GREENVILLE, SC (FOX Carolina) -
South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia are among more than 20 states who have filed petitions for President Barack Obama's administration to allow them to secede from the Union.
The petitions began appearing on the White House website shortly after Obama won re-election Nov. 6.
The request for sovereignty opens with the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which reads:
"When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
It then quotes, in part, another sentence from the historic document:
"...Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government..."
The petitions aim for a goal of 25,000 signatures by Dec. 10. As of Monday night, the petition for South Carolina had garnered 7,603 signatures. North Carolina's petition had received 10,651 signatures and 10,445 people had signed Georgia's petition.
Furman University Political Science Professor Don Aiesi said that the Constitution does not allow for the secession of states, but it does allow citizens to leave the country if they are unhappy with the government.
"Constitutionally, 'We the people,' is what our country is about," Aiesi said. "There's nothing that restricts an individual. They have the right to leave this country, and the right to renounce their citizenship. They have the right to go wherever they wish, but they do not have the right to take all the people of a state with them."
Aiesi also pointed out that the point of the Civil War was to stop the Southern states from leaving the Union.
In December 1860, South Carolina was the first state to secede before the start of the Civil War less than a year later.
So far, Texas has received the most signatures on its petition - 40,646.
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