Why secede over slavery in 1860, and not earlier?

ForeverFree

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=> This was moved from another thread over concerns of hijacking that other thread.

Slavery was an underlying issue, but not the issue that kicked it all off, otherwise CW would have occured decades before the 1860's.


That's a good question: If the CW was about slavery, then why did war happen in 1860, given that conflicts over slavery dogged the republic since its founding?

The answer is that, prior to the election of the Republican Abraham Lincoln, no president had been elected who was seen as so totally partisan to one section, and a real threat to implement policies that were injurious to the institution of slavery.

If you look at the history of the presidency up to Lincoln, many were slaveholders themselves (notably Washington, Jefferson, and Jackson) or were doughfaces, "northern men with southern principles" (such as Lincoln's predecessor, Buchanan).

It was not until the election of Lincoln that a candidate who was so tied to the North (he did not win a single slave state in the 1860 election) or so associated with anti-slavery (due to his support of prohibiting slavery in the territories, and rhetoric such as the "House Divided" speech.

But don't take my word for it. This is South Carolina is its secession declaration:

The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume 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. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

I take the state of South Carolina at its word. They said that the election of the president of a sectional party that was in opposition to the institution of slavery led them to dissolve the Union. I didn't say it; they said it. And there's a whole lot more out there along these lines than just this document from SC... A LOT more.

- Alan
 
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