The idea of secession is alive and well, with variations even I’d never heard of, like the Second Vermont Republic and Novacadia. Wikipedia even has a helpful list of various state secession movements, while noting that only two (West Virginia and Maine) were successful.
Josh Levin at Slate is taking a look at various ways the United States might end, including secession of various parts of the country. In addition to the ones above:
Charles Truxillo, a professor at the University of New Mexico, who says it’s too late to save the United States we know today. Truxillo believes this century will see the birth of La República del Norte, a sovereign “Mexicano nation” in what’s now the American Southwest. “The U.S. ripped these areas off from Mexico in 1848,” he says, and the debt has come due. Rather than fight what’s inevitable, Truxillo says North America should toss out the melting pot and learn to love “autonomous sovereign zones”—a French-speaking nation for the Quebecois, a Spanish-speaking nation for the Latinos, and an English-speaking nation for the Anglophones.
Lest you think this is impossible, remember ethnic separatism, not integration, is all the rage now, and that the national history that many school children are taught these days, often in bilingual classes, is a very negative one.
UPDATE: Meant to mention the most colorful proposed state name:
Shortly before the Civil War, southern Illinois considered seceding from Illinois and joining the Confederacy; a proposed name for the new state was Little Egypt after the region’s local name. However, speeches by Union General and southern Illinois native, John A. Logan, convinced many in the region to remain in the Union.
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