Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Secessionist \Se*ces"sion*ist\, n.
One who upholds secession.
(U.S. Hist.) One who holds to the belief that a State has the right to separate from the Union at its will.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1860, first recorded in U.S. context, from secession + -ist (colloquial short form secesh, noun and adjective, is attested from 1861); the earlier noun had been seceder, but this had religious overtones, especially in reference to Scottish Church history.
Wiktionary
a. secede or supporting secession. n. A person who secedes or supports secession from a political union or an alliance or organisation.
WordNet
n. an advocate of secessionism
Usage examples of "secessionist".
Union men in the several seceding States to gain a political victory at the polls over the secessionists, and to return their States to their normal position in the Union.
A reference to the conflict between secessionist ethnic Armenians living in the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave of Azerbaijan, and the Azeri government.
When Jefferson Davis moves the Confederate government to Richmond, the Virginia forces, as well as those of the other ten secessionist states, are absorbed into the Confederate army.
The refutation of the secessionists is in the facts adduced that disprove the theory of State sovereignty, and prove that the sovereignty vests not in the States severally, but in the States united, or that the Union is sovereign, and not the States individually.
None of the secessionists have been rebels or traitors, except in outward act, and there can, after the act has ceased, be no just punishment where there has been no criminal intent.
The government and the small politicians, who usually are the most influential with all governments, should remember that none of the secessionists, however much in error they have been, have committed the moral crime of treason.
October, they experienced a considerable reverse in an attack which was made on the secessionists by General Stone, and in which Colonel Baker was killed.
Gersen had established a Copo Special Reserve, and within a year almost a hundred of the former Secessionists had enlisted.
Were the secessionists traitors and rebels to their sovereign, or were they patriots fighting for the liberty and independence of their country and the right of self-government?
Catholics who in our struggle have joined the Secessionists and fought in their ranks against the United States, it is because the prevalence of the doctrine of State sovereignty has seemed to leave a reasonable doubt whether they were really rebels fighting against their legitimate sovereign or not.
The secessionists from the United States defended their action only on the ground that the States of the American Union are severally independent sovereign states, and they only obeyed the authority of their respective states.
If they are only a confederation of states--and if they ever were severally sovereign states, only a confederation they certainly are--state secession is an inalienable right, and the government has had no right to make war on the secessionists as rebels, or to treat them, when their military power is broken, as traitors, or disloyal persons.
United States, appeared sure to succeed, and in fact would have succeeded if, as the secessionists pretended, the Union had been only a confederacy, and the States had been held together only by a conventional compact, and not by a real and living bond of unity.
The secessionists disclaim revolutionary principles, and hold that the right of secession is anterior to the convention, a right which the convention could neither give, nor take away, because inherent in the very conception of a sovereign State.
It is objected to, this conclusion that the States were, prior to the Union, independent sovereign States, and secession would not destroy the State, but restore it to its original sovereignty and independence, as the secessionists maintain.