民主共和与国家统一：美国早期宪政中的北方分离运动

Democratic Republic and National Unity: the Secession Movement in the North in Early Constitutionalism in the US

美国是世界上最早以现代民族自决观念进行独立运动的国家,其独立建国之后也备受分离问题的困扰。但美国宪政史上最早的分离运动并不是发生在19世纪中叶的美国内战前后,而是在其共和国初期的北方新英格兰地区。对这一分离运动的历史及其涉及的宪法问题和政治哲学辩论的考察,有助于我们理解分离问题在美国宪政中的特殊地位,也有助于我们进一步理解现代民主共和制下国家统一问题的复杂性。

The United States is the first country that justified its secession movement by the modern idea of self-determination. However, after its independence and the founding of a new country, the US was haunted by the problem of secession. This article shows that in the history of American constitutionalism, the first secession movement was not the well-known Southern one launched around the Civil War in the middle of the 19th century. Rather, it took place in the North and was launched by the New England Federalists. Through examining and studying the history of this secession movement and political and constitutional debates over the secession in the early American Republic, the article analyzes the special place of secession in American political tradition and the complexity of the national unity issue in modern republican regime.