Introduction

Sectional tensions over slavery persisted since the writing of the Constitution and exploded into secession and the Civil War in 1860–61. The resistance to slavery of African Americans, both enslaved and free, prodded the consciences of enough Northern whites to produce the abolition movement and emerge as a political force in its own right. Southerners recognized that the morality of slavery was at the heart of the issue and sought in vain to make Northerners acknowledge slavery as a morally just institution and allow it to grow and expand. The Northern refusal to do so fueled the rise of the Republican Party and split the Democratic Party at its national convention in the spring of 1860, setting the stage for the election of Abraham Lincoln and the outbreak of the secession crisis.

Secessionist Surge

The states of the Lower or Cotton South seceded in January 1861 following the failure of the Crittenden Compromise and the seizure of federal property by their governors. Here, unlike in South Carolina, moderates initially mounted a strong opposition to immediate straight-out secession. Coalescing under the label of cooperationists, they hoped to delay secession while seeking redress for Southern grievances within the Union. Some called for a convention of all Southern states to present demands; others wanted a prior agreement to secede by blocs of states before any decisive steps were taken. Republican refusals to grant them any significant concessions destroyed any chances of their success. Led by upwardly mobile young planters and slaveholding lawyers, the immediate secessionists easily carried Mississippi and Florida, where slavery was still undergoing vigorous growth. Elsewhere, the contests for the secession conventions were quite close as older, established planters and non-slaveholders in the backcountry condemned secession as certain to provoke a war that would result in economic ruin and the end of slavery. In all the elections, support for secession was strongest where slavery was most dominant. Once their states seceded, the cooperationist delegates called for popular referendums on secession. When those calls were rejected, they joined the original secessionists in presenting a united front against the North.

Conclusion

Southern whites paid a terrible price in mangled bodies and lives lost in their bid to win independence and perpetuate slavery. On the defensive since the late eighteenth century when the Western world turned against slavery, they saw in Lincoln’s election, followed by his call for troops in April 1861, the realization of their worst fears. Duty, honor, and the protection of loved ones motivated them to fight for liberties that in their minds were inseparable from the ownership of slaves. Many non-slaveholders in the mountains and backcountry opposed the Confederacy by 1863 and slaves fled to Union armies wherever they could, but slaveholders fought on with ever greater desperation. As the losses mounted, whites came to understand the war as divine retribution for their sins and those of the nation.

Getting Right with Slavery

Moral doubts about slavery persisted among Southern whites throughout the antebellum period, and planters were never convinced of the full loyalty to slavery of non-slaveholders. Largely in response to the moral indictment of slavery by Northern abolitionists, evangelical ministers launched a concerted movement to show that slavery was ordained by God in the Bible and was part of a divine plan entrusting Southerners with the care and moral uplift of an inferior race unfit to live in freedom. As revealed by slave testimony, the disciplinary measures of slaveholders, and the separation by sale of slave families, efforts to reform slavery by the Christian principle of stewardship were unsuccessful. Sporadic programs in the Upper South to gradually end the institution by colonizing slaves in Africa reached dead ends. Although often troubled by the responsibilities of managing slaves, plantation mistresses readily resorted to violence to enforce their will and placed their positions of wealth and privilege above any antislavery sentiments. Intimidation and expulsion faced dissenters who openly attacked slavery. Whatever doubts whites entertained, they closed ranks against any outside interference with slavery.

From Waiting Game to War

A month of anxious waiting came to an end in early April 1861 when Lincoln’s decision to send a relief expedition to Fort Sumter shattered an uneasy peace between the Union and the Confederacy and precipitated war and the last phase of secession. Just after delivering his Inaugural Address on March 4, 1861, in which he denounced secession as anarchy and pledged to hold federal properties as yet unseized in the South but not to initiate hostilities against the seceded states, Lincoln learned from Major Anderson that Fort Sumter would run out of supplies in about forty days. Whether to resupply the fort or order its evacuation was the defining issue of his first month in office. Against the advice of Republican conservatives led by William H. Seward, who were convinced that Southerners would voluntarily choose to reenter the Union in a matter of months if Lincoln refrained from any act that could touch off a war, Lincoln finally ordered a relief expedition but stipulated that no troops or ammunition would be sent in unless the Confederacy fired upon the expedition or the fort. On the orders of Jefferson Davis, Confederate artillery opened fire on the morning of April 12. On learning of the fort’s surrender, Lincoln called on all the states for militia troops to put down what he defined as a rebellion. Southerners viewed his troop call as a declaration of war to invade their homeland and end slavery. Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina in the Upper South quickly seceded, but the border slave states, a key to future Union offensive operations, held firm in the Union.

The Upper South

The failure to gain the states of the Upper South when they held their secession elections in February 1861 was a major setback for the cause of secession. The seven states of the original Confederacy needed the manufacturing and white manpower of the Upper South, either to convince the North of the futility of military coercion or to be competitive should war break out. Both for its prestige and size, Virginia was the pivotal state that had to be won. As an institution, slavery was stagnant or declining across most of the Upper South, and levels of slave ownership and slaves in the population were roughly half of those in the Lower South. Secessionist appeals for the immediate need to leave the Union to protect slavery failed to gain any majority support. The conservative Whig Party was still very competitive and warned that the cotton Confederacy would push for free trade and the African slave trade, both of which would undermine the more diversified economies in the Upper South. Its leaders rallied non-slaveholders under the banner of conditional Unionism, a commitment to remain in the Union so long as concessions on slavery were granted and the North refrained from any military action against the states that had seceded. Aware of their distinctly minority status and the vulnerability of their slaves given the proximity of the free-labor Northern states, most of the slaveholders in the border slave states clung to the Union as the safest defender of their slave property.

Deadlock and a Deepening Crisis

Congressional efforts to quell secession through a sectional compromise collapsed in December. As Northerners debated ways to deal with secession, President James Buchanan, a Democrat who had long sympathized with Southern grievances, lost credibility on both sides when he declared secession to be an unconstitutional act that he was powerless to put down. Following the departure of House members from the Lower South and South Carolina’s secession on December 20, a Senate committee proposed the Crittenden Compromise, a package of constitutional amendments guaranteeing the protection of slavery, including the recognition of slavery in all present and future territories south of the Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30'. Lincoln emphatically rejected the territorial feature on the expansion of slavery, and the Republicans backed him by scuttling the compromise. At the same time, the governors in the Lower South denounced the surprise move by Major Robert Anderson of his federal garrison from the vulnerable Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter in the Charleston harbor as a hostile act portending a new aggressive federal policy against secession. In what amounted to de facto secession, the governors ordered the seizure of federal forts and possessions in their states. War over Fort Sumter was averted when Buchanan and the South Carolina governor agreed to maintain the status quo in the wake of the firing on a poorly planned relief effort to resupply the fort.

Uneasy Rest the Masters

The maturation of the slave economy by the 1850s restricted opportunities for whites and provoked populist stirrings of discontent challenging planter rule. The cotton prosperity of the decade resulted in the pricing of good land and slaves beyond the reach of the bulk of the population, and the numbers of poor whites with neither land nor slaves rose to one-third of the free population. The color line blurred as poor whites were forced into competition with slave labor and miscegenation increased. Frustrated by shrinking opportunities, the sons of planters yearned to win glory and status as the South’s future leaders. To defend their jobs and white manhood, urban workers organized politically to protest the use of slave mechanics in the job market. Moral and economic opposition blocked efforts to widen slave ownership by lowering prices through reopening the African slave trade. The decade ended with new political groupings demanding greater political and economic power for non-slaveholders.

The Confederacy

In forming the Confederate States of America at a convention in Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861, the delegates made the protection of slavery their top priority. They wrote into the Provisional Confederate Constitution explicit guarantees for the perpetuation of slavery. Anxious to project an image of bipartisan moderation, they denied leadership positions to the fire-eaters, the original hard-core radicals, and chose Jefferson Davis, a latecomer to secession, for president, and Alexander Stephens, who had warned against the dangers of secession, for vice-president. As inducements for the Upper South to join the Confederacy, the convention adopted a moderate tariff instead of free trade and constitutionally mandated the prohibition of the African slave trade. God was invoked as their protector on the official seal of the Confederacy, a confirmation of the evangelical belief that Southerners were undertaking a holy mission in forming a new Christian republic dedicated to the glory of God. Although specifically authorized only with drafting a provisional constitution, the delegates conferred the powers of a legislative body or congress on the convention in order to move ahead quickly in shaping their new government and preparing for a possible war with the North. By March, a functioning government and army were in place.

South Carolina Takes the Lead

South Carolina had been in the forefront of Southern radicalism since the 1820s, and it took the lead once Lincoln was elected. Pushing to the side the fire-eater Robert B. Rhett and his followers as extremists who would precipitate a war and isolate South Carolina from the other Southern states, moderate lowcountry planters orchestrated a propaganda campaign to achieve peaceful, orderly secession that would pull in the other slave states. Aware that any unified Southern response would be stymied by the temporizing of the Upper South, the secessionists relied on separate state secession to be achieved by popularly elected state conventions. Cooperation would follow among the seceded states. Invoking the horrors of forced emancipation and racial equality under Republican rule with appeals to restore the past glory of South Carolina during the American Revolution, secessionist ideology produced a mandate for immediate secession. To clinch the support of Charleston’s white workers, a harsh repression of free blacks forced many to leave and flee to the North for safety. Sons of planters rushed to join the cause and women in the planter class reveled in their new political role of advocates for secession. Banners, flags, and songs celebrated deliverance from Northern tyranny as workers and clerks flooded the streets of Charleston. Speed was of the essence to ensure that passions did not cool, and once the secessionists pressured the legislature to push the date of the election for convention delegates up to December 6, the state’s secession was a foregone conclusion.