Why did the South secede?
Donald Winchester
Abraham Lincoln’s election in 1860 as the first ‘Black Republican’ to the helm of the United States spawned an uproarious cacophony of upheaval and agitation amongst the Southern states. The months following his election saw the forthright secession of seven states of the Lower South, in direct response to this. It seems certain that ‘the catalyst that [produced] the Confederate States of America was the election of Abraham Lincoln’[1]. Southern slaveholders and non-slaveholders alike could not stomach the prospect of a president opposed to the basis of their way of life. They feared the destruction of their beloved South, to be replaced by an industrialized, money-grubbing Northern style that should become the undisputed ‘American way’.
They had a right to grievance – their country had not, in their eyes, been formed to this end. Not only was slavery – the main source of North/South contention – accepted in the Revolutionary era and, significantly, the Constitution, it was not even so much as mentioned as a pressing issue. Thomas Jefferson amongst others celebrated the rural way of life that was to become distinctly ‘Southern’ as more northern states adopted an industrial economy and more highly educated culture. James McPherson calls the South a ‘colonial economy’[2], and this is perhaps particularly apt if considered not only in terms of economics, but also in terms of the Southern mind and attitude. Southern culture was, in the face of specifically Northern forms of ‘individualism’, a familial, traditional set-up. Change was regarded with scepticism and reluctance, whether in religion, philosophy or economics. Thus, transcendentalism and the second Great Awakening both passed over the South with little influence. Education, or the lack of, may be the reason for this: ‘the percentage of illiterates was seven or eight times as high in the South [as in the North]’, if slaves are included in the calculation. Interest in education was minimal, as it apparently added nothing to their way of life. Indeed, it is hard to see how Finney’s fleeting collective conversions or Emerson’s theories of self-reliance or American literary emergence should have an effect on a South prospering in their status quo. Emory Thomas asserts: ‘During the middle third of the nineteenth century, Southerners began to close their minds to alterations to their “way of life”; they celebrated and sanctified the status quo’[3]. Religion, a hotbed of conflicting ideas and controversy in the North, had its insignificant place in Southern society: ‘Hearing their sins exposed and denounced,…Southern sinners were sufficiently freed from guilt to thank the preacher for a fine sermon and go sin some more.’[4] Lack of interest in new ideas, whether abstract theory or practicable method, meant that the South remained in 1860 largely as it had been in 1800 and, if anything, became more ruralized and agriculture-dependant as the North became more urbanized. This was truly due to disinterest and contentment rather than any inherent economical disadvantage or petty stubborn resistance - the South were happy as they were. A Texas politician in 1861 declared: “We don’t have no cities. We don’t want them…As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want.”[5] A cruel observer could draw attention to the ‘ignorance is bliss’ concept, but the fact remains that the South had no reason to seek new religion, education or any other widespread change. Difference was compounded indirectly by slavery, as ‘black music, folklore, speech patterns, religion, and other manifestations of this culture influenced white society in the South’, as can be seen in Mark Twain’s pre-Civil War character Huckleberry Finn, whose speech is shaped by discourse with his slave friend Jim. Rejection of a rural ideal was forced upon the North, given their differing climate and topography. The influx of largely European migrants meant the inevitable introduction of new ideas and methods. The South watched the immigrant invasion from afar, as the northern Atlantic ports admitted thousands, increasingly destabilizing their society. Thus change was required in the North to accommodate the new, and to cope with their constantly shifting climate. Hence we can see how a largely homogenous nation of mostly British origin could splinter into such marked opposites in less than a century.
Some historians have attempted to prove the inherent similarity of the North and South through demographics and shared systems of life. For example, David Potter contends: ‘commonalities of language, religion, law and political system outweighed differences in other areas.’ However, this argument bears the marks of superfluity; Potter has simply missed the point. The presence of shared language or political system can be a sign of unity; it can also be a means of disunity. It is how these commonalities are employed that is important. The then freshly dusted revolt against the British colonizing power is a perfect case in point: the colonies and Britain largely shared language, legal and political system – yet the independence of the colonies was forcibly ensured. Language is used to revile, religion is used to condemn, and legal/political systems are interpreted in vastly different ways to suit the respective sides.[6] Thus we can see the methods by which these cultural differences were hardened to fierce and venomous effect. In 1790, the South was not even a presence, except perhaps in terms of demographics. As the decades passed, differences became more apparent, and the North/South divide, although never visibly certain (note the ambiguity of such Unionist slave states such as Kentucky and Missouri), became a topic of increasing discussion. They became two incommensurable sides to a coin, and as sides will do, they compared and competed. Each side’s peculiar characteristics were satirised and stereotyped, with initially playful motives. These became soured as threats, both real and imagined, were realized to the balance of power. ‘Because so many Northern changes seemed threatening, the South developed a defensive ideology that revisited change’[7]; an ideology that added aggression and hostility to its armoury as tensions became more heated. From the Southern point of view, ‘the North was home to a set of self-righteous money-grubbers whose personalities were a match for its cold climate; “Yankee” was synonymous with pious frauds and pasty faces; worse, Yankees sought power and pelf at Southern expense.’[8] It is the final statement that betrays the motive for the barely concealed malice in the stereotype. As the abolitionist movement was added to the multitude of (inherently Northern) social reforms in the first half of the nineteenth century, Southerners not only felt a threat to their lifestyle but also to their relative power within the nation. To be compelled – enslaved, even – to a Northern way of life was repulsive and unconstitutional to most Southerners, who increasingly viewed any Northern action with this, real or imagined, threat in mind. One can imagine their fears: to be subjugated into a nation where conceived notions of ‘progress’ were the measure of superiority would leave the impoverished – slave-less – ‘backward’ South at the bottom of the heap. Plantation farming, the industry most suitable to the southern climate, would suffer under a much smaller scale without the necessary labour, which would necessarily comprise large numbers of white workers, who had formerly lived a life of comparative supervisory ease. It could not be called a fair Union, in their eyes.
Slavery gains pre-eminence as a discussion topic when considering the Civil War in both historiography and popular debate. Many historians believe it to be the central, most divisive issue in considering the causes for the Civil War – and perhaps it is. However, the baggage that has become attached to slavery – principled notions of equality and racism – are perhaps better left out of the equation. The Northern anti-slavery thrust was not ‘all about equality’: such can be quashed with the continued reluctance to admit women to the public sphere. Neither can ‘racial equality’ be cited: Northern social treatment of Irish immigrants and the general treatment of Native Americans makes this argument repulsive. Southerners may have been ‘racist’, but no more than their counterparts in the North, and this was not specifically due to any inherent propensity to violent superiority: the South protected slavery because it was central to their own interests. There is also an argument that the slave owners had moral backing: there was ‘a notion that slavery was worthwhile – that it was a “positive good” for blacks as well as whites’[9]. It is likely that this was simply created to support an already thriving institution: although, if it was widely believed, then this was no violent racism, but an application of poorly conceived dogma. Northern abolitionists’ attack on slavery was principled, but not specifically on ‘equality’ or ‘racism’. Their central motive was a belief in how a man should be treated, and in a man’s right to free will. This fits more squarely with the established, North-specific, ideologies of individualism.
Now that the concept of slavery has been pared, one can explore its position in the conflict. David Potter contends that ‘no other sectional factor [other than slavery] could have brought about this [polarizing effect] in the same way’[10]. McPherson concurs: ‘slavery formed the foundation of the South’s distinctive social order’. McPherson goes on to dispense with historiographical differentiations between ‘slavery’ and ‘plantation farming’ – ‘the distinction scarcely seems important’[11]. Slavery was so entwined in the plantation culture, he says, there is no need to separate them. But surely there is! To say that because slavery was so central to Southern culture, it must be the distinctive feature is an argument that could equally be applied to tobacco or the cotton gin or even the lash; in fact, any implement required in plantation farming. The Southern reliance on the success of plantation farming meant that education, religion and other consequently ‘Northern’ qualities were eschewed – simply because they were not required to improve their lifestyle. Slavery was a major element to the difference in culture, but was not the cause. If the South had adopted an industrial economy, and with it all the trappings of ‘Northern-ism’, and had enslaved blacks in their factories, the cultural differences would have been virtually non-existent. Civil war would still have been likely, however, and it is here that one can see where slavery plays its part. The South seceded at Lincoln’s election not because he embodied ‘Northern-ism’ (Lincoln had a poor non-industrial background), but because he was anti-slavery. Slavery had become the bone of contention, the realized Northern threat to Southern contentment that was the catalyst for secession and consequently, war.
The South seceded ultimately because the threat to their lifestyle that they had feared for decades had been manifested. A ‘Black Republican’ president posed more of threat to the South than the success of industrialization, or transcendental/religious attempts at social reform, or even the prospect of ‘dozens of John Browns’[12] inciting slave revolt. The South was afraid of the forced imposition of the Northern lifestyle that was now visibly threatened by Lincoln’s ascension. ‘The extinction of slavery was precisely what the South feared’[13], and the extinction of slavery was what Lincoln intended to effect. Thomas claims, from a Southern point of view, ‘union with such people [as the North] had never been desirable; now [at Lincoln’s election] it was no longer possible.’[14] But was secession the indisputable answer? This question was sufficiently controversial and debated at the time to persuade five ‘slave’ states to side with the North in the Civil War, preferring to pursue the continued Union. Was it possible for the two factions to co-exist? ‘Most Americans still believed a sectional adjustment’ to the Constitution, alleviating the pressure, ‘possible without bloodshed’. However, these are the same naïve people who believed that ‘the South had no concrete grievances of importance’[15]. The answer must be in the negative, even notwithstanding Lincoln’s uncompromising stance (‘the South must honestly face the great principle, and agree to its soundness’[16]). Such stark opposing sides might edgily coexist in a union if the differences weren’t reflected in such a straight geographical divide as plagued the American nation. A widening division created by, on one side, a resistance to change and, on the other, an embracement of change, ultimately produced a schism that became loaded with a well-fuelled loathing and revulsion. The tenor of the division became such that the South was primarily focussed on resisting the advances of the North, by the time of Lincoln’s election. Thomas affirms that ‘the ultimate thrust of Southern culture and polity during the late antebellum period [was] to defend the Southern way of life and assert its superiority over the merging American norm, even by force.’[17] How should the South avoid the dreaded imposition of abolition threatened by Lincoln’s election? Secession seemed the only answer, as rebellion within the union would create chaos, as ‘Bleeding Kansas’ had revealed. The Kansas anarchy had showcased the potentialities of close contact between abolitionists and pro-slavery men. Such brutally disparate parties, allowed to proceed freely in close contact, could not coexist with the heated irons of malice that had brewed for decades in play. For the furtherance of the status quo in the South, secession appeared then, and still appears now, to have been the only viable option.
That secession should even be considered signifies the creation of a simmering ‘Southern’ nationalism. Thomas argues that ‘the essential fact of the Confederate experience was that a sufficient number of white Southern Americans felt more Southern than American or, perhaps more accurately, that they were orthodox Americans and Northerners were apostates.’[18] Secession, to varying degrees, was felt to be necessary. The South seceded because they ultimately believed in their constitutional and moral right to their way of life. While it is likely that this outlook was founded primarily on a more base desire to protect their own interests, this is perhaps the case with any revolutionary movement. This attitude could not have been procured in a moment, or even in a ‘temporary emotional reaction’ to Lincoln’s election[19]. ‘Secession was not just a spontaneous restatement of Lockean theory; it was the culmination of years of radical tactics and revolutionary propaganda’[20]. McPherson goes further: ‘the creation of a Confederacy was merely a political ramification of an irrevocable separation that had already taken place in the hearts and minds of the people’[21]. This may not be applicable to the South in its entirety, but it adequately supports the case that Lincoln’s election, and the rise of the Republican Party, was not the underlying cause for secession – it was the catalyst. At the base of the Southern motive was a desire to ‘protect their constitutional liberties against the perceived Northern threat to overthrow them’[22]. Slavery was the torch that ignited the division, inciting them to the path to war, to such levels that an Atlanta newspaper could luridly proclaim:
“Let the consequences be what they may, whether the Potomac is crimsoned in human gore, and Pennsylvania Avenue is paved ten fathoms deep with mangled bodies…the South, will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln.’[23]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Evans, Allan, The War For the Union, Vol 1: The Impoverished War 1861-1862, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959).
Finkelman, Paul, An Imperfect Union: Slavery, Federalism, and Comity, (Chapel Hill, USA: University of North Carolina Press, 1981).
Freehling, William W & Simpson, Craig M (eds), Secession Debated: Georgia’s Showdown in 1860, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).
McPherson, James M, Drawn With The Sword, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
McPherson, James M, Ordeal By Fire, Vol 1: The Coming of War, (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1982).
Potter, David M, The Impending Crisis: 1848-1861, (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1976).
Thomas, Emory M, The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865, (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1979).
Tindall, George Brown & Shi, David Emory, America, (New York: WW Norton & Co, 2000).
[1] James M McPherson, ‘The War of Southern Aggression’ in Drawn With The Sword, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p37.
[2] McPherson, Ordeal By Fire, Vol 1: The Coming of War, (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1982), p25.
[3] Emory M Thomas, The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865, (New York: Harper Colophon Books, 1979), p4.