Download The Coming of the American Civil War

The Coming of the American Civil War
Gary J. Kornblith
Oberlin College
March 18, 2010
What Caused the Civil War?
Lincoln’s Second Inauguration, 1865
“One eighth of the whole population
were colored slaves, not distributed
generally over the Union, but
localized in the Southern part of it.
These slaves constituted a peculiar
and powerful interest. All knew that
this interest was, somehow, the
cause of the war.” -- Abraham
Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address
(1865)
War as an Exceptional Road
to Abolition and Emancipation
•1777 Vermont constitution abolishes slavery
•1780 Pennsylvania adopts gradual abolition
•1783 Massachusetts rules slavery illegal
based on 1780 constitution
•1784 Connecticut adopts gradual abolition
•1784 Rhode Island adopts gradual abolition
•1793 Upper Canada, by Act Against Slavery
•1799 New York State adopts gradual
abolition
•1803 Lower Canada abolishes slavery
•1804 New Jersey adopts gradual abolition
•1804 Haiti declares independence and
abolishes slavery
•1813 Argentina abolishes slavery
•1821 Gran Colombia (Ecuador, Colombia,
Venezuela, Panama) declares free the sons
and daughters born to slave mothers, sets up
program for compensated emancipation
•1823 Chile abolishes slavery
•1824 The Federal Republic of Central
America abolishes slavery
•1829 Mexico abolishes slavery
•1831 Bolivia abolishes slavery
•1834 Slavery abolished in British West Indies
•1842 Uruguay abolishes slavery
•1851 New Granada (Colombia) abolishes
slavery
•1852 Hawaiian Kingdom abolishes slavery
•1854 Peru abolishes slavery
•1854 Venezuela abolishes slavery
•1865 United States abolishes slavery
•1871 Brazil declares free the sons and
daughters born to slave mothers after 28
September 1871.
•1873 Slavery abolished in Puerto Rico
•1886 Slavery abolished in Cuba
•1888 Brazil abolishes slavery
Source: “Abolition of slavery timeline,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abolition_of_slavery_timeline
More Questions
• Why did slavery lead to civil war in the
United States when abolition was
achieved peacefully in nearly all other
societies in the Western Hemisphere?
• Why did slavery lead to civil war in 1861,
rather than in, for example,1820 or 1850
or 1890 or 1920?
The Problem of Slavery at the
Founding, 1776-1788
• Lack of controversy over American slavery
through mid-18th century; legal in all British
colonies on eve of Revolution
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
Free
Slave
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
NH MA RI
CT NY NJ PA DE MD VA NC SC GA
Source: Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone (1998), pp. 369-70
• Reevaluation of slavery in Revolutionary Era
– Sources of antislavery ideas
• Egalitarian Protestantism, especially Quakerism
• Lockean political thought
• “Country“ ideology
– Antislavery actions at state level
• Vermont’s Constitution (1777)
• Pennsylvania’s act for gradual emancipation (1780)
• Emergence of “free” North as halting process but major worldhistorical development
Anthony Benezet teaching black children
George Bryan
• Continental discussion of slavery, 1776
– Declaration of Independence
• Thomas Jefferson’s denunciation of King George III
Thomas Jefferson
for promoting slave trade in original draft
“He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most
sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who
never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in
another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation
thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of INFIDEL powers, is
the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to
keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has
prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to
prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And … he is now
exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase
that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on
whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes
committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which
he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another.”
• Congress’s decision to omit Jefferson’s attack on slave trade
– Controversy over whether to count slaves as
people in apportioning states’ financial
obligations (July 1776)
• General agreement that costs of continental
government should be apportioned according to
relative wealth of different states
• When committee proposes using population as
practical proxy for wealth, Samuel Chase of
Maryland calls for counting only “white inhabitants”
on grounds that slaves are property, not people
“Our Slaves being our Property, why should they be
taxed more than the Land, Sheep, Cattle, Horses, &c.”
-- Thomas Lynch of South Carolina
“Slaves rather weaken than strengthen the State,
and there is therefore some difference between
them and Sheep. Sheep will never make any
insurrections.” --Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania
Samuel Chase
Thomas Lynch
Benjamin Franklin
“In some countries the laboring poor [are] called freemen,
in others they [are] called slaves; but . . . the difference
as to the state [is] imaginary only. What matters it
whether a landlord employing ten laborers in his farm,
gives them annually as much money as will buy them
the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries
at short hand. The ten laborers add as much wealth
annually to the state, increase its exports as much in
the one case as the other. Certainly 500 freemen
produce no more profits, no greater surplus for the
payment of taxes than 500 slaves. Therefore the state
in which are the laborers called freemen should be
taxed no more than that in which are those called
slaves.” --John Adams of Massachusetts
John Adams
“Two slaves should be counted as one freeman. . . .
Slaves [do] not do so much work as freemen . . . This
[is] proved by the price of labor. The hire of a labourer
in the Southern colonies being from 8 to pound 12,
while in the Northern it [is] generally pound 24.”
--Benjamin Harrison of Virginia
Benjamin Harrison
• Continental discussion of slavery, 1787
– Northwest Ordinance: intersectional support for
restriction of slavery’s expansion
• Narrow failure of Thomas Jefferson’s 1784 proposal to bar
expansion of slavery across Appalachian mountains after
1800
• Northwest Ordinance as “charter of freedom”?
“Article the Sixth. There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary
Servitude in the said territory otherwise than in the punishment of
crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided,
always that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor
or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such
fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person
claiming his or her labor or service as aforesaid.”
• Why southern congressmen supported Ordinance
–
–
–
–
–
Implicit acceptance of slavery south of Ohio River
Anticipated demographic growth of Southwest
Economic logic: limiting plantation crops to South
Anticipated agrarian alliance of South and West
Moral ambivalence over slavery
– Constitutional Convention
• Three-fifths compromise
• Compromise over the slave trade
“Mr. L. Martin [of Maryland], proposed to . . . to allow a
prohibition or tax on the importation of slaves. In the
first place, as five slaves are to be counted as three
freemen, in the apportionment of Representatives,
such a clause would leave an encouragement to this
traffic. In the second place, slaves weakened one part
of the Union, which the other parts were bound to
protect; the privilege of importing them was therefore
unreasonable. And in the third place, it was
inconsistent with the principles of the Revolution, and
dishonorable to the American character, to have such
a feature in the Constitution. . . . “
“Mr. Rutledge [of South Carolina:] If the Convention
thinks that North Carolina, South Carolina, and
Georgia, will ever agree to the plan, unless their right
to import slaves be untouched, the expectation is vain.
The people of those States will never be such fools, as
to give up so important an interest.”
Luther Martin
John Rutledge
• Was the Constitution a “covenant with death”?
The Problem of Slavery in the
New Republic, 1789-1820
• Abolition efforts at state level after 1789
– Virginia declines to consider St. George Tucker’s
gradual abolition proposal in 1796
– New York adopts gradual abolition, 1799
– Virginia debates foreign colonization of blacks in wake
of Gabriel’s Rebellion, 1800-1801; asks for federal
assistance in locating a suitable location for sending
emancipated slaves
– New Jersey adopts gradual abolition, 1804
– No further state-level abolition, though slavery
declines significantly in practice in Delaware and
Maryland
St. George Tucker
• Louisiana Purchase (1803)
– Almost doubles size of U.S.; seems to guarantee fulfillment
Jefferson’s vision of an agrarian republic for generations to come,
what he calls an “Empire for Liberty”
– A bold step not taken: Jefferson fails to propose carving a black
colony out of the purchased territory, which might have led to a
“two-state solution” to the problem of where emancipated slaves
would go given white resistance to a multi-racial republic
• American withdrawal from the Atlantic slave trade (1808)
– Jefferson frames as a question of “human rights” and Congress passes
act banning importation of slaves from abroad
– Unlike in most other slave societies in Americas, however, end of slave
trade does not doom slavery as an institution
– Stimulates domestic slave trade, tying upper and lower South closer
together economically
Slave Population in the U.S., 1790-1860
4,000,000
3,500,000
Slaves
3,000,000
2,500,000
2,000,000
1,500,000
Abolition in North
1,000,000
500,000
0
1790
1800
1810
Ban on slave importations
1820
1830
Y ear
1840
1850
1860
Average Annual Rates of Natural Population Increase by Race
(in percent)
3
2.5
2
%
U.S. whites
U.S. blacks
1.5
1
0.5
0
1750
1800
1850
Source: R. W. Fogel, Without Consent or Contract (1989),124.
• Missouri Crisis (1819-21)
– Basic chronology
• James Tallmadge, Jr., of N.Y.
proposes gradual abolition of
slavery in Missouri as
condition for statehood (1819)
• Proposal passes in House
but fails in Senate
• Uproar spreads from Congress
to populace at large (1819-20)
• Famous compromise engineered by Henry Clay of Kentucky and
Jesse B. Thomas of Illinois with support of President James Monroe
of Virginia (1820)
– Missouri to be admitted as slave state; Maine to be admitted as free state
– Slavery prohibited in remaining territory of Louisiana Purchase north of
36º30´ latitude
• Second compromise accepts Missouri’s state constitution by
construing it as compatible with U.S. Constitution notwithstanding bar
on free blacks entering the state (1821)
– Rhetoric of the Missouri debates
“Sir, if a dissolution of the Union must take place, let it be so! If civil war,
which gentlemen so much threaten, must come, I can only say, let it
come! My hold on life is probably as frail as that of any man who
now hears me; but, while that hold lasts, it shall be devoted to the
service of my country—to the freedom of man. If blood is necessary
to extinguish any fire which I have assisted to kindle, I can assure
gentlemen, while I regret the necessity, I shall not forbear to
contribute my mite. . . . I know the will of my constituents, and,
regardless of consequences, I will avow it; as their representative, I
will proclaim their hatred to slavery in every shape; as their
representative, here will I hold my stand, until this floor, with the
James Tallmadge, Jr.
Constitution of my country which supports it, shall sink beneath me.
...
“Sir, on this subject the eyes of Europe are turned upon you. You boast
of the freedom of your Constitution and your laws; you have
claimed, in the Declaration of Independence, ‘That all men are
created equal . . .’ and yet you have slaves in your country. The
enemies of your Government . . . point to your inconsistencies. . . . If
you allow slavery to pass into Territories where you have the lawful
power to exclude it, you will justly take upon yourself all the charges
of inconsistency; but, confine it to the original slaveholding States
where you found it in the formation of your Government, and you
stand acquitted of all imputation.” --James Tallmadge, Jr., of New
York
Charles Pinckney
“Sir, when we recollect that our former parent State was the original
cause of introducing slavery into America. . . ; that it cannot be got rid
of without ruining the country, certainly the present mild treatment of
our slaves is most honorable to that part of the country where slavery
exists. . . . The great body of slaves are happier in their present
situation than they could be in any other . . . .
“Have the Northern States any idea of the value of our slaves? At least,
sir, six hundred millions of dollars. If we lose them, . . . an annual
income of at least forty millions of dollars will be lost [and] felt by . . .
the whole Union; for to whom, at present, do . . . the Eastern and
Northern [States] look for the employment of their shipping, in
transporting our bulky and valuable products, and bringing us the
manufactures and merchandises of Europe? . . . In a pecuniary view
of this subject, therefore, it must ever be the policy of the Eastern and
Northern States to continue connected with us. But, sir, there is an
infinitely greater call upon them, and this is the call of justice, of
affection, and humanity. Reposing at a great distance, in safety, in the
full enjoyment of all their Federal and State rights, unattacked in
either, or in their individual rights, can they, with indifference, or ought
they to risk, in the remotest degree, the consequences which this
measure may produce. These may be the division of this Union, and a
civil war. Knowing that whatever is said here, must get into the public
prints, I am unwilling, for obvious reasons, to go into the description of
the horrors which such a war must produce, and ardently pray that
none of us may ever live to witness such an event . . .” --Charles
Pinckney of South Carolina
– Significance of the Missouri Crisis
• Balance of population has shifted markedly
toward “free” states by 1820*
6,000,000
5,000,000
4,000,000
Free states
Slave states
3,000,000
2,000,000
1,000,000
0
1790
1800
1810
1820
*For the purposes of this chart, NY and NJ are considered “free” throughout the period,
even though they did not adopt gradual abolition statutes until 1799 and 1804, respectively.
• Arguments on both sides couched in both moral and
economic terms
• Upper South leaders (including Jefferson) have
switched from support for restriction of slavery to
support for “diffusion”
– Seek to reduce potential for slave rebellions
– Seek to retain southern influence in national government
• Sectional compromise over the problem of slavery is
still feasible but significantly harder than in 1787
– Sense of external danger has diminished
– Politics has become more democratic and hence less easily
managed by elites behind closed doors
• Disunion and civil war are serious possibilities, not
just rhetorical threats, as both John Quincy Adams
and Thomas Jefferson signal privately
John Quincy Adams
“I have favored this Missouri compromise,
believing it to be all that could be
effected under the present
Constitution, and from extreme
unwillingness to put the Union at
hazard. But perhaps it would have
been a wiser as well as a bolder
course to have persisted in the
restriction upon Missouri, till it should
have terminated in a convention of
the States to revise and amend the
Constitution. This would have
produced a new Union of thirteen or
fourteen States unpolluted with
slavery, with a great and glorious
object to effect, namely, that of
rallying to their standard the other
States by the universal emancipation
of their slaves. If the Union must be
dissolved, slavery is precisely the
question upon which it ought to
break.”
Thomas Jefferson
“[T]his momentous question, like a fire bell in the
night, awakened and filled me with terror. I
considered it at once as the knell of the
Union. . . . A geographical line, coinciding
with a marked principle, moral and political,
once conceived and held up to the angry
passions of men, will never be obliterated;
and every new irritation will mark it deeper
and deeper. . . .
“I regret that I am now to die in the belief, that
the useless sacrifice of themselves by the
generation of 1776, to acquire selfgovernment and happiness to their country,
is to be thrown away by the unwise and
unworthy passions of their sons. . . . If they
would but dispassionately weigh the
blessings they will throw away, against an
abstract principle more likely to be effected
by union than by scission, they would pause
before they would perpetrate this act of
suicide on themselves, and of treason
against the hopes of the world.”
A Path Not Taken
• Congressional proposals for compensated emancipation and
black colonization
– Rep. Henry Meigs of New York calls for use of public land as incentive for
emancipation but resolution is tabled by House, 66-55 (1821)
“Whereas slavery in the United States is an evil acknowledged to be of great and
increasing magnitude, and which merits the greatest efforts of this nation to remedy:
therefore,
“Resolved, That a committee be appointed to inquire into the expediency of devoting five
hundred millions acres of public lands west of the Mississippi as a fund for the purpose
of, in the first place, employing a naval force competent to the annihilation of the slave
trade. Secondly, the gradual emancipation of slaves, by a voluntary exchange of lands
for them; and, lastly, colonizing such emancipated slaves in such way as may be
conducive to their happiness in their original country, Africa: Provided, That no such
exchange of lands for slaves shall ever be suffered or allowed, except upon the
perfectly ascertained consent of such slaves, to be colonized in Africa: And provided
also, That, wherever such exchanges are, or shall be made, no separation of husband
and wife, or parent and child, shall be permitted contrary to their well ascertained
consent.”
– Senator Rufus King of N.Y., a drafter of the Constitution, submits
resolution to allocate proceeds from land sales to pay for
emancipation and colonization, but it goes nowhere (1825)
Rufus King
“Resolved. . . That, as soon as the portion of the existing funded debt of the
United States, for the payment of which the public land of the United
States is pledged, shall have been paid off, then, and thenceforth, the
whole of the public land of the United States, with the net proceeds of all
future sales thereof, shall constitute and form a fund, which is hereby
appropriated, and the faith of the United States is pledged, that the said
fund shall be inviolably applied to aid the emancipation of such slaves,
within any of the United States, and to aid the removal of such slaves,
and the removal of such free persons of color, in any of the said states,
as by the laws of the states, respectively, may be allowed to be
emancipated, or removed, to any territory or country without [i.e., outside]
the limits of the United States of America.”
– Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky seeks to direct part of budget
surplus generated by land sales toward financing black
colonization but proposal fails in committee (1832)
Henry Clay
• Troubled history of the American Colonization Society
– Founded in 1816
– Dedicated to African colonization of American free blacks
– Endorsed by prominent public leaders,
including Henry Clay, Bushrod
Washington, James Madison
– Society gains some popular support
among whites in North and Upper South
but almost none in Lower South
– Widely opposed by northern free blacks
– Establishes Liberia with federal
assistance in 1822
– Liberia struggles, grows very slowly
– Target of immediate abolitionists, who
denounce colonization as immoral, not just impractical
• David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World (1829)
• William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization (1832)
• Lane Debates (1834)
• Implications
– Continuing, deepening importance of slavery to economy of the
South, especially Lower South, in wake of Cotton Revolution
U.S. Cotton Output, 1790-1860
4500
4000
Bales (in thousands)
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
1790
1800
1810
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
Year
– In quest for all-white Republic, Euro-Americans pursue different
strategy toward African Americans than toward Native Americans,
who are subject to Indian Removal policy in 1830s
– Continuing potential for the problem of slavery to disrupt the Union
Problem of Slavery in the
Jacksonian Era, 1820-1850
• Party rivalry as counter-weight to sectional conflict
“Party attachment in former times furnished a complete
antidote for sectional prejudices by producing
counteracting feelings. It was not until that defence had
been broken down that the clamour [against] Southern
Influence and African Slavery could be made effectual in
the North…. Formerly, attacks upon Southern Republicans
were regarded by those of the north as assaults upon their
political brethren & resented accordingly. This all powerful
sympathy has been much weakened, if not destroyed…. It
can & ought to be revived.” --Martin Van Buren (1827)
• Second Party System: Democrats vs. Whigs
• Controversy over slavery
intensifies but is contained by
Second Party System in 1830s
– Virginia Slavery Debate in wake of Nat
Turner’s Rebellion
– Rise of immediate abolitionism
– Attacks on abolitionists by white
northerners as well as white
southerners
– Congressional “gag rule” to silence
antislavery petitions
– Elaboration of proslavery argument
– Rejection of Texas’ application for
annexation after Texan Revolution
Anti-abolitionist agitation and riot
in Cincinnati, 1836
• New Territory, New Crisis in the 1840s
– Election of 1844
• John Tyler’s Texas strategy
• James K. Polk’s narrow victory
– Annexation of Texas (1845)
– Mexican-American War (1846-48)
James K. Polk
John Tyler
• Wilmot Proviso
“I would preserve for free white labor a fair country, a rich inheritance,
where the sons of toil, of my own race and color, can live without
the disgrace which association with negro slavery brings upon free
white labor.” --David Wilmot
• Mexican Cession
David Wilmot
• Election of 1848
– Democrats nominate Lewis Cass
on “popular sovereignty” platform
– Whigs nominate Zachary Taylor on
no platform
– Free Soil Party founded and
nominates Martin Van Buren on
platform opposing slavery’s
expansion
– Taylor wins with intersectional
support
– Popular vote
• Whig: 47.5%
• Democratic: 42.5%
• Free Soil: 10%
Lewis Cass
Zachary Taylor
Martin Van Buren
Free vs. Slave State Population, 1820 & 1850
• Compromise of 1850
– Demographic dynamics
• Population of free vs. slave
states
• California Gold Rush
– Taylor’s plan
– Clay’s plan
16,000,000
14,000,000
12,000,000
10,000,000
Free states
Slave states
8,000,000
6,000,000
4,000,000
2,000,000
0
1820
1850
• Admission of California as free state
• Organization of the remainder of Mexican
Cession without restriction on slavery
• Abolition of slave trade, but not slavery,
in Washington, D.C.
• Enactment of more stringent federal
fugitive slave law
– Senate debate and deadlock
Henry Clay addressing Senate, 1850
– Taylor dies; New Yorker Millard Fillmore
becomes president (July 1850)
– Democrat Stephen Douglas tweaks Clay’s
plan, engineers passage of Compromise of
1850
Millard Fillmore
“I am determined never to make another
speech on the slavery question --let us
cease agitating, stop the debate, and drop the
subject. If we do this, the Compromise will be
recognized as a final settlement.”
--Stephen Douglas (1850)
Stephen Douglas
The Problem of Slavery and the
Realignment of American
Politics, 1850-1860
• Still more questions
– Why did the Compromise of 1850 fail to usher in a
generation of peace the way the Missouri Compromise
had?
– What destroyed the Second Party System, the
longstanding counter-weight to sectional conflict?
– How did the Republican Party capture the presidency
in the election of 1860?
• Old Territory, New Crisis
– Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
•
•
•
•
Stephen Douglas’s purpose
Southern pressure
Rationale of “popular sovereignty”
Repeal of Missouri Compromise
– “Appeal of the Independent Democrats” (Jan. 19, 1854)
“In 1820, the Slave States said to the Free States: ‘Admit Missouri with Slavery and refrain
from positive exclusion south of 36º 30' and we will join you in perpetual prohibition north
of that line.’ The Free States consented. In 1854, the Slave States say to the Free States:
‘Missouri is admitted; no prohibition of Slavery south of 36º 30' has been attempted; we
have received the full consideration of our agreement; no more is to be gained by
adherence to it on our part; we, therefore, propose to cancel the compact." If this be not
Punic faith, what is it? Not without the deepest dishonor and crime can the Free States
acquiesce in this demand. . . .
“[T]he
first operation of the proposed permission of Slavery in Nebraska will be to stay the
progress of the Free States westward, and to cut off the free States of the Pacific from the
free States of the Atlantic. It is hoped, doubtless, by compelling the whole commerce and
the whole travel between the East and West to pass for hundreds of miles through a
Slaveholding region, in the heart of the continent, and by the influence of a Federal
Government, controlled by the Slave Power, to extinguish Freedom and to establish
Slavery in the States and Territories of the Pacific, and thus permanently subjugate the
whole country to the yoke of a Slaveholding despotism.”
• Collapse of the Second Party System (1854-1855)
– Inability of northern Whigs to capitalize on unpopularity of
Kansas-Nebraska Act in North
– Founding of Republican Party
– Founding of American (Know-Nothing) Party
House of Representatives, 1854 Election
Party
Total
Seats
Change
from 1852
Seat
Percentage
Democratic
84
-73
33.3%
American
62
+62
24.6%
Whig
60
-11
23.8%
Republican
46
+46
18.3%
Independent
0
-1
0%
Other
0
-4
0%
Totals
252
+18
100.0%
Source: Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._House_election,_1854)
• Republican Party emerges as main opposition to Democrats
in North (1856-1858)
– Failure of Know-Nothings to deliver on promises of
reform; decline of alarm over immigration
– Events lend increasing credence to Republican charge of
Slave Power conspiracy
•
•
•
•
Bleeding Kansas (1855+)
Caning of Charles Sumner (1856)
Dred Scott Decision (1857)
Effort to admit Kansas as slave state
on basis of Lecompton Constitution
opposed by most Kansans (1858)
Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina
attacking Sen. Charles Sumner
of Massachusetts in U.S. Senate
• Democratic Party divides along sectional lines
– Southern Democrats turn against Douglas after he turns against
Lecompton Constitution and espouses “Freeport Doctrine”
– Southern Democrats walk out of 1860 party convention over
platform’s failure to endorse a federal slave code for territories
• Four candidates run for president in 1860
Stephen Douglas
Northern Democrat
John C. Breckinridge
Southern Democrat
John Bell
Constitutional Union
Abraham Lincoln
Republican
• Republican Abraham Lincoln wins 1860 presidential
election with (not quite) 40 percent of popular vote
Popular Vote for President, 1852-60
(in percentages)
Democrat
1852
1856
1860
50.8%
45.3%
29.5%
18.1%
Southern Democrat
Whigs
43.9%
12.6%
Constitutional Union
Free Soil
4.9%
Republican
33.1%
American
21.5%
39.8%
The Problem of Slavery in the
Secession Crisis, 1860-1861
• Seven Lower South states secede
before Lincoln takes office
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
South Carolina (Dec. 20, 1860)
Mississippi (Jan. 9, 1861)
Florida (Jan. 10, 1861)
Alabama (Jan. 11, 1861)
Georgia (Jan. 19, 1861)
Louisiana (Jan. 26, 1861)
Texas (Feb. 1, 1861)
• Rationale for secession: to protect slavery
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest
material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes
by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.
These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and
by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to
the tropical sun.…
“Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in
it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to
degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we
must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as
every other species of property. For far less cause than this, our fathers
separated from the Crown of England. --Declaration of the Immediate Causes
Which Induce and Justify the Secession of Mississippi from the Federal Union
• Why 1861
– Political pessimism: fear of what Lincoln would do as
president to undermine slavery
– Economic optimism: confidence in expanding global
demand for cotton; belief that slaves states would
prosper as separate nation
“[W]ould any sane nation make war on cotton? Without firing a gun, without drawing
a sword, should they make war on us we could bring the whole world to our feet.
The South is perfectly competent to go on, one, two, or three years without
planting a seed of cotton. . . . What would happen if no cotton was furnished for
three years? . . . England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized
world with her, save the South. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power
on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king.” --James Henry Hammond of
South Carolina, Speech to the U.S. Senate, Mar. 4, 1858
• Lincoln’s position on slavery during secession crisis
– Rejects Crittenden Compromise that would have reinstituted,
extended Missouri Compromise line via Constitutional amendment
– Supports Constitutional amendment that would have forever
prohibited federal intervention to end slavery in states where it already
existed
– In Inaugural Address, proclaims slavery wrong but denies that as
president he could or would interfere with it in current states
• Why war
– Lower South goes to war to protect slavery
– North goes to war to protect Union and principles of
republican government
– Upper South divides between allegiance to Union and
allegiance to slavery
– No section goes to war to end slavery--and had the war
been short, slavery would have survived the conflict
regardless of which side won