The Failure Of The South To Convince Delaware To Secede

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This is an interesting blog post that talks about the state of Delaware and the campaign to recruit it into the Confederacy: The Failure Of The South To Convince Delaware To Secede. This is from the blog This Cruel War: An Evidence-Based Exploration of the Causes and Ramifications of the American Civil War.

The article cites text from David Clopton, Alabama’s secession commissioner, who contacted the state and tried to convince it to secede. This is from Clopton's appeal to the state governor and legislature:

“(regarding the Republican Party) Its animus, its single bond of union, is hostility to the institution of slavery as it exists in the Southern States. Its members, numbering nearly two millions of voters, as evidenced by the late Presidential election, have been collected from all the other various political organizations, and although disagreeing totally upon other important political principles, have nevertheless ignored all these, and been molded into a compact mass of enmity to this particular institution, upon which depend the domestic, social, and political interests of fifteen States of the Union, and which institution was recognized, respected, guarded, and protected by the convention which framed the Constitution and by the people of the States by whom it was ordained and established.

“Those men who direct the sentiment, purpose, and action of this party have notified the people of the slave-holding States that the past policy of the Federal Government is now to be wholly changed; that those principles which have secured our present respect abroad and our past internal prosperity are to be superseded by others which are adverse to the true theory, nature, and designs of the federal government. Mr. Lincoln has left us in no doubt as to his policy.

“He may suppose that the people of the slave-holding States will be satisfied with the assurance that he does not intend to interfere with slavery in the States; but, in thus supposing, he supposes further, that they have not the manhood and honor to assert and maintain, or do not possess the intelligence to understand, their rights in the Territories or wherever else the jurisdiction of the Government extends, and that they are willing to surrender all the outposts, and leave the citadel unguarded, liable to first covert then open attacks. Notwithstanding this assurance, common sense and experience, our knowledge of human nature and all history, teach that, believing slavery to be a moral and political evil, a wrong to the Government, and that these States cannot exist half free and half slave, Mr. Lincoln will exert all his powers, influence, and patronage ‘to place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction.’

“From these considerations Your Excellency must concur in the opinion expressed by the Governor of the State of Alabama, that— The success of said party and the power which it now has and will soon acquire, greatly endanger the peace, interests, security, and honor of the slave-holding states, and make it necessary that prompt and efficient measures should be adopted to avoid the evils which must result from a Republican administration Of £ Federal Government.​
“You cannot be surprised that, in the opinion of the people of Alabama, the time has arrived when imperious necessity and self-preservation require them to exercise their right to abolish the present Government and institute a new one, laying its foundation in such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

“I will simply suggest that the hope of obtaining new and sufficient guaranties, by way of constitutional amendments or otherwise, has abandoned the hearts of all, even the most moderate Southern men. The expressions of Republican presses and the representative men in and out of Congress, the futile efforts of the Senate and House committees, and the persistent silence of Mr. Lincoln have extinguished the last ray of such hope. But even if new guaranties could be obtained, they can bring no sense of security to the Southern mind; they would prove a temporary and delusive truce, a broken reed to pierce hereafter.

“It will be my pleasure to advise and consult with Your Excellency and the members of the Legislature, so far as may be agreeable and practicable, and to communicate the views and purposes of Your Excellency and the sentiments and desires of the people of Delaware to the Governor of the State of Alabama by the time of the meeting of the State convention.”​

- Alan
 
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