Civil War: Secession of the Southern States

The American Civil War (1861-65) was one of the most pivotal events in the history of the U.S. About 620,000 Americans died in the war, more than in all other American wars combined. The Civil War also resulted in the liberation of roughly four million black slaves, which forever changed the social structure of the South and race relations in the U.S.

War became inevitable after several Southern states seceded from—or left—the Union. The first state to secede was South Carolina, on December 20, 1860. Ten other Southern states eventually seceded, joining with South Carolina to form the Confederate States of America. President James Buchanan (D, 1857-61) did not take action to stop the states from seceding; although he argued that secession was not legal, he also claimed that the federal government did not have the constitutional right to stop the South from doing so. However, he did declare that the government would retain its military facilities in the South.

The reasons for the break-up of the Union are complex and open to interpretation. In the mid-19th century, there were vast differences between the Northern and Southern portions of the U.S. The South had an economy that was based on farming—particularly on growing cotton—and it depended on the labor of black slaves. The North was more industrial, and it did not rely on slave labor. The sectional differences between North and South gradually heightened tensions between the two regions.

Slavery was a key factor in the widening of the rift between the two regions. While the South insisted that slavery was vital to its economy, many in the North were dedicated to ending slavery throughout the country. Up until the late 1850s, the North and South had largely avoided violent confrontations over slavery. But with the question of the expansion of slavery to new territories looming larger and larger, the issue was bound to come to a head. It finally did, with the 1860 election of Lincoln, whose Republican Party had expressed its opposition to the spread of slavery. [See Republican Party Platform, 1860 (primary document)]

However, political and economic factors also played a role in secession. By the 1830s, the North had gained a majority in Congress due to its increased population; by 1861 approximately 22 million people lived in the Northern states, while approximately five million free whites and four million slaves lived in the Southern slave states. That situation led to policy differences between North and South, in particular over taxation. Under the Constitution, the House of Representatives was responsible for legislation that dealt with raising revenue. Since there was now a Northern majority in the House, the Southern states could not prevent the passage of new taxes that often benefited Northern manufacturers while falling heavily on the Southern states.

By the time Lincoln was elected, a growing number of people were convinced that two very different and deeply opposed societies had evolved within the nation. The New York Tribune summed up that state of relations when it wrote, "We are not one people. We are two peoples. We are a people for Freedom and a people for Slavery. Between the two, conflict is inevitable." Indeed, that conflict led to secession and war.

Many proponents of secession argued that the government was acting contrary to the South's best interests. They particularly expressed concern about the growing tide of antislavery sentiment in the North; if slavery were threatened, Southern advocates asserted, then their very livelihoods would be in peril. Proponents of secession also argued that the Southern states had reason to secede because they were being taxed unfairly by the federal government. Supporters compared secession to the action of the colonists when they declared their independence from Britain nearly a century earlier; they were acting legally to gain independence from an oppressive master, secessionist claimed.

Opponents of secession, however, argued that the Southern states did not have the constitutional right to secede from the Union. When the states had originally entered the Union, critics contended, they formed a binding compact. Opponents argued that under the guiding principle of majority rule, that compact could be broken only with the agreement of a combined majority of Northern and Southern states. Many also feared that if the prosperous Southern states were to leave, then the economy and the security of the U.S. would suffer a severe blow.

Early Threats to the Union and the 'Nullification Crisis'

Lincoln's election in 1860 was not the first time the Union was faced with secession. The first threat to the Union came just 15 years after the Constitution was signed. In 1803, Massachusetts declared that it would secede if the U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory from France. Josiah Quincy, a Boston-based political leader and member of the Federalist Party, said that admitting a new state without specific approval of the original 13 states would be a cause for dissolution of the Union. Only mediation by congressional leaders on both sides kept them from carrying through on their threat.

Rumblings of secession surfaced again roughly a decade later, when the New England states were rumored to be considering leaving the Union because of the War of 1812 (1812-15) with Britain. New England was strongly opposed to the war, which was having a devastating impact on its foreign trade. To discuss the problems facing New England, the Federalist Party held a meeting in Hartford, Connecticut, in December 1814 and January 1815. While the meetings were held in secret, and there were no records of what was discussed, it was widely believed that the states were considering secession, although the states never took any action on secession. The delegates did propose seven amendments to the U.S. Constitution, one of which aimed at diluting the Southern states' representation in Congress. Those proposals were all defeated in state legislatures. [See War of 1812]

But the biggest threats to the Union arose from regional differences between North and South. In fact, those differences created conflict from the very founding of the country. The regional differences were noted by George Mason, a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Mason had refused to sign the Constitution, expressing concern with a provision in which "by requiring only a majority to make all commercial and navigation laws, the five Southern States (whose produce and circumstances are totally different from those of the eight Northern and Eastern States) will be ruined."

Those differences came to a head in South Carolina in the late 1820s. The state argued that most of the federal tax revenue derived from the South, and that Southern states were not getting their fair share in return. That was because the population had shifted northward, and Northern legislators in Congress were passing bills that benefited the North.

A piece of legislation that particularly angered the South was an 1828 tariff that came to be known in the South as the "Tariff of Abominations." The bill—intended to protect Northern industries from the dumping of competing British products on American markets at artificially low prices—was designed to keep foreign goods out by making them more expensive. The measure hurt the South in two ways; it made manufactured goods more expensive for Southerners to buy, and also resulted in Britain reducing its import of Southern cotton when the market for British products shrank.

The North passed a milder tariff law in 1832, but the South was not satisfied. That year, South Carolina passed an Ordinance of Nullification, declaring that both the 1828 and 1832 tariff acts were "null, void, and no law." South Carolina argued that all states had the right to suspend any federal law in their territory that they felt was not in their best interests. However, the federal government did not agree with that reasoning. South Carolina, declared President Andrew Jackson (D, 1829-37), stood on "the brink of insurrection and treason."

The so-called Nullification Crisis was resolved in 1833, after Congress enacted a compromise tariff that gradually reduced duties on imported goods. In response, South Carolina repealed its Ordinance of Nullification. A showdown between the North and South was averted, but only temporarily.

The Seeds of Conflict: The Missouri Compromise and the Kansas-Nebraska Act

Another major issue that threatened to split the Union was slavery. In 1803, President Thomas Jefferson (Democratic-Republican, 1801-09) oversaw the Louisiana Purchase for the U.S., buying a huge parcel of land from France. In one fell swoop, the land owned by the U.S. doubled. At the time, the population of the slave and free states was fairly even, and there were as many slave states as free states. But issues soon arose in Congress concerning which parts of the new lands would be considered free states and which ones would be considered slave states. A swing either way would give the North or the South an advantage in congressional representation, and neither wanted to be in the minority.

The Compromise of 1820—also known as the Missouri Compromise—admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, keeping the number of free and slave states in balance. It also established a line of division at 36� 30� latitude through the Louisiana Purchase. Slavery was permitted south of the line, but prohibited to the north of it. That solution resolved the slavery issue until 1845, when Texas was admitted to the U.S. as a slave state. That led to the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California as a free state while allowing slavery to persist in the other lands west of Texas (Utah and New Mexico) that were acquired from Mexico.

In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise. Senator Stephen A. Douglas (D, Illinois) wrote and introduced the bill that divided the land west of Missouri into two territories: Kansas and Nebraska. A provision of the bill called for popular sovereignty, so that residents of the new territories would decide for themselves whether slavery would be legal where they settled. [See The Kansas-Nebraska Act]

When the Kansas-Nebraska Act became law on May 30, 1854, antislavery activists were outraged. If the Missouri Compromise were still in effect, they reasoned, slavery would have been illegal in both territories. Passage of the bill resulted in violence, as both pro-slavery and antislavery activists went to Kansas to try to determine the outcome of the slavery vote in the first election to be held in the new territory. The convergence of those two opposing forces came to be known as "Bloody Kansas," for the violence that subsequently gripped the territory. As a result of the violence, tensions between North and South reached a fever pitch.

Those events helped give birth to a new political party—the Republican Party. In early February 1854, largely in response to opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska bill, people from a number of existing parties, including Whigs, Free-Soilers and Anti-Slavery Democrats, gathered in Ripon, Wisconsin, to create a new party. The party was dedicated to preventing the expansion of slavery, which Republicans called "the great moral, social and political evil" of the day.

The Dred Scott Decision

Tensions between the Northern and Southern states grew even worse on March 6, 1857, when the U.S. Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger Taney, ruled that Congress did not have the right to prohibit slavery in the western territories. Taney, a slave owner from the slave-holding state of Maryland, ruled that a slave named Dred Scott had no right to sue in federal court. Scott had attempted to sue for his freedom based on the claim that he had lived on free soil in Illinois and Wisconsin before moving back to Missouri. However, Scott was denied his freedom because, according to Taney, "blacks had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the Negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever profit could be made by it." [See Dred Scott Decision]

The Dred Scott decision meant that the Republican Party's goal of stopping slavery from spreading to the western territories was unconstitutional. And it also meant that the doctrine of "popular sovereignty"—which stated that territorial governments had the power to prohibit slavery if they so wished—was also unconstitutional.

Many Northern abolitionists were outraged at that decision, and saw it as a major step backward in their efforts to rid the nation of slavery. Some even believed that Southern Democrats were engaged in a conspiracy to make slavery legal throughout the country. However, Frederick Douglass, a rising black political leader and abolitionist, stated that "my hopes were never brighter than now." To Douglass, the Dred Scott decision and its implications were so immoral that he felt it would bring slavery to the forefront of the nation's consciousness. Douglass believed this would lead to the ultimate obliteration of the practice. His words would soon prove prophetic.

A vivid example of how rancorous the relations between North and South had gotten is provided by an attack on Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner by South Carolina Representative Preston Brooks (D). Sumner had given a speech on the Senate floor in May of 1856 in which he argued that the "Crime against Kansas" was simply the latest attempt by Southern political leaders to expand slavery to the west and hence gain power in Congress. Two days later, Brooks walked up to Sumner at his desk in the Senate chamber and pummeled him viciously with a cane until Sumner lost consciousness.

Against that backdrop, Lincoln was president on November 6, 1860. Although he claimed to be more interested in preserving a strong union than in ending slavery, the South predicted that his election would lead to an attempt to abolish slavery nationwide. Lincoln's election was the tipping point in the sectional crisis between North and South.

On February 4, delegates from those states met in Montgomery, Alabama, where they drafted a constitution for the Confederate States of America (which was adopted on March 11). They chose Jefferson Davis, a congressman and statesman, as provisional president (he was elected president in October). Four more states would join the Confederacy in the following months: Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee. When the Southern states began to secede, outgoing President Buchanan did very little to stem the tide, believing that the North did not have any constitutional right to interfere. However, Lincoln declared that secession was illegal, and that the Southern states were in rebellion. [See Constitution of the Confederate States of America (primary document), Inaugural Address of Confederate President Jefferson Davis (primary document)]

The Case for Secession

Supporters of secession claimed that, through economic legislation such as tariffs passed by a Northern-controlled Congress, the North was essentially trying to turn the South into an agricultural colony. In fact, southerners compared their situation to that of the American colonists who overthrew the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775-83). In both cases, they asserted, a group of people declared their independence from a power that was taxing them heavily; in both cases, the seceding entity was invaded by a power that did not want secession to be successful.

In an "Address of the people of South Carolina to the people of the slaveholding states," in which South Carolina urged other Southern states to join it in a confederacy of slave-holding states, secessionists noted that the Southern states were subordinate to the North in Congress. According to the address: [see Address of the People of South Carolina to the People of Slaveholding States (primary document)]

Their representation in Congress is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British Parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States, have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North.

Secessionists also pointed to the Declaration of Independence to bolster their claim that states had a right to secede. South Carolina's secession declaration included wording from the Declaration of Independence stating that the colonies "are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States." The secession declaration further quoted the colonists' declaration that "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government."

Davis echoed the Declaration of Independence when he commented that the South's situation "illustrates the American idea that governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established." He further summed up the Southern view when he said, "The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came."

Secession proponents also asserted that secession was allowed by the Constitution, and that the compact between the states was not meant to be binding. In fact, they pointed out, Article Two of the Articles of Confederation (the precursor to the Constitution) said that "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled." Advocates saw nothing in the Constitution that contradicted that view.

Proponents also pointed to the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which stated that "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Since secession was a power not delegated to the government, they reasoned, then it was a power left to the states. Furthermore, they asserted, there was nothing in the Constitution permitting the federal government to prevent secession.

In addition, proponents argued that it was hypocritical for the North to prevent Southern states from seceding when Northern states had previously tried to do so. They pointed out that Northern states had previously threatened to secede, yet when a Southern state attempted to secede, the Northern position on secession changed drastically.

One of the most vigorous arguments by many secessionists concerned the slavery issue. By the 1850s, Southern leaders were aware that many Northern abolitionists wanted to rid the entire country of slavery. Southerners argued that abolition of slavery would have a devastating effect on the Southern economy, because the South's labor force included nearly four million slaves.

Many Southerners claimed that Northerners had unfairly taken up the issue of slavery in order to inflame other Northerners against the South; they pointed out that far fewer than 10% of the South's roughly 5.5 million whites—only 300,000—were estimated to be slave owners. In addition, many secession proponents believed that Southern slaves were treated more humanely than workers in Northern factories. Advocates argued that slave owners provided shelter, food, care, clothing and other necessities for a people who could not compete in the modern world without proper training. Many Southern preachers even proclaimed that slavery was sanctioned in the Bible.

Representative Laurence Keitt (D, South Carolina) summed up the belief of many in the South regarding slavery in a speech to the House in January 1860. According to Keitt:

African slavery is the corner-stone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depopulation and barbarism....The anti-slavery party contend that slavery is wrong in itself, and the Government is a consolidated national democracy. We of the South contend that slavery is right, and that this is a confederate republic of sovereign states.

The slavery issue came to a boil with Lincoln's election. Proponents of secession pointed to Lincoln's "House Divided" speech of 1858, in which he warned, "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Lincoln said he believed that the nation would end up being either entirely free or entirely accepting of slavery, but secessionists argued that his presidency would lead to the abolition of slavery. [See Abraham Lincoln's 'A House Divided Against Itself' Speech (primary document)]

Stephen Hale, who had been appointed by the governor of Alabama to travel to other slave-holding states to advocate secession, discussed the impact of Lincoln's election and his party's antislavery stance in a letter to Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin (D). Hale wrote:

[T]he election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility to the South, her property and her institutions-nothing less than an open declaration of war-for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.

The Case Against Secession

Many opponents of secession, such as Lincoln, stressed the importance of keeping the nation united. In a letter to New York Tribune publisher Horace Greeley, Lincoln wrote: "My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that."

Even some who did not contest the legality of Southern secession argued against it in practice, claiming that it was more important to maintain the Union. In January 1861, Alexander Stephens, a member of Georgia's House of Representatives (who in February would be elected provisional vice president of the Confederacy) argued against Georgia's secession. Stephens stated that the current government "is the best and freest government—the most equal in its rights—the most just in its decisions-the most lenient in its measures, and the most inspiring in its principles to elevate the race of men, that the sun of heaven ever shone upon." He continued:

Now, for you to attempt to overthrow such a government as this, under which we have lived for more than three quarters of a century—in which we have gained our wealth, our standing as a nation, our domestic safety while the elements of peril are around us, with peace and tranquility accompanied with unbounded prosperity and rights unassailed—is the height of madness, folly and wickedness, to which I can neither lend my sanction nor my vote.

But most critics of secession argued that it was illegal. When the Southern states entered the Union they were entering into an enduring relationship with the Northern states, opponents claimed, agreeing to a binding compact. "No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union," Lincoln asserted. "They can only do so against law, and by revolution."

Lincoln's belief was that the very core of a civilized democracy was the principle of majority rule. He and other opponents of secession reasoned that it was unacceptable because no democracy could function if sections of the country were to leave the Union simply because they did not like the results of an election. Such behavior would lead ultimately to anarchy, they warned. Lincoln argued that the South's decision to dissolve the compact between the states would be valid only if it had the approval of a majority of the states, in both North and South. He addressed those ideas in his first inaugural address when he stated: [See President Lincoln's First Inaugural Address (primary document)]

[W]e divide upon [all our constitutional controversies] into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority....Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.

Moreover, opponents argued that there were two clauses in the Constitution that made secession illegal: the supremacy clause and the guarantee clause. The supremacy clause (Article VI, Paragraph 2) stated: "This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof. shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding." Antisecessionists interpreted that to mean that the act of secession was in violation of federal mandates against treason.

Furthermore, they noted, the guarantee clause (Article IV, Section 4) stated: "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." Lincoln referred to that clause to justify the Northern invasion of the South in an attempt to prevent secession. "[I]f a State may lawfully go out of the Union, having done so, it may also discard the republican form of government; so that to prevent its going out, is an indispensable means, to the end, of maintaining the guaranty mentioned; and when an end is lawful and obligatory, the indispensable means to it, are also lawful, and obligatory," he said.

Northern opponents of secession also argued that the U.S. would be a much stronger country, militarily and economically, if it were to stay united. Splitting the U.S. into two countries would leave both more susceptible to foreign invasion, and both would suffer economically in the long run, critics warned. "The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. It is very clear that the South gains by this process, and we lose. No—we MUST NOT 'let the South go'," The Union Democrat, a Manchester, New Hampshire, newspaper declared on February 19, 1861.

Finally, some of the more militant of the abolitionists warned that if states were allowed to secede, then hopes for abolition would be dashed. There would be no chance of ending the practice of slavery in the South if the North were not allowed to intervene in the affairs of the South, they noted.

Secession and the Civil War

Problems between the Northern and Southern states of the U.S. kept mounting through the first half of the 19th century. The issue of slavery was a critical factor that drove a wedge between the two sides. Because of the agrarian nature of the Southern way of life, the South was largely dependent on slave labor to sustain its economy. Southerners saw Northern resistance to slavery as a direct threat to their existence. As a result of what they considered to be unconstitutional intervention from a hostile central power, which manifested itself in excessive taxation and the election of a president whom they considered to be anti-Southern, the Southern states voted to leave the Union. The goal of secession, then, was simply to create a confederation of independent local states. Many Southerners viewed their bold move as a Second American Revolution.

From the North's perspective, however, the secession of the Southern states was unconstitutional, inasmuch as a state's departure required the agreement of a majority of states in the country. They also argued that it was imperative to keep the Southern states in the Union in order for the U.S. to be a powerful and affluent country.

The differences between North and South could be resolved only through war. The impact of the Civil War was enormous. As a result of the North's victory, slavery was eradicated once and for all throughout the U.S., by virtue of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the 13th Amendment, ratified on December 6, 1865, which outlawed slavery. Also, because most of the fighting took place in the South, the region was left devastated, and in dire economic and social straits. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the nation would have to begin the process of rebuilding the South and healing long-standing divisions through the process of Reconstruction. [See Comparison of Union and Confederate Resources (sidebar), Letters to Home from Civil War Soldiers (primary document)]

Discussion Questions & Activities

1. Many Southerners drew parallels between secession and the colonists' declaration of independence against Great Britain. In what ways were the situations similar? In what ways were they different?

2. Should the South have been allowed to secede if it decided that remaining in the Union was not in its best interests? Why or why not?

3. What role did slavery play in the Civil War? Do you think that the North and South could have ever reached a compromise on slavery without resorting to bloodshed?

5. Imagine that you are President James Buchanan; write a speech in which you respond to South Carolina's declaration of secession in 1860.

Bibliography

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Boller, Paul F. Jr. Presidential Campaigns. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Catton, Bruce. The Centennial History of the Civil War. 3v. Doubleday, 1961-65. Comprehensive history: V. 1: The Coming Fury; V. 2: Terrible Swift Sword; V. 3: Never Call Retreat.

Davis, William C. and Wiley, Bell I. Shadows of the Storm. New York: Doubleday, 1981.

Dew, Charles. Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. University of Virginia Press, 2002.

Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Haywood, John. Atlas of World History. New York: Friedman, Michael Publishing Group, 2000.

Holt, Michael. The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Extension, and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.S

Horton, James Oliver and Lois Horton. Slavery and the Making of America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Kennedy, James Roland and Walter Kennedy. The South Was Right! Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing Co., 1995.

McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Niven, John. The Coming of the Civil War: 1837-1861. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson Inc., SS1990.

Rhodes, James. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966.

Civil War: Secession of the Southern States
Preservation of the Union v. Formation of the Confederacy

By Phil Allard

Introduction