Why south seceded

There was no army being mobilized to wage an impending war on the South. If the reason for seceding was to protect slavery from abolition -- then perhaps a better strategy would have been to wait until such an attempt was actually made. Surely at the very least this might have made the Southern cause more sympathetic under the sensibilities of the time.

Instead a faction of radical secessionists called " fire-eaters " manipulated this situation towards their end of leaving the Union. They did so playing on fears of a slave insurrection and the other points listed above, but by winning the political debate they triggered a premature and irrevocable decision. For the Southern elite, seceding in December was akin to a football team walking off of the field because they were behind in the second quarter.

Speculating on alternative history is always problematic, but I believe that it's useful in this case for the purposes of showing just how bad of an idea secession really was for the South in Below are four scenarios that might have occurred had South Carolina and by extension the rest of the eventual Confederacy held tight after Lincoln's election and not withdrawn from the Union. Most of Lincoln's agenda would have been thwarted with a strong Democratic opposition.

It is unclear whether he could have forced a resolution on the end of slavery in the Western territories. Federal support of the First Transcontinental Railroad would have been obstructed, slowing the development of the West. The increase in tariffs that assisted Northern manufacturers would also not have been possible. Finally, it's unlikely that any progress towards the abolition of slavery would have been made in the s. Faced with these problems it's conceivable that the Republicans could have been the Party to split into two factions in , strange as that idea may sound.

There were two very distinct groups within the Party during this era. Perhaps some legal arrangement would have been worked out granting the South more autonomy within the U. At the first sign of such overtures, the abolitionists might have withdrawn from the Republicans and formed a new Liberty Party. All of this is speculation, but there is no guarantee that the Republican coalition would have remained stable through the s. Additionally, after the disaster of the Democrats might have been more inclined to run as a national party in or Perhaps Stephen A.

Douglas would not have caught typhoid in and instead been the standard-bearer. A Democratic victory in either of those elections would have chastened the abolitionist wing for at least a few years, and the slavery issue might have been suppressed in national conversation until the late s or s.

Scenario 3 below will examine this "alternative" late 19th century in more detail. The radical wing descendants of the abolitionists wanted to keep the focus on civil rights for the freedmen. Eventually the radicals were defeated. This was without a doubt the nightmare scenario for the planter class, and one that was brought to the forefront by John Brown's abortive coup in Southerners had prevented large-scale rebellion for over two centuries, using timeless carrot-and-stick methods of pacifying the slave communities.

Productive, non-rebellious slaves could attain positions in skilled trades or as house slaves, where their status in the eyes of white society at least and living conditions were somewhat improved.

Those who fell out of line were beaten mercilessly and put on the worst jobs thereafter, and obviously those who attempted open rebellion such as Nat Turner or Gabriel Prosser were executed. All of the slaves were monitored with constant surveillance from whites and other slaves alike. The surface nature of this arrangement has even led some observers to make the argument that slaves in the South were not poorly treated as a whole.

There is an element of truth to that argument, insofar as slaves who cooperated with the system lived in a modicum of comfort, and insofar as they were much better off than slaves in the Caribbean and even some free whites. This argument however, for rhetorical reasons, entirely ignores the backdrop of violence that held the slave system together. There is no obvious answer to the question of whether tens or hundreds of thousands of slaves might have been killed had a full-scale revolt actually broken out, as I will now examine.

It's very hard to speculate on how the federal government might have intervened had a serious slave rebellion taken hold in the s or 70s. While the seizure of a federal arsenal in John Brown's case made the intervention easy, would the same reaction have happened if 1, slaves rebelled? Would there have been a Democratic or a Republican President at the time of the revolt? Would the broader part of the Republican Party have supported the use of the U. Or would the suppression have taken place solely with Southern militias, and would they have been able to stop a revolt once it reached that kind of magnitude?

The event of a mass slave rebellion in and of itself might have been the kind of catalyst for end to slavery -- perhaps one that would have proceeded in a very different manner from what actually transpired. If slaves took over a significant area of land, would they have been willing to turn it over to the U. Would the U. Would the slaves have remained independent like those of Haiti? Would they have been deported en masse to Liberia as some free blacks had earlier been?

From the perspective of the Southern planters, it's hard to tell what would have happened in this scenario, but it is possible that the end result would have been far worse for them than the sharecropping system that eventually developed after the Civil War.

Clement Vallandigham, an Ohio Congressman who was eventually arrested and deported from the United States because of his speeches in opposition to the policies of the Lincoln administration, gave a speech in the U. The result was as inevitable as the laws of trade are inexorable. Trade and commerce…began to look to the South…. Threatened thus with the loss of both political power and wealth, or the repeal of the [Morrill] tariff…New England—and Pennsylvania, too, the land of Penn, cradled in peace—demanded, now, coercion and civil war, with all its horrors, as the price of preserving either from destruction…The subjugation of the South—ay, sir, the subjugation of the South!

And sir, when once this policy was begun, these self-same motives of waning commerce, and threatened loss of trade, impelled the great city of New York, and her merchants and her politicians and her press—with here and there an honorable exception—to place herself in the very front rank among the worshippers of Moloch….

These, sir, were the chief causes which, along with others…forced us, headlong, into civil war, with all its accumulated horrors. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Timely Abbeville Instritute articles and news delivered directly to your inbox. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, or download our mobile app. Hit enter to search or ESC to close. No Comments. Comparing the position of the South to that of the American colonists in , the Address stated: The Government of the United States is no longer a Government of Confederated Republics…it is no longer a free Government, but a despotism.

The Northern States, having the majority in Congress, claim the same power of omnipotence in legislation as the British Parliament…and the people of the Southern States are compelled to meet the very despotism their fathers threw off in the Revolution of … They [the Southern states] are a minority in Congress.

Even before the war was over, scholars in the North and South began to analyze and interpret the reasons behind the bloodshed. The scholars immediately disagreed over the causes of the war and disagreement persists today. Others minimize slavery and point to other factors, such as taxation or the principle of States' Rights. One method by which to analyze this historical conflict is to focus on primary sources.

Four states went further. Two major themes emerge in these documents: slavery and states' rights. All four states strongly defend slavery while making varying claims related to states' rights. Other grievances, such as economic exploitation and the role of the military, receive limited attention in some of the documents.

This article will present, in detail, everything that was said in the Declarations of Causes pertaining to these topics. Read More. Mississippi: 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 have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. Texas: The servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations.

South Carolina: Those [Union] States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States.

Georgia: That reason was [the North's] fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity.

Georgia: We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution.

Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end. This insulting and unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation and firmness by the South. We had shed our blood and paid our money for its acquisition; we demanded a division of it… or an equal participation in the whole of it.

The price of the acquisition was the blood and treasure of both sections-- of all, and, therefore, it belonged to all upon the principles of equity and justice. Texas: The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretenses and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.

Georgia: For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us. Mississippi: [Abolitionism] advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.