Overview
Some people have difficulty understanding the difference between the causes of the War Between the States and the causes for secession. To many, these are all one in the same. But they are not. There are actually two waves of secession in 1861 and they occurred for decidedly different reasons. The first wave started in 1860 when the Deep South states of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana all seceded due to Lincoln’s victory which was proof to them that the anti-slavery power had seized control of the Federal Government. However, this act of secession was not the first time secession had occurred on the American continent nor was it the last. America had been founded on the very idea that states had the right to alter or abolish a system of government when it no longer suited their ends and to establish a new one.
States in the Union had argued the right of a state to secede for many decades at different times and for different reasons. The right was not explicitly granted in the Constitution but it was also not explicitly denied. No state had ever tested the theory in practice. When the Deep South seceded over slavery, the rest of the Union had to decide whether to uphold the right of a state to exercise it’s pre-Union sovereignty. The very arguments of the Declaration of Independence indicate that a state (formerly an English colony) had the right to abolish a government and form a new government. Let’s take a look at the four different waves of secession and the two wars that accompanied them.
The First American Secession
The first act of secession in American history was the signing of the Declaration of Independence. All of the founding states’ signers who had signed the Declaration of Independence saw it as a legally binding document for which they could have been put to death by the English Crown for treason. Each colony put itself on the line by having a representative put their signature on the declaration. These states believed in the right of a colony to secede from English rule and to form a new national government. The justifications for their beliefs are included in the document itself. They had to fight a war (the American War for Independence) to make their claims a reality. Had they lost, their act of declaring independence would have been nothing more than a footnote in history.
The Second American Secession
The second act of secession started with the 1787 Constitutional Convention where Governor Randolph of Virginia proposed an entirely new form of government for the American states when all of the delegates who attended were from states still governed under the Articles of Confederation. President Arthur St. Clair was president of the Articles of Confederation when the convention was held. Even though a legitimate and ratified government was still in power, the delegates from the different states formed an entirely new government.
After the Constitution was signed by the different delegates, it went through a ratification process which lasted until 1790. During this period of time, each state went through a process of ratifying the new U.S. Constitution which did not officially go into effect until nine of the thirteen states ratified it. This means, that states were quite literally seceding from the Articles of Confederation and voting themselves into the U.S. Constitution. During this period, there were two different national governments on American soil and states were split between the two. However, there was no war against the seceding states.
The Third American Secession
We are now back to the secession which most people think of when they think of the word “secession”: the secession by the Deep South of 1860-61. The Deep South seceded to protect slavery. That part cannot really be debated. The legitimacy of their claims can be debated but they were rather clear on their points when arguing for secession.
For these Deep South states, slavery was an issue worth seceding over. In fact, this was in line with their statements at the Constitutional Convention in 1787. They had repeatedly stated that they would not ratify a constitution that did not recognize and protect the legitimacy of slavery. Seventy-three years later, they backed up those claims by seceding from the Union when it became apparent that the Republican Party, an explicitly anti-slavery political party, had become the dominant power in the Federal Government. Thus, these seven states seceded over the issue of slavery. However, it must be remembered that there was no war nor immediate threat of war at this time although many suspected Lincoln would want a war.
The Fourth American Secession
The last act of secession was a response to the deliberate provocation of civil war by President Lincoln. Lincoln had rejected peace delegations from the Deep South. He refused to evacuate and abandon Federal forts and properties in the Deep South states. He waited, refused to allow any effort toward peace, and when he saw a chance to spark the conflict, he sent reinforcements to Fort Sumter to produce just such a spark. And it worked. The whole nation could see that he was antagonizing the Deep South and refusing peace. He was living up to the expectations of his detractors who accused him of being a tyrant-in-waiting. When he provoked the South to attack Fort Sumter and then called for 75,000 troops to invade the South, all of the prophecies of his dictatorial ambitions were proven true. Lincoln had no desire for peace and no respect for states’ rights. The future of America was going to be a bloodbath and it was his choice.
In exasperated and outraged response, four more states seceded from the Union, not in defense of slavery but in defiance of Lincoln’s tyranny and in solidarity with the states’ rights of the seceded Deep South states. This was the fourth secession and it had nothing at all to do with preserving slavery but with fighting against a lawless and bloodthirsty Federal Government. Before this secession of the Upper South, the Deep South by themselves had no real chance of victory. With the addition of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas to the Confederacy, there was a real war on. Virginia, the oldest state in the Union, the home of George Washington, the Old Dominion state, the birthplace of presidents, the place where the American War for Independence had been won, the state after which the Constitution was initially named (Governor Randolph’s Virginia Plan), had seceded out of pure righteous anger. Governor Letcher of Virginia accused Lincoln of inaugurating civil war. The Upper South seceded to fight Lincoln’s tyranny, not to protect slavery.
Without this final secession, there would be no Richmond to defend, no battle between the Monitor and Merrimack, and no General Lee nor General Jackson. There would be no Army of Northern Virginia nor Army of Tennessee. There would be no battles at Manassas, Sharpsburg, Gettysburg, Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Shiloh Hill, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, etc. The American Civil War, the War Between the States as we know it would never have happened. This last secession is the one to which Southerners refer when they say that the war was fought over states’ rights and not over slavery. Whatever the Deep South had done, and whatever its reasons, the final cause of war between the states was Lincoln’s desire for unlawful power and the South’s collective refusal to bend the knee to his tyranny.
Conclusion
It may be difficult for some folks to separate all this out in their mind and to recognize that secession as a practice has a long history (both peaceful and non-peaceful) in the American experience. They may find it impossible to sympathize with the Deep South and its defense of slavery. But, if we make an honest effort, we must find that the Upper South’s act of secession in the Spring of ’61 had nothing to do with slavery and everything to do with the principles of states’ rights and resistance to tyranny. If we can shift our minds to the period following Lincoln’s inauguration and to the events leading up to the attack on Fort Sumter it may help folks realize what really led to war and what led the most powerful states in the South (Virginia and Tennessee) to secede from the Union.
Lincoln’s war was a violation of the American principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence and it cost America at least 620,000 precious lives. Sadly, we will never know what peaceful solutions might have been possible to avoid the tragedy. One thing is certain, the argument between the North and South may have started in a war of words over slavery but it turned to blows over the issue of states’ rights vs presidential tyranny.