Definition of "disunionist" []

• An advocate of disunion, especially a secessionist during the U.S. Civil War. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It was not the lowest term of abuse to call those who were conscious that they were struggling against oppression; and let me assure gentlemen that the term disunionist is rapidly assuming at the South the meaning which rebel took when it was baptized in the blood of Warren at Bunker Hill, and illustrated by the gallantry of Jasper at Fort Moultrie."
• "Allow me to say, in reference to this matter, I regret that you have brought it about, but it is true that this epithet "disunionist" is likely soon to have very little terror in it in the South."
• "It was Madison, they note, who nudged Jefferson out of retirement after his wife's death in 1782, initiated the criticisms of Hamilton that Jefferson continued in the early 1790s, was the "driving force" behind Jefferson's candidacy for the presidency in 1796, and helped reverse Jefferson's dangerously disunionist impulses three years later, after the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions had failed to rally the states against the Alien and Sedition Acts."