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secession
From: Encyclopedia of American History: Civil War and Reconstruction, 1856 to 1869, Revised Edition
(Volume V).
Secession was the act by which the 11 Southern states that formed the Confederate States
of America withdrew from the Union. The secession crisis of 1860–61 led directly to the
outbreak of Civil War. The North's victory in the war ensured that secession would no
longer be a political issue of any relevance.
There is no provision for secession in the U.S. Constitution. Rather, secession was a
concept that developed in response to a series of debates over the course of the
antebellum era about the relationship between the states and the federal government.
Which held the ultimate power? If the answer was the state, then that entity had the right
to secede from the federal government if its liberties were endangered. Three events in
particular from the late 18th to the mid-19th century would shape the secessionist
position: the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, the War of 1812, and the
Nullification Crisis of 1832–33.
America's first party system was founded in the 1790s under the leadership of Thomas
Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson and Hamilton had radically different ideas on
the nature of government. Hamilton, a Federalist, favored a strong national government,
while Jefferson, the founder of the Democratic Party, was committed to the supremacy of
the states. He articulated his position in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, in
which he invented the term nullification to describe a state's right to overrule the federal
government. The Constitution, argued Jefferson, was a "compact," or agreement, between
the states and the national government. If the compact was seriously violated by the
federal government, the states could legally withdraw, or secede, from the Union.
The first time states threatened to secede was during the War of 1812. Most New
Englanders were opposed to the war, largely because Great Britain was the most important
market for their manufactured goods. In 1814 representatives from the states of New
England held a convention in Hartford, Connecticut, to discuss their grievances. Disunion
was mentioned prominently on the convention floor. Ultimately, the issue was tabled after
the war's end.
The question of secession again appeared in 1832 when the federal government adopted a
tariff, or tax, on imported goods that Southerners felt was far too high. This was the third
time in eight years the government had adopted a tariff that was contrary to Southern
interests. In response, the South Carolina legislature passed an ordinance that nullified the
federal tariff and stated that if the national government enforced the collection of the tariff,
South Carolina would secede. The situation was resolved with a compromise tariff that
South Carolina agreed to accept. Temporarily, the storm subsided, but the nullification
crisis had major long-term implications for making the Palmetto State a leader of
secessionist sentiment. Most importantly, South Carolinian John C. Calhoun emerged from
the crisis a powerful voice for states' rights and the protection of slavery. Calhoun was a
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former nationalist who served in the House, the Senate, in the cabinet as secretary of war
and secretary of state, and as Andrew Jackson's vice president. In the 1830s, he turned
his formidable intelligence to constructing a rationale for ensuring the perpetuation of
slavery in a Union he perceived to be increasingly hostile to the minority slaveholders.
Rejecting the current two-party system, Calhoun advocated a Southern sectional party
based on states' rights that would be devoted to protecting that region's "peculiar
institution." Failing to persuade his fellow Southerners to abandon the Democratic Party,
Calhoun became increasingly pessimistic about the fate of the South within the Union. For
him, secession was a logical and legal process should it become necessary.
By the 1840s, Southerners influenced by Calhoun had developed an intellectual
justification for secession. The 1850s brought constant conflict over the future of slavery.
Most Southerners felt that it was important that slavery expand to the territories to sustain
the balance of power between slave and free states in the federal government. Many
believed that slavery should be legal everywhere in the nation, even in Northern states
that had banned the institution. The majority of Northerners felt very differently. They
were willing to allow slavery to remain where it already was but wanted to reserve the
territories for free labor only. In response to this attitude, a small group of rabid
secessionists, called fire-eaters, began to advocate loudly the dissolution of the Union in
order to defend and preserve slavery and states' rights. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was
elected president on a Republican platform committed to stopping the spread of slavery in
the territories. Prominent fire-eaters, such as William Lowndes Yancey of Alabama,
Edmund Ruffin of Virginia, and Robert Barnwell Rhett Sr. of South Carolina, saw Lincoln
and the party he represented as deeply hostile to Southern slaveholding interests.
Throughout the fall and winter of 1860 they worked hard to dissolve the Union. They had
compelling arguments, all of which centered on the Republicans' desire to use the federal
government's power to deny the property rights of Southerners.
The fire-eaters faced significant obstacles. The wealthy states of the Upper South like
Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky were not interested in seceding. They wanted to watch
and wait to see if they could forge a compromise that would be to their advantage. In the
Lower South, it was not clear that the majority of nonslaveholding farmers were willing to
support secession to save an institution they had no financial stake in preserving. There
were also a substantial number of "cooperationists" in the lower South that favored
continuing negotiations with the federal government. They argued that secession should be
seen only as a last resort.
Southern radicals knew that they had to manage things very carefully or they would lose
their momentum and secession would fail. The fire-eaters chose to focus their attentions
on South Carolina, in hopes that the state's leaders could be convinced to secede quickly
and decisively. The Palmetto State was a natural choice to lead the secession movement.
It had been the home of John C. Calhoun and a center of secessionist sentiment for more
than three decades. Beyond that, South Carolina's constitution was unusual in that it
required the state legislature to choose presidential electors. As such, when Abraham
Lincoln won the election of 1860, most Southern legislatures had adjourned for winter, but
the South Carolina legislature was still in session pending the results. They immediately
approved Governor William Henry Gist's call for special elections to choose representatives
for a secession convention.
South Carolina's secession elections made the state's departure from the Union a certainty.
Strong opponents of secession declined to run for seats at the convention, knowing that
they would be defeated. Cooperationists dismissed the convention as largely meaningless,
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believing that secession would only happen if a group of Southern states agreed to secede
together. When the secession convention was seated on December 17, 1860, it was
populated entirely by fire-eaters. A committee was appointed to draw up a secession
resolution, and in short order they completed their work. The convention voted
unanimously on December 20 to endorse the resolution that declared the union between
the states to be "dissolved."
South Carolina's bold move gave a big boost to the efforts of fire-eaters in the other states
of the Lower South. In each state, the same basic pattern had to be followed: elections, a
secession convention, and the adoption of an ordinance of secession. In no state was
secession as much of a certainty as in South Carolina, and in some states the issue was
hotly contested. However, the inspiration provided by the Palmetto State, as well as skillful
politicking by fire-eaters, eventually convinced the rest of the Lower South to join South
Carolina in seceding. By February 1, 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia,
Louisiana, and Texas had called secession conventions and voted to leave the Union. On
February 4 delegates from the seceded states met to begin drawing up a constitution for
the new nation.
The states of the Upper South hesitated much more than those in the Lower South.
Pro-Unionist sentiment, Northern commercial ties, and a much lower number of slaves
made secession more problematic. For the federal government, the key to retaining the
loyalty of the Upper Southern states was a noncoercive policy. Compromise between North
and South was discussed and rejected, and as time dragged on, hope faded. Supplies
began to run out for the small Union garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina, located in
Charleston Harbor. President Lincoln weighed his options, keenly aware that popular
sentiment in the North heavily favored resupplying the fort and keeping it under the
national flag.
On April 6 Lincoln went public with his decision to resupply Fort Sumter, but only with food
and other necessities of survival. President Jefferson Davis could not abide by this
decision, as he was well aware of the symbolic importance of allowing the North to keep
possession of the fort. So, Davis decided to fire upon Sumter before the Northern ships
arrived. On April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries attacked, and the Garrison surrendered
two days later.
Lincoln responded to the attack on Fort Sumter with a call for 75,000 troops to put down
the insurrection. At this point, the states of the Upper South had a choice between taking
arms against the South and taking arms against the North. This was an easy decision to
make, and shortly thereafter Virginia left the Union. Over the course of the five weeks
after Fort Sumter, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina followed suit. The secession
crisis had ended and the Union was dissolved. The stage was set for the bloodiest conflict
in American history.
William C. Davis, Rhett: The Turbulent Life and Times of a Fire-Eater (Columbia: University of South
Carolina Press, 2001);
Charles B. Dew, Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001);
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William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990);
William A. Link, Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2003);
Kenneth M. Stampp, And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860–1861 (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1970).
Text Citation (Chicago Manual of Style format):
Bates, Christopher. "secession." In Waugh, John, and Gary B. Nash, eds. Encyclopedia of American History:
Civil War and Reconstruction, 1856 to 1869, Revised Edition (Volume V). New York: Facts On File, Inc.,
2010. American History Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
ItemID=WE52&iPin=EAHV257&SingleRecord=True (accessed September 8, 2013).
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