History
The Second Vermont Republic was founded in 2003 by Thomas Naylor, who published the book The Vermont Manifesto that same year. He was motivated by the September 11 attacks. Vermont's Bread and Puppet Theater were early supporters. Naylor began informal meetings of the group, holding the first statewide meeting in October 2003. In June 2004 Second Vermont Republic and Bread & Puppet Theater sponsored a parade in Montpelier and a rally of over 300 people at the State House calling for Vermont independence. University of Vermont professor Frank M. Bryan, co-author of the humorous novel OUT! The Vermont Secession Book, later joined the Advisory Board of the Second Vermont Republic.
The "independence" flag adopted by the Second Vermont Republic is similar in design to the Green Mountain Boys regimental flag flown by those who supported creation of the first Vermont Republic.
The Second Vermont Republic hosted a "radical consultation" in Middlebury, Vermont in November 2004 which resulted in the creation of the Middlebury Declaration and the establishment of the Middlebury Institute. In April 2005, members of Second Vermont Republic started the Vermont Commons quarterly publication. In January 2005, the Second Vermont Republic stated it had 125 card-carrying members. In October 2005 300 people attended Second Vermont Republic's first statewide secession convention in the House Chamber of the Vermont State House.
In November 2006 the group's representatives attended the First North American Secessionist Convention in Burlington, which brought together secessionists from a broad political spectrum. The convention issued the Burlington Declaration.
In April 2007 the University of Vermont Center for Rural Studies released its annual "Vermonter Poll" which showed that thirteen percent of eligible voters in Vermont supported secession. That month Frank Bryan and Vermont Commons publisher Ian Baldwin authored an op-ed piece for the Washington Post, "The Once and Future Republic of Vermont". The authors wrote "Vermont did not join the Union to become part of an empire. Some of us therefore seek permission to leave." In June 2007, Frank Bryan stated that "the cachet of secession would make the new republic a magnet" and "People would obviously relish coming to the Republic of Vermont, the Switzerland of North America."
In May 2008, Feral House published Thomas Naylor's book Secession: How Vermont and all the Other States Can Save Themselves from the Empire. Author Kirkpatrick Sale wrote the foreword. In the book he writes about diplomat George F. Kennan being "a major source of inspiration for the Second Vermont Republic." A 2010 Time magazine article quoted Naylor as describing the Second Vermont Republic as "left-libertarian, anti-big government, anti-empire, antiwar, with small is beautiful as our guiding philosophy".
In 2012 Thomas Naylor, Kirkpatrick Sale, Chellis Glendinning, Carolyn Chute and two others issued "The Montpelier Manifesto", carried on the Second Vermont Republic website, as a "Document of Grievances and Abuses" with specific suggestions for a "Redress of Grievances."
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