secession, in art, any of several associations of progressive artists, especially those in Munich, Berlin, and Vienna, who withdrew from the established academic societies or exhibitions. The artists of Munich formed a secession in 1892 that spread to other German cities. The Berlin Secession split away from the Verein Berliner Künstler in 1892; in 1899 it held its first exhibition in its own building. The group was led by Max Liebermann and included Lovis Corinth, Hans van Marées, and Franz von Stuck. When, in 1910, young artists of Die Brücke were excluded from the Berlin Secession exhibition, Max Pechstein led the rejected painters and organized the New Secession group. The Vienna Secession was organized in 1897 by 19 leading Austrian artists. Their leader was Gustav Klimt, whose decorative, exotic murals exemplify Secessionstil, the Viennese version of art nouveau. The Photo-Secession group was an American association of modern photographers founded in 1902 by Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen in New York City in reaction against pictorial photography.

secession, in political science, formal withdrawal from an association by a group discontented with the actions or decisions of that association. The term is generally used to refer to withdrawal from a political entity; such withdrawal usually occurs when a territory or state believes itself justified in establishing its independence from the political entity of which it was a part. By doing so it assumes sovereignty.

The U.S. Civil War

Perhaps the best-known example of a secession taking place within the borders of a formerly unified nation was the withdrawal (1860-61) of the 11 Southern states from the United States to form the Confederacy. This action, which led to the Civil War, brought to a head a constitutional question that had been an issue in the United States since the formation of the union. It was the principal point in the controversy over states' rights.

The secessionists argued that the union created by the Constitution was only a compact of sovereign states and that power given to the federal government was only partial and limited, not paramount over the states, and effective only in the specific fields assigned it. The states, being sovereign, had the legal right to withdraw from the voluntary union. The opponents of the right of secession believed that the Constitution created a sovereign and inviolable union and that withdrawal from that union was impossible. Prior to the Civil War secessionist sentiments were evidenced in both the North (see Hartford Convention) and South, but as the North grew more powerful, talk of secession became more common in the South.

The nullification movement, which held that any state could declare null and void any federal law that infringed upon its rights, was an attempt to eradicate the need for secession by giving the states complete sovereignty. Measures such as the Missouri Compromise and the Compromise of 1850 were merely delays in resolving whether the states or the federal government was to possess sovereignty. Desiring to maintain the slave system and threatened by the North socially and economically, the South finally seceded from the Union soon after the election of Abraham Lincoln. The defeat of the Confederacy in the bloody war that followed settled the constitutional controversy permanently.

Other Historical Examples of Secession

An early example of secession is that of northern Israelite tribes from the larger Davidian kingdom after the death of Solomon (933 B.C.). Venezuela and Ecuador were created in 1830 when they seceded from Gran Colombia. Military action by Finnish nationalists enabled Finland to secede from a weakened Russia after 1917. In the 1960s the attempts of Katanga to secede from the newly independent Congo and of Biafra to break away from Nigeria were both crushed in long and bloody civil wars. By contrast, the secession (1971) of Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) from the state of Pakistan was accomplished successfully with the help of India, the Baltic states regained independence from the USSR immediately before its dissolution, and Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia in 1993 after the overthrow of the latter nation's government.

Secession, War of: see Civil War.

(1860–61) Withdrawal of 11 Southern states from the U.S. The precipitating event was the election of Abraham Lincoln as president (1860). Since the Republican Party strongly opposed slavery and its extension into the new territories, most slaveholding states had vowed to secede if the Republican candidate won. Secession had been proclaimed by states'-rights advocates as a corollary to the compact that united the states, permitting them to withdraw as easily as they had joined. Earlier threats of secession were made at the Hartford Convention (1814), in the nullification crisis (1832), and in the 1850s before the Missouri Compromise. Secession was first approved by South Carolina (1860); six other states followed in the period before Lincoln was inaugurated in March 1861. After Lincoln resisted the South's attack on Fort Sumter, four other slaveholding states voted to secede, joining the newly formed Confederate States of America.

Learn more about secession with a free trial on Britannica.com.