[Christopher Ketcham] justifies NYC's Urban Secession. Among antebellum constitutional scholars, it was axiomatic that if the states were once sovereign entities that acceded to join the union in a mutually beneficial treaty, they implicitly retained the right to rescind the treaty and withdraw... Petulant states constantly threatened it, with New Englanders early on showing an especial fondness for cutting loose from a Union that increasingly catered to Southern slaveholder interests... The heavy hand of Abraham Lincoln's contempt for constitutional law fell especially hard on New York City, where there operated a great number of the hundreds of newspapers Lincoln shut down for their criticisms in a time of war (nationwide, Lincoln mass-arrested thousands of political dissenters, censored telegraph communications and even deported a Congressional opponent).

Update: [Jason Flores Williams] is pushing this idea, too, though I don't know whether I'd want to live in his NYC either...

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