and brittler stucco.


title: Stucco

text: The repair of historic stucco should begin by identifying the cause of the damage to the stucco finish. Historically, the application of stucco was quite similar to the process of applying lime plaster. Repairs should be carried out as soon as problems become visible, as the damage will only become worse over time. Cracks may form in the stucco due to building settling or direct damage to the exterior coating. Once water is able to breach the coating, whether through an opening in the stucco itself or from beneath its surface, fragile stucco can begin to buckle and crumble. Wood is a common structural material that is often used as substrate beneath stucco. It can absorb moisture from at or below ground level and draw it away from the original source of the problem. Stucco can also be applied to masonry such as brick or stone, which can also be damaged by moisture infiltration.


title: Stucco

text: Rising damp from groundwater or drainage issues is especially problematic. The stucco can delaminate from damp wood lath beneath and as the wood rots, the stucco may begin to deteriorate and separate from it and the building. Damage to the stucco itself leads to further moisture infiltration that exacerbates the deterioration of the finish as well as the substrate. Downspouts, gutters, flashing and other means of managing directing water away from the building will prevent damage from getting worse. Without proper guttering, water may splash up onto stuccoed surfaces, staining and accelerating the deterioration of the finish. Grading of the soil around the building may also be necessary to redirect moisture away from the structure and foundation.


title: Stucco

text: Depending on the extent of the damage to the finish, varying degrees of repairs may be carried out. Small hairline cracks may be sealed with an additional layer of finish coat or even simply a coat of paint. Modern caulking materials are not ideal mediums of repair. Making the choice to patch or completely repair a stuccoed surface depends on the texture of the finish coat. Repairs, especially numerous ones, made to a smoothly finished surface will be more noticeable and recovering the entire surface with a new layer of finish coat may be more appropriate. Conversely, it may be easier to conceal patches of repair work to a textured surface and complete refinishing may not be necessary.


title: Stucco

text: Preparation should begin with the removal of all damaged material in the area to be repaired. Any stucco that is loose should be removed as it has already failed. The removal of compromised materials may extend to wood lath or other substrates that may also have been damaged, although it may be preferable to install new mesh over damaged lath. Care must be taken regarding this approach, as it may be especially critical when authenticity is of a concern regarding a historic building. In such cases, replacement of damaged lath is generally considered to be more appropriate than installing new mesh. All surfaces should be cleaned to remove paint, oil, or plant growth. Stone or brick mortar joints may be scored to a depth of 5/8" to allow for the proper adhesion of the new stucco. New stucco patches should not overlap old stucco.To obtain a neat repair, the area to be patched should be squared-off with a butt joint, using a cold chisel, a hatchet, a diamond blade saw, or a masonry bit. Sometimes it may be preferable to leave the area to be patched in an irregular shape which may result in a less conspicuous patch. Proper preparation of the area to be patched requires very sharp tools, and extreme caution on the part of the plasterer not to break keys of surrounding good stucco by "over-sounding" when removing deteriorated stucco.


title: Stucco

text: The application of new stucco should not include wire mesh when lime stucco is being repaired on a masonry surface. The new stucco repair should bond to the masonry substrate appropriately without mesh. The introduction of wire mesh has the potential to hasten deterioration of both the masonry and the stucco finish as the slightest amount of moisture will lead to rust developing on the wire mesh, which expands as it rusts. This may lead to the spalling of not only the new stucco, but also of the masonry itself.


title: Stucco

text: After thoroughly dampening the masonry or wood lath, the first, scratch coat should be applied to the masonry substrate, or wood or metal lath, in a thickness that corresponds to the original if extant, or generally about ″ to ″. The scratch coat should be scratched or crosshatched with a comb to provide a key to hold the second coat. It usually takes 24–72 hours, and longer in cold weather, for each coat to cure before the next coat can be applied. The second coat should be about the same thickness as the first, and the total thickness of the first two coats should generally not exceed about ″. This second or leveling coat should be roughened using a wood float with a nail protruding to provide a key for the final or finish coat. The finish coat, about ″ thick, is applied after the previous coat has initially set. If this is not feasible, the base coat should be thoroughly dampened when the finish coat is applied later. The finish coat should be worked to match the texture of the original stucco.


title: Stucco

text: Preparing for the repair process requires testing to determine the composition of the stucco that is to be repaired. Due to numerous factors, including regionally available materials and original workmanship, there is a variety of materials that may have been used for the original application of stucco. It must also be determined if the type of stucco used is lime-based or Portland cement-based. Of particular concern is the use of Portland cement, which is harder than previous methods used in stucco application. This material is not compatible with softer and more flexible lime cement that was used in the 18th and into the mid-19th centuries. Test sampling is critical to determine the best mixture, in terms of durability, compatibility, texture and color to use in the repair process. Test patches should be used to help make this determination. The same number of layers should be used in the repair as were used in the original stucco application.


title: Stucco

text: A professional plasterer or contractor familiar with the process of making repairs to historic stucco should carry out necessary repairs. Typically, a homeowner should not attempt to repair stucco finishes on their own.


title: Stucco

text: Further research that should be conducted prior to the commencement of repair includes determining the types of ingredients used in the original stucco so that the color and texture of the original material can be matched as closely as possible. In some cases, shells or pebbles were used in the stucco covering. Regionally sourced sand, for example, may have been used in the original application, but may no longer be readily available. In this way, stucco tended to be tinted directly, although sometimes it was painted after being applied. Additionally, the use of ingredients such as animal hair was popular in some regions. Care should be taken that repairs made include similar ingredients that are clean and free of oils. This is another reason for the use of test patches, to ensure that the repairs blend into the original building fabric as much as possible.


title: Secession in the United States

text: In the context of the United States, secession primarily refers to the voluntary withdrawal of one or more states from the Union that constitutes the United States; but may loosely refer to leaving a state or territory to form a separate territory or new state, or to the severing of an area from a city or county within a state. Advocates for secession are called disunionists by their contemporaries in various historical documents.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Threats and aspirations to secede from the United States, or arguments justifying secession, have been a feature of the country's politics almost since its birth. Some have argued for secession as a constitutional right and others as from a natural right of revolution. In "Texas v. White" (1869), the Supreme Court ruled unilateral secession unconstitutional, while commenting that revolution or consent of the states could lead to a successful secession.


title: Secession in the United States

text: The most serious attempt at secession was advanced in the years 1860 and 1861 as 11 Southern states each declared secession from the United States, and joined together to form the Confederate States of America, a procedure and body that the government of the United States refused to accept. The movement collapsed in 1865 with the defeat of Confederate forces by Union armies in the American Civil War.


title: Secession in the United States

text: In the history of the United States, the only territories to have been withdrawn from the country are the small portions of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 49th parallel north, established as the U.S.–British (now Canadian) border by the Treaty of 1818; and the territory of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, which became independent after the Treaty of Manila. The former is today part of Canada, while the latter corresponds to the Republic of the Philippines.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Boundaries of U.S. territories, such as the Nebraska Territory, were not defined precisely. The boundaries of each new state are set in the document admitting the former territory to the Union as a state, which Congress must approve. There is only one instance in U.S. history in which a portion of a state successfully seceded to create a new state: West Virginia, which separated from Virginia in 1863.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Historian Pauline Maier argues that this narrative asserted "the right of revolution, which was, after all, the right Americans were exercising in 1776"; and notes that Thomas Jefferson's language incorporated ideas explained at length by a long list of 17th-century writers, including John Milton, Algernon Sidney, John Locke, and other English and Scottish commentators, all of whom had contributed to the development of the Whig tradition in 18th-century Britain.


title: Secession in the United States

text: The right of revolution expressed in the Declaration was immediately followed with the observation that long-practiced injustice is tolerated until sustained assaults on the rights of the entire people have accumulated enough force to oppress them; then they may defend themselves. This reasoning was not original to the Declaration, but can be found in many prior political writings: Locke's "Two Treatises of Government" (1690); the Fairfax Resolves of 1774; Jefferson's own "Summary View of the Rights of British America"; the first Constitution of Virginia, which was enacted five days prior to the Declaration; and Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" (1776):


title: Secession in the United States

text: Gordon S. Wood quotes President John Adams: "Only repeated, multiplied oppressions placing it beyond all doubt that their rulers had formed settled plans to deprive them of their liberties, could warrant the concerted resistance of the people against their government".


title: Secession in the United States

text: With origins in the question of states' rights, the issue of secession was argued in many forums and advocated from time to time in both the North and South in the decades after adopting the Constitution and before the American Civil War. Historian Maury Klein described the contemporary debate: "Was the Republic a unified nation in which the individual states had merged their sovereign rights and identities forever, or was it a federation of sovereign states joined together for specific purposes from which they could withdraw at any time?" He observed that "the case can be made that no result of the [American Civil] war was more important than the destruction, once and for all...of the idea of secession".


title: Secession in the United States

text: Historian Forrest McDonald argued that after adopting the Constitution, "there were no guidelines, either in theory or in history, as to whether the compact could be dissolved and, if so, on what conditions". However, during "the founding era, many a public figure...declared that the states could interpose their powers between their citizens and the power of the federal government, and talk of secession was not unknown". But according to McDonald, to avoid resorting to the violence that had accompanied the Revolution, the Constitution established "legitimate means for constitutional change in the future". In effect, the Constitution "completed and perfected the Revolution".


title: Secession in the United States

text: Whatever the intentions of the Founders, threats of secession and disunion were a constant in the political discourse of Americans preceding the Civil War. Historian Elizabeth R. Varon wrote:


title: Secession in the United States

text: In late 1777 the Second Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation for ratification by the individual states. The Confederation government was administered de facto by the Congress under the provisions of the approved (final) draft of the Articles until they achieved ratification—and de jure status—in early 1781. In 1786 delegates of five states (the Annapolis Convention) called for a convention of delegates in Philadelphia to amend the Articles, which would require the unanimous consent of all thirteen states.


title: Secession in the United States

text: The delegates to the Philadelphia Convention convened and deliberated from May to September 1787. Instead of pursuing their official charge they returned a draft (new) Constitution, proposed for constructing and administering a new federal—later also known as "national"—government. They further proposed that the draft Constitution "not" be submitted to the Congress (where it would require unanimous approval of the states); instead that it be presented directly to the states for ratification in special ratification conventions, and that approval by a minimum of nine state conventions would suffice to adopt the new Constitution and initiate the new federal government; and that only those states ratifying the Constitution would be included in the new government. (For a time, eleven of the original states operated under the Constitution without two non-ratifying states, Rhode Island and North Carolina.) In effect, the delegates proposed to abandon and replace the Articles of Confederation rather than amend them.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Because the Articles had specified a "perpetual union", various arguments have been offered to explain the apparent contradiction (and presumed illegality) of abandoning one form of government and creating another that did not include the members of the original. One explanation was that the Articles of Confederation simply failed to protect the vital interests of the individual states. Necessity then, rather than legality, was the practical factor in abandoning the Articles.


title: Secession in the United States

text: According to historian John Ferling, by 1786 the Union under the Articles was falling apart. James Madison of Virginia and Alexander Hamilton of New York—they who joined together to vigorously promote a new Constitution—urged that renewed stability of the Union government was critically needed to protect property and commerce. Both founders were strong advocates for a more powerful central government; they published "The Federalist Papers" to advocate their cause and became known as the federalists. (Because of his powerful advocacy Madison was later accorded the honorific "Father of the Constitution".) Ferling wrote:


title: Secession in the United States

text: Other arguments that justified abandoning the Articles of Confederation pictured the Articles as an "international" compact between "unconsolidated", "sovereign" states, any one of which was empowered to renounce the compact at will. (This as opposed to a "consolidated" union that "totally annihilated, without any power of revival" the sovereign states.) The Articles required that all states were obliged to comply with all requirements of the agreement; thus, permanence was linked to compliance.


title: Secession in the United States

text: 'Compliance' was typically perceived as a matter of interpretation by each individual state. Emerich de Vattel, a recognized authority on international law, wrote at the time that "Treaties contain promises that are perfect and reciprocal. If one of the allies fails in his engagements, the other may ... disengage himself in his promises, and ... break the treaty." Thus, each state could unilaterally 'secede' from the Articles of Confederation at will; this argument for abandoning the Articles—for its weakness in the face of secession—was used by advocates for the new Constitution and was featured by James Madison in Federalist No. 43.


title: Secession in the United States

text: St. George Tucker, an influential jurist in the early republic era, and especially in the South, argued that abandoning the Articles of Confederation was the same as seceding from the Articles government. In 1803, he wrote that the unanimous dissolution of the Articles Confederation in 1789 by Act of Congress was legal precedent for future secession(s) from the Constitution one state at a time by state legislatures.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Others, such as Chief Justice John Marshall who had been a Virginia delegate to its Ratification (Federal) Convention, denied that ratifying the Constitution was a precedent for a future one-off dissolution of the Union by an isolated state or states. Writing in 1824, exactly midway between the fall of the Articles of Confederation and the rise of a second self-described American Confederacy, Marshal summarized the issue thusly: "Reference has been made to the political situation of these states, anterior to [the Constitution's] formation. It has been said that they were sovereign, were completely independent, and were connected with each other only by a league. This is true. But, when these allied sovereigns converted their league into a government, when they converted their congress of ambassadors, deputed to deliberate on their common concerns, and to recommend measures of general utility, into a legislature, empowered to enact laws on the most interesting subjects, the whole character in which the states appear underwent a change."


title: Secession in the United States

text: Nationalists for Union in the antebellum America argued the opposite of secession; that indeed the new Constitution inherited "perpetuity" from the language in the Articles and from other actions done prior to the Constitution. Historian Kenneth Stampp explains their view:


title: Secession in the United States

text: Constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar argues that the permanence of the Union of the states changed significantly when the U.S. Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation. This action "signaled its decisive break with the Articles' regime of state sovereignty". By adopting a constitution—rather than a treaty, or a compact, or an instrument of confederacy, etc.—that created a new body of government designed to be senior to the several states, and by approving the particular language and provisions of that new Constitution, the framers and voters made it clear that the fates of the individual states were (severely) changed; and that the new United States was:


title: Secession in the United States

text: Patrick Henry adamantly opposed adopting the Constitution because he interpreted its language to replace the sovereignty of the individual states, including that of his own Virginia. He gave his strong voice to the anti-federalist cause in opposition to the federalists led by Madison and Hamilton. Questioning the nature of the proposed new federal government, Henry asked:


title: Secession in the United States

text: The federalists acknowledged that "national" sovereignty would be transferred by the new Constitution to the whole of the American people—indeed, regard the expression, ""We the people ..."". They argued, however, that Henry exaggerated the extent to which a consolidated government was being created and that the states would serve a vital role within the new republic even though their national sovereignty was ending. Tellingly, on the matter of whether states retained a right to unilaterally secede from the United States, the federalists made it clear that no such right would exist under the Constitution.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Amar specifically cites the example of New York's ratification as suggestive that the Constitution did not countenance secession. Anti-federalists dominated the Poughkeepsie Convention that would ratify the Constitution. Concerned that the new compact might not sufficiently safeguard states' rights, the anti-federalists sought to insert into the New York ratification message language to the effect that "there should be reserved to the state of New York a right to withdraw herself from the union after a certain number of years." The Madison federalists opposed this, with Hamilton, a delegate at the Convention, reading aloud in response a letter from James Madison stating: "the Constitution requires an adoption "in toto, and for ever"" [emphasis added]. Hamilton and John Jay then told the Convention that in their view, reserving "a right to withdraw [was] inconsistent with the Constitution, and was no ratification". The New York convention ultimately ratified the Constitution without including the "right to withdraw" language proposed by the anti-federalists.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Debates on the legality of secession often looked back to the example of the American Revolution and the Declaration of Independence. Law professor Daniel Farber defined what he considered the borders of this debate:


title: Secession in the United States

text: In the public debate over the Nullification Crisis the separate issue of secession was also discussed. James Madison, often referred to as "The Father of the Constitution", strongly opposed the argument that secession was permitted by the Constitution. In a March 15, 1833, letter to Daniel Webster (congratulating him on a speech opposing nullification), Madison discussed "revolution" versus "secession":


title: Secession in the United States

text: Thus Madison affirms an "extra"constitutional right to revolt against conditions of "intolerable oppression"; but if the case cannot be made (that such conditions exist), then he rejects secession—as a violation of the Constitution.


title: Secession in the United States

text: During the crisis, President Andrew Jackson, published his Proclamation to the People of South Carolina, which made a case for the perpetuity of the Union; plus, he provided his views re the questions of "revolution" and "secession":


title: Secession in the United States

text: Some twenty-eight years after Jackson spoke, President James Buchanan gave a different voice—one much more accommodating to the views of the secessionists and the slave states—in the midst of the pre-War secession crisis. In his final State of the Union address to Congress, on December 3, 1860, he stated his view that the South, "after having first used all peaceful and constitutional means to obtain redress, would be justified in revolutionary resistance to the Government of the Union"; but he also drew his apocalyptic vision of the results to be expected from secession:


title: Secession in the United States

text: In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere voluntary association of States, to be dissolved at pleasure by any one of the contracting parties. If this be so, the Confederacy [here referring to the existing Union] is a rope of sand, to be penetrated and dissolved by the first adverse wave of public opinion in any of the States. In this manner our thirty-three States may resolve themselves into as many petty, jarring, and hostile republics, each one retiring from the Union without responsibility whenever any sudden excitement might impel them to such a course. By this process a Union might be entirely broken into fragments in a few weeks which cost our forefathers many years of toil, privation, and blood to establish.


title: Secession in the United States

text: In response to the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts—advanced by the Federalist Party—John Taylor of the Virginia House of Delegates spoke out, urging Virginia to secede from the United States. He argued—as one of many vociferous responses by the Jeffersonian Republicans—the sense of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, adopted in 1798 and 1799, which reserved to those States the rights of secession and interposition (nullification).


title: Secession in the United States

text: Thomas Jefferson, while sitting as Vice President of the United States in 1799, wrote to James Madison of his conviction in "a reservation of th[ose] rights resulting to us from these palpable violations [the Alien and Sedition Acts]" and, "if the federal government did not return to"


title: Secession in the United States

text: Here Jefferson is arguing in a radical voice (and in a private letter) that he would lead a movement for secession; but it is unclear whether he is arguing for "secession at will" or for "revolution" on account of "intolerable oppression" (see above), or neither. Jefferson secretly wrote (one of) the Kentucky Resolutions, which was done—again—while he was holding the office of Vice President. His biographer Dumas Malone argued that, had his actions become known at the time, Jefferson's participation might have gotten him impeached for (charged with) treason. In writing the first Kentucky Resolution, Jefferson warned that, "unless arrested at the threshold", the Alien and Sedition Acts would "necessarily drive these states into revolution and blood". Historian Ron Chernow says of this "he wasn't calling for peaceful protests or civil disobedience: he was calling for outright rebellion, if needed, against the federal government of which he was vice president." Jefferson "thus set forth a radical doctrine of states' rights that effectively undermined the constitution".


title: Secession in the United States

text: Jeffersonian Republicans were not alone in claiming "reserved rights" against the federal government. Contributing to the rancorous debates during the War of 1812, Founding Father Gouverneur Morris of Pennsylvania and New York—a Federalist, a Hamilton ally and a primary author of the Constitution who advanced the concept that Americans were citizens of a single Union of the states—was persuaded to claim that "secession, under certain circumstances, was entirely constitutional."


title: Secession in the United States

text: The election of 1800 showed Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party to be on the rise and the Federalists to be declining, and the Federalists felt threatened by initiatives taken by their opponents. They viewed Jefferson's unilateral purchase of the Louisiana territory as violating foundational agreements between the original 13 states; Jefferson transacted the purchase in secret and refused to seek the approval of Congress. The new lands anticipated several future western states which the Federalists feared would be dominated by the Democratic-Republicans. Other things added to the Federalists' alarm, such as the impeachment of Federalist district judge John Pickering by the Jeffersonian-dominated Congress, and similar attacks on Pennsylvania state officials by the Democratic-Republican legislature. By 1804, their national leadership was decimated and their viable base was reduced to the states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Timothy Pickering of Massachusetts and a few Federalists envisioned creating a separate New England confederation, possibly combining with lower Canada to form a new pro-British nation. The Embargo Act of 1807 was seen as a threat to the economy of Massachusetts, and the state legislature debated in May 1808 how the state should respond. These debates generated isolated references to secession, but no definite plot materialized. Historian Richard Buell, Jr. suggests that "the secessionist movement of 1804 was more of a confession of despair about the future than a realistic proposal for action."


title: Secession in the United States

text: Federalist party members convened the Hartford Convention on December 15, 1814, and they addressed their opposition to the continuing war with Britain and the domination of the federal government by the "Virginia dynasty". Twenty six delegates attended; Massachusetts sent 12, Connecticut seven, and Rhode Island four. New Hampshire and Vermont declined, but two counties each from those states sent delegates. Historian Donald R. Hickey notes:


title: Secession in the United States

text: The final report addressed issues related to the war and state defense, and it recommended several amendments to the Constitution. Massachusetts and Connecticut endorsed it, but the war ended as the delegates were returning to Washington, effectively quashing any impact that it might have had. The Jeffersonians described the convention as "a synonym for disloyalty and treason", and it became a major factor in the sharp decline of the Federalist Party.


title: Secession in the United States

text: It is not often remembered today, as it was the South that actually attempted to secede. However, there was a movement to have the North secede, thereby escaping the slave power that dominated the Federal government.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Tensions began to rise between North and South by the late 1830s over slavery and related issues. Many Northerners, especially New Englanders, saw themselves as political victims of conspiracies between slave owners and Western expansionists. They viewed the movements to annex Texas and to make war on Mexico as fomented by slaveholders bent on dominating Western expansion and thereby the national destiny. New England abolitionist Benjamin Lundy argued that the annexation of Texas was "a long-premeditated crusade—set on foot by slaveholders, land speculators, etc., with the view of reestablishing, extending, and perpetuating the system of slavery and the slave trade".


title: Secession in the United States

text: The first petition asking for dissolution of the Union, from the citizens of Haverhill, Massachusetts, was presented to the U.S. Congress by Massachusetts representative John Quincy Adams in January 1842.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Newspaper editors began demanding separation from the South. William Lloyd Garrison called for secession in "The Liberator" of May 1844 with his "Address to the Friends of Freedom and Emancipation in the United States". The Constitution was created, he wrote, "at the expense of the colored population of the country", and Southerners were dominating the nation because of the Three-fifths Compromise; now it was time "to set the captive free by the potency of truth" and to "secede from the government". Coincidentally, the New England Anti-Slavery Convention endorsed the principles of disunion by a vote of 250–24.


title: Secession in the United States

text: In 1846, the following volume by Henry Clarke Wright was published in London: The dissolution of the American union : demanded by justice and humanity, as the incurable enemy of liberty.


title: Secession in the United States

text: The Southern members of Congress walked out in the 1830s in protest over support for slaves' right to petition, and "were with difficulty persuaded to return". (The enslaved did not have the right to petition the government.) Support of secession really began to shift to Southern states from 1846, after introduction into the public debate of the Wilmot Proviso, which would have prohibited slavery in the new territories acquired from Mexico. Southern leaders increasingly felt helpless against a powerful political group that was attacking their interests (slavery), reminiscent of Federalist alarms at the beginning of the century.


title: Secession in the United States

text: The Nashville Convention was a political meeting held in Nashville, Tennessee, on June 3–11, 1850. Delegates from nine slave states met to consider secession, if the United States Congress decided to ban slavery in the new territories being added to the country as a result of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican Cession. The compromises worked out in Nashville paved the way for the Compromise of 1850, including the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and, for a time, preserved the union of the United States.


title: Secession in the United States

text: In 1851 Frederick Barnard found that for the South, "the Union [was the] only security for Southern rights [slavery]".


title: Secession in the United States

text: Called by David Garrison, a convention to discuss "the dissolution of the American Union, and the formation of a Northern, non-slave-holding Confederacy," was held in Worcester, Massachusetts, in January 1857.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Similar conventions were held in Angola, Indiana, Adrian, Michigan, and Oswego, New York (at the latter of which Susan B. Anthony spoke).


title: Secession in the United States

text: During the presidential term of Andrew Jackson, South Carolina had its own semi-secession movement due to the so-called 1828 Tariff of Abominations, which threatened South Carolina's economy, and South Carolina, in turn, threatened to secede from the United States (the Union). Jackson also threatened to send federal troops to put down the movement and to hang the leader of the secessionists from the highest tree in South Carolina. Also due to this, Jackson's vice president, John C. Calhoun, who supported the movement and wrote the essay "The South Carolina Exposition and Protest", became the first US vice president to resign. On May 1, 1833, Jackson wrote of nullification, "the tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and Southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question." South Carolina also threatened to secede in 1850 over the issue of California's statehood. It became the first state to declare its secession from the Union on December 20, 1860, with the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union, and it later joined with the other Southern states to form the Confederacy.


title: Secession in the United States

text: The most famous secession movement was the case of the Southern states of the United States. Secession from the United States was accepted in eleven states (and failed in two others). The seceding states joined together to form the Confederate States of America (CSA).


title: Secession in the United States

text: The eleven states of the CSA, in order of their secession dates (listed in parentheses), were: South Carolina (December 20, 1860), Mississippi (January 9, 1861), Florida (January 10, 1861), Alabama (January 11, 1861), Georgia (January 19, 1861), Louisiana (January 26, 1861), Texas (February 1, 1861), Virginia (April 17, 1861), Arkansas (May 6, 1861), North Carolina (May 20, 1861), and Tennessee (June 8, 1861).


title: Secession in the United States

text: Secession was also declared by pro-Confederate governments in Missouri and Kentucky (see Confederate government of Missouri and Confederate government of Kentucky), but it never became effective as it was opposed by pro-Union governments that in both states retained actual control of the territory. In Virginia, Unionists in the northwestern part of the state quickly succeeded in forming a functioning government in Wheeling that opposed the pro-Confederate government in Virginia. By 1863 Unionists convinced Congress to admit fifty Virginia counties as the State of West Virginia and the "Restored Government of Virginia" relocated to Union-occupied Alexandria until the Confederacy's dissolution.


title: Secession in the United States

text: This secession movement brought about the American Civil War. The position of the Union was that the Confederacy was not a sovereign nation—and never had been, but that "the Union" was always a single nation by intent of the states themselves, from 1776 onward—and thus that a rebellion had been initiated by individuals. Historian Bruce Catton described President Abraham Lincoln's April 15, 1861, proclamation after the attack on Fort Sumter, which defined the Union's position on the hostilities:


title: Secession in the United States

text: With the departure of the Representatives and Senators from the seceding states—most voluntarily, but some were expelled—the makeup and organization of the 36th United States Congress changed dramatically. Vice-President and Senate President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky remained until he was replaced by Hannibal Hamlin, and then expelled, but gone was the President pro tempore (Benjamin Fitzpatrick of Alabama) and the heads of the Senate committees on Claims (Alfred Iverson Jr. of Georgia), Commerce (Clement Claiborne Clay of Alabama), the District of Columbia (Albert G. Brown of Mississippi), Finance (Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, expelled), Foreign Relations (James M. Mason of Virginia, expelled), Military Affairs (Jefferson Davis of Mississippi), Naval Affairs (Stephen Mallory of Florida), and Public Lands (Robert Ward Johnson of Arkansas).


title: Secession in the United States

text: Within days, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state, an issue at the time similar to the 20th and 21st-century debate over statehood for the District of Columbia. Within a month Colorado, Nevada, and Dakota Territory followed. The end of slavery in the District of Columbia had been a goal of abolitionists since the slavery gag rule crisis of the 1830s. The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act passed in 1862, as did the Homestead Act and the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862, other measures the slave states had blocked.


title: Secession in the United States

text: The Constitution does not directly mention secession. The legality of secession was hotly debated in the 19th century. Although the Federalist Party briefly explored New England secession during the War of 1812, secession became associated with Southern states as the North's industrial power increased. The Supreme Court has consistently interpreted the Constitution to be an "indestructible" union. The Articles of Confederation explicitly state the Union is "perpetual"; the U.S. Constitution declares its purpose is to form a "more perfect union" than the Articles of Confederation. Other scholars, while not necessarily disagreeing that the secession was illegal, point out that sovereignty is often "de facto" an "extralegal" question. Had the Confederacy won, any illegality of its actions under U.S. law would have been rendered irrelevant, just as the undisputed illegality of American rebellion under the British law of 1775 was rendered irrelevant. Thus, these scholars argue, the illegality of unilateral secession was not firmly "de facto" established until the Union won the Civil War; in this view, the legal question was resolved at Appomattox.


title: Secession in the United States

text: "Texas v. White" was argued before the United States Supreme Court during the December 1868 term. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase read the Court's decision, on April 15, 1869. Australian Professors Peter Radan and Aleksandar Pavkovic write:


title: Secession in the United States

text: Chase, however, "recognized that a state could cease to be part of the union 'through revolution, or through consent of the States'".


title: Secession in the United States

text: In 1877, the "Williams v. Bruffy" decision was rendered, pertaining to Civil War debts. The Court wrote regarding acts establishing an independent government that "The validity of its acts, both against the parent state and the citizens or subjects thereof, depends entirely upon its ultimate success; if it fail to establish itself permanently, all such acts perish with it; if it succeed and become recognized, its acts from the commencement of its existence are upheld as those of an independent nation."


title: Secession in the United States

text: Historian Kenneth Stampp notes that a historical argument against secession was that "the Union is older than the states" and that "the provision for a perpetual Union in the Articles of Confederation" was carried over into the Constitution by the "reminder that the preamble to the new Constitution gives us one of its purposes the formation of 'a more perfect Union'". Concerning the "White" decision Stampp wrote:


title: Secession in the United States

text: The Republic of Texas successfully seceded from Mexico in 1836 (this, however took the form of outright rebellion against Mexico, and claimed no warrant under the Mexican Constitution to do so). Mexico refused to recognize its revolted province as an independent country, and the Texas Republic did not have significant international recognition. In 1845, Congress admitted Texas as a state. The documents governing Texas's accession to the United States of America do not mention any right of secession—although they did raise the possibility of dividing Texas into multiple states inside the Union. Mexico warned that annexation meant war and the Mexican–American War followed in 1846.


title: Secession in the United States

text: New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.


title: Secession in the United States

text: The separation referred to is not secession but partition. Some of the movements to partition states have identified themselves as "secessionist" movements.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Of the new states admitted to the Union by Congress, three were set off from already existing states, while one was established upon land claimed by an existing state after existing for several years as a "de facto" independent republic. They are:


title: Secession in the United States

text: The late 20th and early 21st centuries have seen examples of local and state secession movements. All such movements to create new states have failed. The formation in 1971 of the Libertarian Party and its national platform affirmed the right of states to secede on three vital principles: "We shall support recognition of the right to secede. Political units or areas which do secede should be recognized by the United States as independent political entities where: (1) secession is supported by a majority within the political unit, (2) the majority does not attempt suppression of the dissenting minority, and (3) the government of the new entity is at least as compatible with human freedom as that from which it seceded."


title: Secession in the United States

text: There was an attempt by Staten Island to break away from New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s, leading to a 1993 referendum, in which 65% voted to secede. Implementation was blocked in the State Assembly by assertions that the state's constitution required a "home rule message" from New York City.


title: Secession in the United States

text: The San Fernando Valley lost a vote to separate from Los Angeles in 2002. Despite the majority (55%) of the valley within the L.A. city limits voting for secession, the city council unanimously voted to block the partition of the valley north of Mulholland Drive.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Other attempted city secession drives include Killington, Vermont, which has voted twice (2005 and 2006) to join New Hampshire; the community of Miller Beach, Indiana, originally a separate incorporated community, to split from the city of Gary in 2007 and Northeast Philadelphia to split from the city of Philadelphia in the 1980s.


title: Secession in the United States

text: A portion of the town of Calabash, North Carolina, voted to secede from the town in 1998 after receiving permission for a referendum on the issue from the state of North Carolina. Following secession, the area incorporated itself as the town of Carolina Shores. Despite the split, the towns continue to share fire and emergency services.


title: Secession in the United States

text: The town of Rough and Ready, California declared its secession from the Union as The Great Republic of Rough and Ready on 7 April 1850, largely to avoid mining taxes, but voted to rejoin the Union less than three months later on 4 July.


title: Secession in the United States

text: Some state movements seek secession from the United States itself and the formation of a nation from one or more states.


title: Secession in the United States

text: A September 2017 Zogby International poll found that 68% of Americans were open to states of the USA seceding. A 2014 Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 24% of Americans supported their state seceding from the union if necessary; 53% opposed the idea. Republicans were somewhat more supportive than Democrats. Respondents cited issues like gridlock, governmental overreach, the possible unconstitutionality of the Affordable Care Act and a loss of faith in the federal government as reasons for desiring secession.


title: Secession in the United States

text: A 2021 poll found that 52% of Trump voters and 41% of Biden voters support partitioning the United States into multiple countries based on political party lines. A different poll that same year grouped the United States into five geographic regions, and found that 37% of Americans favored secession of their own region. 44% of Americans in the South favored secession, with Republican support at 66%; while Democratic support was 47% in the Pacific states.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: Aurora was a rumored mid-1980s American reconnaissance aircraft. There is no substantial evidence that it was ever built or flown and it has been termed a myth.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: The U.S. government has consistently denied such an aircraft was ever built. Aviation and space reference site "Aerospaceweb.org" concluded, "The evidence supporting the Aurora is circumstantial or pure conjecture, there is little reason to contradict the government's position."


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: Former Skunk Works director Ben Rich confirmed that "Aurora" was simply a myth in "Skunk Works" (1994), a book detailing his days as the director. Rich wrote that a colonel working in the Pentagon arbitrarily assigned the name "Aurora" to the funding for the B-2 bomber design competition and somehow the name was leaked to the media.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: In 2006, veteran black project watcher and aviation writer Bill Sweetman said, "Does Aurora exist? Years of pursuit have led me to believe that, yes, Aurora is most likely in active development, spurred on by recent advances that have allowed technology to catch up with the ambition that launched the program a generation ago."


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: The Aurora legend started in March 1990, when "Aviation Week & Space Technology" magazine broke the news that the term "Aurora" had been inadvertently included in the 1985 U.S. budget, as an allocation of $455 million for "black aircraft production" in FY 1987. According to "Aviation Week", "Project Aurora" referred to a group of exotic aircraft, and not to one particular airframe. Funding of the project allegedly reached $2.3 billion in fiscal 1987, according to a 1986 procurement document obtained by "Aviation Week". In the 1994 book "Skunk Works", Ben Rich, the former head of Lockheed's Skunk Works division, wrote that the Aurora was the budgetary code name for the stealth bomber fly-off that resulted in the B-2 Spirit.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: By the late 1980s many aerospace industry observers believed that the U.S. had the technological capability to build a Mach 5 (hypersonic speed) replacement for the aging Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. Detailed examinations of the U.S. defense budget claimed to have found money missing or channeled into black projects. By the mid-1990s reports surfaced of sightings of unidentified aircraft flying over California and the United Kingdom involving odd-shaped contrails, sonic booms, and related phenomena that suggested the US had developed such an aircraft. Nothing ever linked any of these observations to any program or aircraft type, but the name Aurora was often tagged on these as a way of explaining the observations.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: In late August 1989, while working as an engineer on the jack-up barge "GSF Galveston Key" in the North Sea, Chris Gibson saw an unfamiliar isosceles triangle-shaped delta aircraft, apparently refueling from a Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker and accompanied by a pair of F-111 fighter-bombers. Gibson watched the aircraft for several minutes, until they went out of sight. He subsequently drew a sketch of the formation.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: When the sighting was made public in 1992, the British Defence Secretary Tom King was told, "There is no knowledge in the MoD of a 'black' programme of this nature, although it would not surprise the relevant desk officers in the Air Staff and Defence Intelligence Staff if it did exist."


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: A crash at RAF Boscombe Down in Wiltshire on 26 September 1994 appeared closely linked to "black" missions, according to a report in "AirForces Monthly". Further investigation was hampered by USAF aircraft flooding into the base. Special Air Service personnel arrived in plainclothes in an Agusta 109. The crash site was protected from view by fire engines and tarpaulins and the base was closed to all flights soon afterwards.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: An unsubstantiated claim on the Horsted Keynes Village Web Site purports to show photos of the trail left after an unusual sonic boom was heard over the village in July 2002. In 2005 the information was used in a BBC report about the Aurora project.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: A series of unusual sonic booms was detected in Southern California beginning in mid-to-late 1991 and recorded by United States Geological Survey sensors across Southern California used to pinpoint earthquake epicenters. The sonic booms were characteristic of a smaller vehicle, rather than of the 37-meter long Space Shuttle orbiter. Furthermore, neither the Shuttle nor NASA's single SR-71B was operating on the days the booms had been registered. In the article, ""In Plane Sight?"" which appeared in the "Washington City Paper" on 3 July 1992 (pp. 12–13), one of the seismologists, Jim Mori, noted: "We can't tell anything about the vehicle. They seem stronger than other sonic booms that we record once in a while. They've all come on Thursday mornings about the same time, between 4 and 7." Former NASA sonic boom expert Dom Maglieri studied the 15-year-old sonic boom data from the California Institute of Technology and has deemed that the data showed "something at 90,000 ft (c. 27 km), Mach 4 to Mach 5.2". He also said the booms did not look like those from aircraft that had traveled through the atmosphere many miles away at Los Angeles International Airport, rather, they appeared to be booms from a high-altitude aircraft directly above the ground moving at high speeds. The boom signatures of the two different aircraft patterns are wildly different. There was nothing particular to tie these events to any aircraft, but they served to increase the number of stories about the Aurora.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: On 23 March 1992, near Amarillo, Texas, Steven Douglass photographed the "donuts on a rope" contrail and linked this sighting to distinctive sounds. He described the engine noise as: "strange, loud pulsating roar... unique... a deep pulsating rumble that vibrated the house and made the windows shake... similar to rocket engine noise, but deeper, with evenly timed pulses." In addition to providing the first photographs of the distinctive contrail previously reported by many, the significance of this sighting was enhanced by Douglass' reports of intercepts of radio transmissions: "Air-to-air communications... were between an AWACS aircraft with the call sign "Dragnet 51" from Tinker AFB, Oklahoma, and two unknown aircraft using the call signs "Darkstar November" and "Darkstar Mike". Messages consisted of phonetically transmitted alphanumerics. It is not known whether this radio traffic had any association with the "pulser" that had just flown over Amarillo." ("Darkstar" is also a call sign of AWACS aircraft from a different squadron at Tinker AFB) A month later, radio enthusiasts in California monitoring Edwards AFB Radar (callsign "Joshua Control") heard early morning radio transmissions between Joshua and a high flying aircraft using the callsign "Gaspipe". "You're at 67,000 feet, 81 miles out" was heard, followed by "70 miles out now, 36,000 ft, above glideslope." As in the past, nothing linked these observations to any particular aircraft or program, but the attribution to the Aurora helped expand the legend.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: In February 1994, a former resident of Rachel, Nevada, and Area 51 enthusiast, Chuck Clark, claimed to have filmed the Aurora taking off from the Groom Lake facility. In the David Darlington book "", he said:


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: I even saw the Aurora take off one night – or an aircraft that matched the Aurora's reputed configuration, a sharp delta with twin tails about a hundred and thirty feet long. It taxied out of a lighted hangar at two-thirty A.M. and used a lot of runway to take off. It had one red light on top, but the minute the wheels left the runway, the light went off and that was the last I saw of it. I didn't hear it because the wind was blowing from behind me toward the base." I asked when this had taken place. "February 1994. Obviously they didn't think anybody was out there. It was thirty below zero – probably ninety below with the wind chill factor. I had hiked into White Sides from a different, harder way than usual, and stayed there two or three days among the rocks, under a camouflage tarp with six layers of clothes on. I had an insulated face mask and two sleeping bags, so I didn't present a heat signature. I videotaped the aircraft through a telescope with a five-hundred-millimeter f4 lens coupled via a C-ring to a high-eight digital video camera with five hundred and twenty scan lines of resolution, which is better than TV." The author then asked, "Where's the tape?" "Locked away. That's a legitimate spyplane; my purpose is not to give away legitimate national defense. When they get ready to unveil it, I'll probably release the tape."


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: By 1996, reports associated with the Aurora name dropped off in frequency, suggesting to people who believed that the aircraft existed that it had only ever been a prototype or that it had had a short service life.


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: In 2000, "Aberdeen Press and Journal" writer Nic Outterside wrote a piece on US stealth technology in Scotland. Citing confidential "sources", he alleged RAF/USAF Machrihanish in Kintyre, Argyll to be a base for Aurora aircraft. Machrihanish's almost long runway makes it suitable for high-altitude and experimental aircraft with the fenced-off coastal approach making it ideal for takeoffs and landings to be made well away from eyes or cameras of press and public. "Oceanic Air Traffic Control at Prestwick," Outterside says, "also tracked fast-moving radar blips. It was claimed by staff that a 'hypersonic jet was the only rational conclusion' for the readings."


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: In 2006, aviation writer Bill Sweetman put together 20 years of examining budget "holes", unexplained sonic booms, as well as the Gibson sighting and concluded:


title: Aurora (aircraft)

text: In June 2017, "Aviation Week" reported that Rob Weiss, the General Manager of the Skunk Works, provided some confirmation of a research project and stated that hypersonic flight technology was now mature, and efforts were underway to fly an aircraft with it.


title: National Bolshevism

text: National Bolshevism (, ), whose supporters are known as National Bolsheviks () or Nazbols (), is a syncretic neo-fascist political movement from conservative revolutionary origins that combines ultranationalism and Bolshevism.


title: National Bolshevism

text: Notable historical proponents of National Bolshevism in Germany included Ernst Niekisch (1889–1967), Heinrich Laufenberg (1872–1932), and Karl Otto Paetel (1906–1975). In Russia, Nikolay Ustryalov (1890–1937) and his followers, the Smenovekhovtsy, used the term. Notable modern advocates of the movement include Aleksandr Dugin and Eduard Limonov, the leader of the unregistered and banned National Bolshevik Party (NBP) in the Russian Federation.


title: National Bolshevism

text: National Bolshevism as a term was first used to describe a current in the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and then the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD) which wanted to ally the insurgent communist movement with dissident nationalist groups in the German army who rejected the Treaty of Versailles. They were led by Heinrich Laufenberg and Fritz Wolffheim and were based in Hamburg. Their expulsion from the KAPD was one of the conditions that Karl Radek explained was necessary if the KAPD was to be welcomed to the Third Congress of the Third International. However, the demand that they withdraw from the KAPD would probably have happened anyway. Radek had dismissed the pair as National Bolsheviks, the first recorded use of the term in a German context.


title: National Bolshevism

text: Radek subsequently courted some of the radical nationalists he had met in prison to unite with the Bolsheviks in the name of National Bolshevism. He saw in a revival of National Bolshevism a way to "remove the capitalist isolation" of the Soviet Union.


title: National Bolshevism

text: National Bolshevism was one of a number of early non-Nazi fascist movements in Germany. During the 1920s, a number of German intellectuals began a dialogue which created a synthesis between radical nationalism (typically referencing Prussianism) and Bolshevism as it existed in the Soviet Union. The main figure in this was Ernst Niekisch of the Old Social Democratic Party of Germany, who edited the "Widerstand" journal.


title: National Bolshevism

text: A National Bolshevik tendency also existed with the German Youth Movement, led by Karl Otto Paetel. Paetel had been a supporter of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), but became disillusioned with them as he did not feel they were truly committed to revolutionary activity or socialist economics. His 1930-formed movement, the Group of Social Revolutionary Nationalists, sought to forge a third way between the NSDAP and the KPD, emphasising both nationalism and socialist economics. He was especially active in a largely unsuccessful attempt to win over a section of the Hitler Youth to his cause.


title: National Bolshevism

text: Although members of the NSDAP under Adolf Hitler did not take part in Niekisch's National Bolshevik project and usually presented Bolshevism in exclusively negative terms as a Jewish conspiracy, in the early 1930s there was a parallel tendency within the NSDAP which advocated similar views. This was represented by what has come to be known as Strasserism. A group led by Hermann Ehrhardt, Otto Strasser and Walther Stennes broke away in 1930 to found the Combat League of Revolutionary National Socialists, commonly known as the Black Front.


title: National Bolshevism

text: After the Second World War, the Socialist Reich Party was established, which combined neo-Nazi ideology with a foreign policy critical of the United States and supportive of the Soviet Union, which funded the party.


title: National Bolshevism

text: As the Russian Civil War dragged on, a number of prominent Whites switched to the Bolshevik side because they saw it as the only hope for restoring greatness to Russia. Amongst these was Professor Nikolai Ustrialov, initially an anti-communist, who came to believe that Bolshevism could be modified to serve nationalistic purposes. His followers, the Smenovekhovtsy (named after a series of articles he published in 1921) "Smena vekh" (Russian: change of milestones), came to regard themselves as National Bolsheviks, borrowing the term from Niekisch.


title: National Bolshevism

text: Similar ideas were expressed by the Evraziitsi movement and writers such as D. S. Mirsky, and the pro-monarchist Mladorossi. Joseph Stalin's idea of socialism in one country was interpreted as a victory by the National Bolsheviks. Vladimir Lenin, who did not use the term National Bolshevism, identified the Smenovekhovtsy as a tendency of the old Constitutional Democratic Party who saw Russian communism as just an evolution in the process of Russian aggrandisement. He further added that they were a class enemy and warned against communists believing them to be allies.


title: National Bolshevism

text: Ustryalov and others sympathetic to the Smenovekhovtsy cause, such as Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy and Ilya Ehrenburg, were eventually able to return to the Soviet Union and following the co-option of aspects of nationalism by Stalin and his ideologue Andrei Zhdanov enjoyed membership of the intellectual elite under the designation non-party Bolsheviks. Similarly, B. D. Grekov's National Bolshevik school of historiography, a frequent target under Lenin, was officially recognised and even promoted under Stalin, albeit after accepting the main tenets of Stalinism. It has been argued that National Bolshevism was the main impetus for the revival of nationalism as an official part of state ideology in the 1930s. Although many of the original proponents of National Bolshevism, such as Ustryalov and members of the Smenovekhovtsy were suppressed and executed during the Great Purge for "anti-Soviet agitation", espionage and other counter-revolutionary activities.


title: National Bolshevism

text: Russian historian Andrei Savin stated that Stalin's policy shifted away from internationalism towards National Bolshevism a view also shared by David Brandenberger and Evgeny Dobrenko.


title: National Bolshevism

text: The term National Bolshevism has sometimes been applied to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his brand of anti-communism. However, Geoffrey Hosking argues in his "History of the Soviet Union" that Solzhenitsyn cannot be labelled a National Bolshevik since he was thoroughly anti-Stalinist and wished a revival of Russian culture that would see a greater role for the Russian Orthodox Church, a withdrawal of Russia from its role overseas and a state of international isolationism. Solzhenitsyn and his followers, known as "vozrozhdentsy" (revivalists), differed from the National Bolsheviks, who were not religious in tone (although not completely hostile to religion) and who felt that involvement overseas was important for the prestige and power of Russia.


title: National Bolshevism

text: There was open hostility between Solzhenitsyn and Eduard Limonov, the head of Russia's unregistered National Bolshevik Party. Solzhenitsyn had described Limonov as "a little insect who writes pornography" and Limonov described Solzhenitsyn as a traitor to his homeland who contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union. In "The Oak and the Calf", Solzhenitsyn openly attacked the notions that the Russians were "the noblest in the world" and that "tsarism and Bolshevism [...] [were] equally irreproachable", defining this as the core of the National Bolshevism to which he was opposed.


title: National Bolshevism

text: The current National Bolshevik Party (NBP) was founded in 1992 as the National Bolshevik Front, an amalgamation of six minor groups. The party has always been led by Eduard Limonov. Limonov and Dugin sought to unite far-left and far-right radicals on the same platform, with Dugin viewing national-bolsheviks as a point between communist and fascists, and forced to act in the peripheries of each group. The group's early policies and actions show some alignment and sympathy with radical nationalist groups, albeit while still holding to the tenets of a form of Marxism that Dugin defined as "Marx minus Feuerbach, i. e. minus evolutionism and sometimes appearing inertial humanism", but a split occurred in the 2000s which changed this to an extent. This led to the party moving further left in Russia's political spectrum, and led to members of the party denouncing Dugin and his group as fascists. Dugin subsequently developed close ties to the Kremlin and served as an adviser to senior Russian official Sergey Naryshkin.


title: National Bolshevism

text: Initially critical of Vladimir Putin, Limonov at first somewhat liberalized the NBP and joined forces with leftist and liberal groups in Garry Kasparov's United Civil Front to fight Putin. However, he later expressed support of Putin following the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War.


title: National Bolshevism

text: The Franco-Belgian Parti Communautaire National-Européen shares National Bolshevism's desire for the creation of a united Europe as well as many of the NBP's economic ideas. French political figure Christian Bouchet has also been influenced by the idea.


title: National Bolshevism

text: In 1944, Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose called for "a synthesis between National Socialism and communism" to take root in India.


title: National Bolshevism

text: That same year, the new leadership of the Israeli paramilitary organization Lehi declared its support for National Bolshevism, a break from the group's fascist outlook under its previous leader Avraham Stern.


title: National Bolshevism

text: Some have described the Serbian Radical Party, the Bulgarian Attack party, the Slovenian National Party, the Macedonian Levica (The Left) party and the Greater Romania Party as "National Bolshevik" for blending much of their respective countries' far-right rhetoric with traditional left-wing stances such as socialised economies, anti-imperialism and defense of historical communist rule. The Serbian Radical Party in particular has given support to leaders such as Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and current Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. The Greater Romania Party on the other hand was founded by Corneliu Vadim Tudor, described as the "Court Poet of Nicolae Ceaușescu", and has been seen as a continuation of the latter's ideology with a right-wing veneer.


title: National Bolshevism

text: In July 2021, the leader of the American Traditionalist Worker Party Heimbach announced his intention to reform the party along National Bolshevik lines.


title: Carl Panzram

text: Charles "Carl" Panzram (June 28, 1891 – September 5, 1930) was an American serial killer, spree killer, mass murderer, rapist, child molester, arsonist, robber, thief, and burglar. In prison confessions and in his autobiography, Panzram confessed to having committed twenty-one murders, only five of which could be corroborated; he is suspected of having killed more than a hundred men in the United States alone, and several more in Portuguese Angola. He also confessed to having committed more than a thousand acts of rape against males of all ages. After a lifetime of crime, during which he served many prison terms and escaped from them just as much, he was executed by hanging in 1930 for the murder of a prison employee at Leavenworth Federal Prison.


title: Carl Panzram

text: Born on a farm in East Grand Forks, Minnesota, Panzram was the sixth of seven children born to East Prussian immigrants Johann "John" Gottlieb Panzram and Mathilda Elizabeth "Lizzie" Panzram (née Bolduan, anglicised as Boldon, Bolden, Boldwon, or Baldwin). He and his six siblings (five older brothers and a younger sister) were raised on the family farm on which they were born, and they were forced to work from a young age until truancy laws, which made it illegal for parents to not send their children to school, came into effect. Panzram's parents were not happy to be losing their children to school during the day, and forced them to work in the fields throughout the night instead; Panzram later reported he would get just two hours of sleep before he would have to get up for school. Punishments in the home ranged from being chained to being starved. Panzram reflected on his early childhood with the sentiment that he was not liked by other children: by the age of five or six he was a liar and thief, and he recalled that he became meaner the older he grew. Panzram’s father abandoned the family when he was six or seven years old. Eventually, four of his five older brothers left as well; one of them died.


title: Carl Panzram

text: Panzram's run-ins with the law started early; in 1899, at age 8, he was charged in juvenile court with being drunk and disorderly, and in 1903, at age 11, he was arrested and jailed for being drunk and "incorrigible," a term used when detaining youths. Not long after this second arrest, he stole some cake, apples, and a revolver from a neighbor's home. In October of that year, his mother sent him to the Minnesota State Training School, purportedly a reform school; according to his autobiography, however, while there he was repeatedly beaten, tortured, and raped by staff members in a workshop the children dubbed "the paint shop" due to leaving the room "painted" with bruises and blood. Panzram hated the school so much that he decided to burn it down, and did so successfully and without detection on July 7, 1905.


title: Carl Panzram

text: In January 1906, Panzram was paroled from Red Wing Training School, where he had been detained after stealing money from his mother's pocketbook. By his early teens Panzram had an alcohol dependence problem and a lengthy criminal rap sheet, mostly for burglary and robbery offenses.


title: Carl Panzram

text: At age 14, a couple of weeks after his parole and two weeks after attempting to kill a Lutheran cleric with a revolver, in late adolescence Panzram ran away from home to live on the streets. He often traveled via train cars, and later recalled having been gang raped by a group of homeless men on one of these occasions.


title: Carl Panzram

text: Panzram claimed that after escaping from a Montana State Reform School he and a fellow escapee named James Benson committed a string of burglaries, robberies, and arsons throughout the Midwest until the pair split up. In 1907, at age 15, after getting drunk in a Montana saloon, Panzram enlisted in the United States Army and was assigned to the 6th Infantry at Fort William Henry Harrison. Refusing to take orders from officers and being generally insubordinate, he was convicted of larceny for stealing $80 worth of supplies and served a prison sentence from April 20, 1908, to 1910 in the United States Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, United States Secretary of War William Howard Taft officially approving Panzram's sentence. Panzram later claimed that while he had been a rotten egg before imprisonment at the military pen any shred of goodness left in him was smashed out during his Leavenworth stint.


title: Carl Panzram

text: After his release and dishonorable discharge, Panzram resumed his career as a thief. Stealing items that ranged from bicycles to yachts, he was caught and imprisoned multiple times. He served prison sentences both under his own name and various aliases in: Fresno, California; Rusk, Texas; The Dalles, Oregon; Harrison, Idaho; Butte, Montana; Montana State Prison (as "Jeff Davis" #4194 #3194 and "Jefferson Rhodes" #4396); Oregon State Prison ("Jefferson Baldwin" #7390); Bridgeport, Connecticut ("John O'Leary"); Sing Sing Correctional Facility, New York ("John O'Leary" #75182); Clinton Correctional Facility, New York ("John O'Leary" #75182); and Washington, D.C. (Carl Panzram #33379) and Leavenworth, Kansas (Carl Panzram #31614). While incarcerated, Panzram frequently attacked officers and refused to follow their orders. The officers retaliated, subjecting him to beatings and other punishments.


title: Carl Panzram

text: In his autobiography, Panzram wrote that he was "rage personified" and that he would often rape men whom he had robbed. He was noted for his large stature and great physical strength—due to years of hard labor at Leavenworth and other prisons – which aided him in overpowering most men he attempted to; he also engaged in vandalism and arson. By his own admission, one of the few times he did not engage in criminal activities was when he was employed as a strikebreaker against union employees. On one occasion, he tried to sign aboard as a ship's steward on an Army transport vessel, but was discharged when he reported to work intoxicated.


title: Carl Panzram

text: Panzram claimed in his 1929 autobiography that after serving a short sentence at Rusk, Texas, he went to Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, in the winter of 1910 to try to enlist in the Federal Mexican Army. He took a train to Del Rio, Texas, and got off in a small town east of El Paso. He later claimed to have abducted, assaulted, and strangled a man about a mile from town and then stolen $35 ($566.12 USD in 2021) from the victim.


title: Carl Panzram

text: In the summer of 1911, Panzram, going by the alias "Jefferson Davis", was arrested in Fresno, California, for stealing a bicycle. He was sentenced to six months in county jail, but escaped after thirty days. He claimed that after his escape while riding on a train boxcar in California he disarmed an armed man he either called a "railway Detective" or a "railway brakeman" whom he then forced to rape a homeless man at gunpoint and threw them off the train. In Oregon he made a living as a logger. In 1913, Panzram, going by the alias "Jack Allen", was arrested in The Dalles, Oregon, for highway robbery, assault, and sodomy. He broke out of jail after two to three months. While he was on the run, he used the alias "Jeff Davis". He was arrested in Harrison, Idaho, but again he escaped from county jail. He was arrested in Chinook, Montana, under the alias "Jefferson Davis" and sentenced to one year in prison for burglary, to be served at the Montana State Prison.


title: Carl Panzram

text: On April 27, 1913, Panzram, using his "Jefferson Davis" alias, was admitted to the state prison at Deer Lodge, Montana. He escaped on November 13. Within a week, he was arrested for burglary, giving his name as "Jeff Rhoades" in Three Forks. He was incarcerated at Deer Lodge for an additional year. By his own account he committed sodomy while imprisoned. He was released on March 3, 1915 with a new suit of clothing, $5.00 and a ticket to the next town six miles away. He rode the rails though Washington, Idaho, Nebraska and South Dakota via the Columbia River. On June 1,1915 Panzram burglarized a house in Astoria, Oregon, where he was soon arrested while attempting to sell some of the stolen items.


title: Carl Panzram

text: Under the name "Jeff Baldwin", he was sentenced to seven years in prison, to be served at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, where he was taken on June 24. Warden Harry Minto believed in harsh treatment of inmates, including beatings and isolation, among other disciplinary measures. Later, Panzram stated that he swore he "would never do that seven years and I defied the warden and all his officers to make me."


title: Carl Panzram

text: Later that year, Panzram helped fellow inmate Otto Hooker escape from the prison. While attempting to evade recapture, Hooker killed Minto. This event marked Panzram's first known involvement in a murder, as an accessory before the fact. In his prison record which noted his two alias "Jefferson Davis" and "Jeff Rhodes" he falsely gave his age as 30, and his place of birth as Alabama. His only truthful statement was when he stated his occupation as "thief".


title: Carl Panzram

text: Panzram was disciplined several times while at Salem, including 61 days in solitary confinement, before escaping on September 18, 1917. After two shootouts, in which he attempted to shoot Chief Deputy Sheriff Joseph Frum, he was recaptured and returned to the prison. On May 12, 1918, he escaped again by sawing through the bars of his cell, and caught a freight train heading east. He began going by the name "John O'Leary" and shaved off his mustache to change his appearance. He would never return to the Northwest. Allegedly he ended up in New York City and got a Seaman Identification card; and sailed on the steamship "James S. Whitney" to Panama. There he tried to steal a small boat with the help of a drunken sailor who killed everyone on board and was arrested. Still free, Panzram travelled to Peru to work in a copper mine. After that, he traveled to Chile, Port Arthur, Texas, London, Edinburgh, Paris, and Hamburg.


title: Carl Panzram

text: In 1920 he committed a robbery in Newport, Rhode Island. In August 1920, Panzram burglarized the William H. Taft Mansion in New Haven, Connecticut, a residence of William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States. Panzram specifically targeted Taft's mansion out of animus he had been holding for the former President since his incarceration at Fort Leavenworth. He stole a large amount of jewelry and bonds, as well as Taft's Colt M1911 .45-caliber handgun.


title: Carl Panzram

text: With the money stolen from Taft he bought a yacht, the "Akista", and embarked on an eight-year long murder spree which spanned several countries and involved multiple victims. Sailing south to New York City, Panzram lured sailors away from port bars onto the yacht, made them drunk before raping them, and then murdered the men with the pistol stolen from Taft's house, subsequently dumping their bodies near Execution Rocks Light in Long Island Sound. In this manner Panzram claimed to have killed ten men. The sailor murders ended only after the "Akista" ran aground and sank near Atlantic City, during which his last two potential victims escaped to parts unknown. On October 26, 1920 Panzram, using the pseudonym "John O'Leary", was arrested in Stamford, Connecticut, for burglary and possession of a loaded handgun. In 1921, he served six months in jail in Bridgeport, Connecticut.


title: Carl Panzram

text: Panzram caught a ship to Southern Africa and landed in Luanda, the capital of colonial Portuguese Angola. In 1921, Panzram was foreman of an oil rig in Angola; he later burned it down out of what he said was spitefulness. He later claimed that, while in Angola, he raped and killed a boy estimated to be 11 years old. In his confession to this murder, he wrote: "His brains were coming out of his ears when I left him and he will never be any deader." He also claimed that he hired a boat with six rowers, shot the rowers with a Luger pistol, and threw their bodies to the crocodiles.


title: Carl Panzram

text: After his return to the United States, Panzram asserted he raped and killed two small boys, beating one to death with a rock on July 18, 1922, in Salem, Massachusetts, and strangling the other later that year near New Haven.


title: Carl Panzram

text: After his murder spree in Salem, Panzram worked as a night watchman in Yonkers, New York, north of Manhattan, at Abeeco Mill factory. In Providence, he stole a yawl and sailed to New Haven, seeking victims to rob and rape, and boats to steal. In June 1923, in New Rochelle, New York, he stole a yacht belonging to the police chief of New Rochelle. He picked up a 15-year-old boy named George Walosin and promised him a job on the boat, but instead, sodomized him.


title: Carl Panzram

text: On June 27, on the river near Kingston, New York, Panzram claimed he used a .38 caliber pistol from the stolen yacht to kill a man attempting to rob him on the yacht. Panzram threw the body into the river. On June 28, Panzram and Walosin docked at Poughkeepsie, New York. Panzram stole $1,000 worth of fishing nets. At Newburgh, New York, Walosin, having witnessed the murder the day before, jumped overboard and swam to shore. He reported to the police at Yonkers that he had been sexually assaulted by Panzram. An alert went out for "Captain John O'Leary". On June 29, "John O'Leary" was arrested in Nyack, New York.


title: Carl Panzram

text: On July 9, Panzram tried to escape from jail. He later conned his lawyer by giving him ownership of a stolen boat in return for bail money. Panzram skipped bail, and the boat was confiscated by the government agents. On August 26, "O'Leary" was arrested in Larchmont, New York, after breaking into a train depot. Three days later, on August 29, "O'Leary" was cleared as a suspect in the stabbing death of Dorothy Kaufman of Greenburgh, New York, committed a month prior. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment. While in county jail, he confessed to the alias "Jeff Baldwin", and that he was wanted in Oregon. In October, Panzram was imprisoned at Clinton Prison in Dannemora, New York as Inmate #75182. He was discharged in July 1928, and he allegedly committed a murder that summer in Baltimore, Maryland.


title: Carl Panzram

text: On August 30, 1928, Panzram was arrested in Baltimore for a Washington, D.C. burglary – stealing a radio and jewelry from the home of a dentist on August 20. (September 2, 1928, Carl Panzram Inmate #33379 mugshot Washington DC.) During his interrogation, he confessed to killing three young boys earlier that month – one in Salem, one in Connecticut, and a 14-year-old newsboy in Philadelphia. Panzram's confession to killing a boy at Pier 28 on League island near Philadelphia in August 1928 was confirmed. Boston police were unable to corroborate his other confession, the murder of a boy in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Panzram later wrote that he had contemplated mass murders and other acts of mayhem, such as poisoning a city's water supply with arsenic, or scuttling a British warship in New York Harbor to provoke a war between the United States and Britain.


title: Carl Panzram

text: In light of his extensive criminal record, Panzram was sentenced to 25-years-to-life. Upon arriving at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, identified as inmate #31614, he warned the warden, "I'll kill the first man that bothers me". He was assigned to work in the prison laundry room, where the foreman, Robert Warnke, was known to bully and harass other prisoners under him. Warnke soon antagonized Panzram, despite the latter repeatedly warning him to back off. On June 20, 1929, Panzram beat Warnke to death with an iron bar.


title: Carl Panzram

text: He was convicted and sentenced to death. He refused to allow any appeals of his sentence. In response to offers from death penalty opponents and human rights activists to intervene, he wrote, "The only thanks you and your kind will ever get from me for your efforts on my behalf is that I wish you all had one neck and that I had my hands on it."


title: Carl Panzram

text: While on death row, Panzram was befriended by an officer named Henry Philip Lesser, who would give him money to buy cigarettes. Panzram was so astonished by this act of kindness that, after Lesser provided him with writing materials, Panzram wrote a detailed summary of his crimes and nihilistic philosophy while awaiting execution. Panzram explicitly denied having any remorse for any of his actions and began his journal with the statement that, "In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry."


title: Carl Panzram

text: Panzram was hanged on September 5, 1930. As officers attempted to place a customary black hood over his head, he spat in the executioner's face. When asked for any last words, he responded, "Yes. Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard; I could kill a dozen men while you're screwing around!" He was buried in the Leavenworth Penitentiary Cemetery, where his grave is marked only with his prison number, 31614.


title: Carl Panzram

text: In 1938, Karl Menninger wrote "Man Against Himself". He included material about Panzram, referring to him as using the pen name of "John Smith," and identified him as prisoner No. 31614.


title: Carl Panzram

text: Former prison guard Henry Lesser preserved Panzram's letters and autobiographical manuscript. He spent the next four decades trying to have this material published. In 1980, Lesser donated Panzram's materials to San Diego State University, where they are housed as the "Carl Panzram papers" in the Malcolm A. Love Library.


title: Carl Panzram

text: Writers Thomas E. Gaddis and Joe Long jointly co-wrote "" (1970). They had consulted with Lesser, who let them draw from Panzram's manuscript for their work.


title: Carl Panzram

text: Musician Marilyn Manson in his song "The Nobodies" sings the lyric "Today I'm dirty, I want to be pretty / Tomorrow, I know I'm just dirt" which alludes to a Panzram quote


title: Carl Panzram

text: The Yugoslav film "Strangler vs. Strangler" ("Davitelj protiv davitelja") (1984), about an ostensible serial killer, opens with a quote from Panzram: "I wish you all had one neck and my hands were around it."


title: Carl Panzram

text: The German film "Schramm" also begins with a quote of Panzram: "Today I am dirty, but tomorrow I'll be just dirt."


title: Carl Panzram

text: The Gaddis-Long book was adapted as a , released in 1996 and starring James Woods as Carl Panzram and Robert Sean Leonard as Henry Lesser.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: On January 8, 2011, U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords and 18 others were shot during a constituent meeting held in a supermarket parking lot in Casas Adobes, Arizona, in the Tucson metropolitan area. Six people were killed, including federal District Court Chief Judge John Roll; Gabe Zimmerman, one of Giffords's staffers; and a 9-year-old girl, Christina-Taylor Green. Giffords was holding the meeting, called "Congress on Your Corner", in the parking lot of a Safeway store when Jared Lee Loughner drew a pistol and shot her in the head before proceeding to fire on other people. One additional person was injured in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. News reports identified the target of the attack to be Giffords, a Democrat representing . She was shot through the head at point-blank range, and her medical condition was initially described as "critical".


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Loughner, a 22-year-old Tucson man who was fixated on Giffords, was arrested at the scene. Federal prosecutors filed five charges against him, including the attempted assassination of a member of Congress and the assassination of a federal judge. Loughner previously had been arrested once (but not convicted) on a minor drug charge and had been suspended by his college for disruptive behavior. Court filings include notes handwritten by Loughner indicating he planned to assassinate Giffords. Loughner did not cooperate with authorities, invoking his right to remain silent. He was held without bail and indicted on 49 counts. In January 2012, Loughner was found by a federal judge to be incompetent to stand trial based on two medical evaluations, which diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. On August 7, Loughner had a hearing in which he was judged competent. He pleaded guilty to 19 counts, and in November 2012 was sentenced to life in prison.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Following the shooting, American and international politicians expressed grief and condemnations. Gun control advocates pushed for increased restrictions on the sale of firearms and ammunition, specifically high-capacity magazines. Some commentators criticized the use of harsh political rhetoric in the United States, with a number blaming the political right wing for the shooting. In particular, Sarah Palin was criticized for a poster by her political action committee that featured stylized crosshairs on an electoral map which included Giffords. Palin rejected claims that she bore any responsibility for the shooting. President Barack Obama led a nationally televised memorial service on January 12, and other memorials took place.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: The shooting took place on January 8, 2011, at 10:10 A.M. MST (17:10 UTC). A United States Representative from Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords, was holding a constituent meeting called "Congress on Your Corner" at the Safeway supermarket in La Toscana Village mall, which is in Casas Adobes, a census-designated place north of Tucson. Giffords had set up a table outside the store and about 20 to 30 people were gathered around her when a 22-year-old man by the name of Jared Lee Loughner suddenly drew a pistol and shot Giffords in the head. The shooting was caught on video by a store security camera, but was not released to the public.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Loughner proceeded to fire apparently randomly at other members of the crowd. He was armed with a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol with four magazines, two of which were capable of holding 33 rounds. A nearby store employee said he heard "15 to 20 gunshots". Loughner stopped to reload, but dropped the loaded magazine from his pocket to the sidewalk, from where bystander Patricia Maisch grabbed it. Another bystander, Roger Salzgeber, clubbed the back of the assailant's head with a folding chair, injuring his elbow in the process, representing the 14th injury. Loughner was tackled to the ground by Bill Badger, a 74-year-old retired United States Army Colonel who had also been shot himself. Loughner was further subdued by Maisch, Salzgeber and bystander Joseph Zamudio. Zamudio, a concealed weapon (CCW) permit holder, had a weapon on his person, but arrived after the shooting had stopped and did not draw his firearm. Thirty-one shell casings were found at the scene by investigators.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: The first call from the scene to emergency services was received at 10:11 A.M. While waiting for help to arrive, Giffords's intern Daniel Hernández Jr. applied pressure to the gunshot wound on her forehead, and made sure she did not choke on her blood. Hernández, and local paramedic Aaron Rogers are credited with saving Giffords's life. David and Nancy Bowman, a married doctor and nurse couple who were shopping in the store, immediately set up triage and attended to nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green. Police arrived on the scene at 10:15 A.M., with paramedics arriving at 10:16 A.M. Badger observed the assailant attempting to discard a small bag containing money and identification, which was recovered by the officers. Following the shooting, the police shut down roads surrounding the shopping center until late in the day. The intersection was cordoned off and most of the businesses in the shopping center were closed throughout the weekend during the initial investigation. The Safeway store reopened a week later, with a makeshift memorial erected near the front of the store.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Five people died at the scene, including Chief Judge John Roll and Giffords's community outreach director Gabe Zimmerman. Several of the injured were taken to University Medical Center in Tucson. Christina-Taylor Green was later pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: When Loughner's parents arrived at their home, unaware of the shootings, they found police tape and police cars around their house. Their neighbor Wayne Smith said Loughner's mother "almost passed out right there", while his father sat in the road and cried. Smith described the family as "devastated", feeling guilty, and wondering "where did they fail?" Loughner's parents released a statement three days later expressing remorse for the victims and saying, "We don't understand why this happened."


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Jared Lee Loughner, the suspect, was described as a white male in his mid-20s with short hair and "dressed in a shabby manner". He was arrested after being detained by bystanders, and police later released his name and details. The FBI attempted to question Loughner, but he reportedly refused to cooperate with authorities and invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. Authorities said that Loughner's motive was unknown. They said that evidence seized from a safe in Loughner's home included an envelope marked with notes reading "I planned ahead", "My assassination", and "Giffords", as well as a letter from Giffords's office thanking him for attending a similar event in 2007.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Federal officials charged Loughner the next day with killing federal government employees, attempting to assassinate a member of Congress and attempting to kill federal employees. Police reports reveal he had purchased a Glock pistol at a Sportsman's Warehouse store, after passing the required FBI background check, less than six weeks before and attempted to buy additional ammunition for the pistol at a Walmart on the morning of the shooting, but the clerk refused to sell it to him based on his appearance and demeanor.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: As the shooting occurred outside the Tucson city limits in unincorporated Casas Adobes, the Pima County Sheriff's Department started the initial investigation with assistance from the Tucson Police Department and the Arizona Department of Public Safety. The Federal Bureau of Investigation director Robert Mueller was ordered to the location by President Obama, and the FBI took over the investigation. The United States Capitol Police also conducted an investigation.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Jared Lee Loughner, then age 22, lived with his parents Randy and Amy Loughner in Tucson, about from the site of the shooting. His mother worked for the City Parks Department; his father's work was not known. Loughner had been attending Pima Community College. Former classmates stated Loughner (at the time) cared about his education due to his appreciation of knowledge. Because of teacher and student complaints about Loughner's increasingly disruptive behavior in classes, the college suspended him on September 29, 2010, and he dropped out of the school in October. Loughner chose not to return, as the college required him to have a mental health evaluation and clearance to be readmitted.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Before the shooting, Loughner had two previous offenses, one of which was for drug possession. He had become obsessed with Giffords, and had previously met her at a "Congress on your Corner" event in a Tucson mall in August 2007.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: U.S. Army officials said that Loughner had attempted to enlist in 2008, but his application had been rejected as "unqualified" for service. They declined further disclosure due to confidentiality rules. An administration official indicated to the media that Loughner had failed a drug test.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Loughner had been posting material online for some time via his Myspace account and on YouTube under the name "Classitup10". He gave his views on terrorism, federal laws, and his belief that the government was brainwashing the citizenry with language. Hours before the incident, Loughner's Myspace page was updated with posts from his account stating, "Goodbye", and said to friends: "Please don't be mad at me."


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: On November 30, 2010, Loughner purchased a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol at a Sportsman's Warehouse store in Tucson, passing a background check.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Earlier on the day of the shooting, Loughner reportedly had an altercation with his father regarding a black bag the younger man took from a car trunk. A bag matching the description was later found in a nearby desert area containing 9mm ammunition, and it is believed to belong to Loughner. Later that morning, at approximately 7:30 A.M., Loughner was stopped by an Arizona Game and Fish Department officer after running a red light, but was released with a reminder when it was determined that he did not have any outstanding warrants.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Loughner was held in the Federal Correctional Institution at Phoenix without bail. All Arizona-based federal judges recused themselves from the case because of their ties to Judge Roll, who was killed in the attack. The federal case was assigned to a San Diego-based jurist, federal Judge Larry Alan Burns from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California. The public defender Judy Clarke, also based in San Diego, was appointed to represent Loughner in federal court.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: On January 19, 2011, a federal grand jury handed down an indictment for three counts against Loughner for the attempt to assassinate Representative Giffords, and attempting to kill two federal employees, her aides Ron Barber and Pamela Simon. Loughner was indicted on additional charges of murder and attempted murder on March 3, for a total of 49 counts.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: Prosecutors representing the state of Arizona filed murder and attempted murder charges on behalf of the victims who were not federal employees. Under Arizona's speedy trial statutes, Arizona state prosecutors normally have ten days from the time a suspect is taken into custody to file charges, but time spent in federal custody does not count toward this limitation. Conviction in either federal or state court meant that Loughner could face the death penalty.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: On May 25, 2011, Judge Burns found Loughner incompetent to stand trial based on two medical evaluations. These evaluations had diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. Loughner was ordered to be forcibly medicated following his diagnosis of schizophrenia. A new evaluation was ordered for January 25, 2012.


title: 2011 Tucson shooting

text: On February 6, 2012, his stay at the Springfield, Missouri facility was extended by four months. A request by Loughner's lawyers to end forced medication was denied. Another competency hearing was set for June 27, 2012, but later rescheduled.