Secession

The contest soon resolved itself into a two-party campaign in each section: Lincoln versus Douglas in the North and Breckinridge versus Bell in the South. The Republicans did not even put up a ticket in ten Southern states. And Douglas has no hope of carrying any of the same ten states. In the North, most old Whigs/American constituency had gone over to the Republicans. And while Breckinridge gained the support of the prominent Northern Democrats identified with the Buchanan administration, the Southern rights party could expect no Northern electoral votes. It became clear that the only way to beat Lincoln was by a fusion of the three opposing parties that might enable them to carry a solid South plus three or four crucial Northern states. But formidable barriers stood in the way of such a fusion. The bitter divisions among Democrats could scarcely be forgiven or forgotten. A good many fire-eaters had worked to break up the party precisely in order to ensure that the election of a Black Republican president and thereby to fire the Southern heart for secession. Even among Southern Democrats who deplored schism, the gulf was now too wide to be bridged. The only fusion achieved in the South was a joint Bell-Douglas ticket in Texas, which won a paltry 24 percent of the vote against Breckinridge. Herculean efforts by party leaders in New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and New Jersey patched together fusion tickets in those states. But this proved futile, for Lincoln won a majority against the combined opposition in the first three states and an electoral plurality in New Jersey.

Lincoln's victory provided the shock that Southern fire-eaters had craved. The tension that had been building for years suddenly exploded like a string of firecrackers, as seven states seceded one after another. According to the theory of secession, when each state ratified the Constitution and joined the Union, it authorized the national government to act as its agent in the exercise of certain functions of sovereignty - but the states had never given away their fundamental underlying sovereignty itself. Any state, then, by the act of its own convention, could withdraw from its "compact" with the other states and reassert its individual sovereignty. Therefore, the South Carolina legislature called for such a convention and ordered an election of delegates to consider withdrawing form the United States. And, on December 20, 1860, that is what the South Carolina convention did, by a vote of 169 to 0.

South Carolina, which had long been in the forefront of southern rights and proslavery agitation, was the first state to secede, doing so on December 20, 1860, at a convention meeting in Charleston. The constitutional theory behind secession was that the Union was a "compact" among sovereign states, each of which could withdraw from the Union by the vote of a convention similar to the one that had ratified the Constitution in the first place. The south Carolinians justified seceding at that time by charging that “a sectional party” had elected a president “whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.”

In other states of the Cotton Kingdom, there was similar outrage at Lincoln’s election but less certainty about how to respond to it. Those who advocated immediate secession by each state individually were opposed by the “cooperationists,” who believed the slave states should act as a unit. If the cooperationists had triumphed, secession would have been delayed until a southern convention had agreed on it. Some of these moderates hoped a delay would provide time to extort major concessions from the North and thus remove the need for dissolving the Union. But South Carolina’s unilateral action set a precedent that weakened the cooperationists’ cause.

Lincoln’s election had split the Union.  Now secession split the South. Seven slave states seceded during the winter, but eight did not. Citizens of the Upper South debated just as furiously whether the South could defend itself better inside or outside the Union, but they came down opposite the Lower South, at least for the moment. Whites in the Upper South had fewer fears that Republican ascendancy meant economic catastrophe, racial war, and social chaos. Lincoln would need to do more than just be elected to provoke them into secession.

In the free states and the Confederate states, Lincoln’s proclamation reinforced the patriotic fervor of the day. In the upper South it brought dismay, and another wave of secession that swept four more states into the Confederacy. Many in those states abhorred both abolitionists and secessionists, but faced with a call for troops to suppress their sister states, decided to abandon the Union. Virginia acted first. Its convention passed an Ordinance of Secession on April 17. The Confederate Congress then chose Richmond as its new capital, and the government moved there in June.

Three other states followed Virginia in little over a month: Arkansas on May 6, Tennessee on May 7, and North Carolina on May 20. All four of the holdout states, especially Tennessee and Virginia, had areas (mainly in the mountains) where both slaves and secessionists were scarce and where Union support ran strong. In Tennessee the mountain counties would supply more volunteers to the Union than to the Confederate cause. Unionists in western Virginia, bolstered by a Federal army from Ohio under General George B. McClellen, contrived a loyal government of Virginia that formed a new state. In 1863 Congress admitted West Virginia to the Union with a constitution that provided for gradual emancipation of the few slaves there. &nbsp

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina seceded from the Union, declaring the "experiment" of putting people with "different pursuits and institutions" under one government a failure. By February 1, the other six Deep South states (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) had seceded. A week later, delegates met in Montgomery, Alabama, created the Confederate States of America, adopted a constitution, and elected Jefferson Davis, a Mississippi senator and cotton planter, its provisional president. The divided house had fallen, as Lincoln had predicted it would. What was not yet certain, though, was whether the house could be put back together or whether disunion necessarily meant civil war.

Republican hopes that southern Unionism would assert itself seemed possible in February 1861. The momentum toward disunion slowed, and no other southern states had seceded. The nation waited and watched, wondering what Virginia and the border states would do, what outgoing President Buchanan would do, and what Congress would do. Prosouthern and determined not to start a civil war in the last weeks of his already dismal administration, Buchanan did nothing. Congress made some feeble efforts to pass compromise legislation, waiting in vain for the support of the president-elect.

Within six weeks after the secession of South Carolina the states of Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Georgia, and Texas had severed their connection with the Union. Delegates from six of these seven " sovereign states " met at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4, 1861, and organized a new Confederacy. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was chosen president, and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia vice president. A constitution was drawn up and submitted to the several states of the Confederacy for ratification. This constitution was very similar to the Constitution of the United States, except that slavery was expressly sanctioned, Congress was forbidden to levy protective duties, the president was elected for a term of six years without eligibility for reelection, and the members of the cabinet were given the right to speak on the floor of Congress. A Confederate flag, the " stars and bars," was adopted. A tax of one eighth of a cent a pound on exported cotton was levied. President Davis was authorized to raise an army of 100,000 men and secure a loan of $15,000,000, and a committee of three, with the impetuous Yancey of Alabama as chairman, was sent abroad to secure the friendship and alliance of European courts. Both Davis and Stephens believed that the South would have the fight "a long and bloody war" to establish its independence.

 

They had done more than this. They had secured all the forts, arsenals, and government places lying within their territory, with the exception of Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor, and Fort Pickens near Pensacola. At this latter place was to occur a history somewhat similar to that of Sumter.