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Running Head: Secession of the South 0

Secession of the South after the 1860

According to Dew (2017), the Civil War was the most catastrophic event to ever happen in the American South to date. As much as there have been very few discussions around the issue of secession, but many people wonder whether the secession of South Carolina was a strategic move regarding the debate around the slave trade at that time.

The election of Abraham Lincoln was the immediate cause of secession (Calomiris and Pritchett, 2016). Be it as it may, in and of itself, secession was an overreaction of the south for losing in the presidential elections of 1860. The election of Abraham Lincoln was a clear indication that the south was losing control of the federal government, and the government that Abraham Lincoln is the leader would eventually put an end to the slave trade (Dew, 2017).

Within the first five months after the presidential elections of 1860 where Abraham Lincoln was announced the winner, the United States was not only divided but also embattled in a civil war. Many southern states had seceded from the US and formed the Confederacy.

Although Lincoln won the election, no southern state supported nor voted for him because he did not like the manner at which the slave trade was spreading across the US (Calomiris and Pritchett, 2016). For a year, the south and the north had not seen eye to eye when it came to the issue of the slave trade. With a president who was firmly against the idea of slavery, the south believed that the president could terminate their way of ordinary life. The south was not as advanced technologically as the north. Therefore, they thought that their lives could be doomed if the president put an end to slavery who offered cheap labor to work on their massive plantations.

Such a revelation made the south to dissolve their union with the US through a voting process that approved secession one state after the other. By doing this, they protected their rights to have slaves to work on their plantations. South Carolina was the first to secede, and within three months, seven states had seceded from the US. This was followed by the formation of armed forces by the Confederacy — the election of 1860 a game changer in the US (Chamberlain, 2018).

List and explain at least three specific events leading up to secession

The secession witnessed in the US after the 1860 election was as a result of the culmination of many events concerning slavery.

1820- The Missouri Compromise

According to Wood (2017), the Louisiana Purchase of 1803 compelled Congress to come up with rules to control the growing slave trade that was expanding to the newly established territories to the west. Missouri applied to be considered as a statehood. However, the application sparked a national debate for it would upset the balance between the Free states and the slave states.

At the end of it all, the Congress came to agree on the matter around Missouri’s application and termed the agreement as Missouri Compromise (Wood, 2017). Under this understanding, Missouri was conceded to be a slave state and Maine was conceded to be a free state for the sake of preserving the Congressional balance (Wood, 2017). However, under the same agreement, slavery was banned in territories to the north of Missouri.

1846-1850- Wilmot Proviso

The Wilmot Proviso was an agreement suggested by David Wilmot immediately after the war between the US and Mexico (Woods, 2018). According to the bill, all the states acquired by the US should outlaw slavery which included most of the Southwest and parts of California (Woods, 2018). David Wilmot spent years fighting for his bill to pass, but all his efforts were unsuccessful. Even though his bill failed, it created the Free-Soil Party and incited the first discussion of secession.

1850- The Compromise of 1850

They existed a bitter relation in the Congress over the Wilmot Proviso, Senator Henry Clay, known as the Great Compromiser, and Stephen Douglas came up with a compromise to put all the issues to a stop. The Compromise worked in favor of all. To please the north, the Compromise conceded California as a Free State and outlawed slavery current capital city of the US, Washington D.C (Hamilton, 2015).

Additionally, to satisfy the south, Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act and refrained from passing any other laws concerning slavery in other states acquired from Mexico (Hamilton, 2015).

1852- Uncle Tom’s Cabin

After Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin as a way of expressing her outrage for it portrayed slavery to be not only brutal but also immoral (Stowe, 2015). Her novel was received differently by the north and the south. It became very popular in the north, but the southerners protested terming the book as being fictions and Stowe’s work as slanderous (Stowe, 2015).

Harriet’s novel became popular and ranked second amongst best-selling books in the 19th century (Stowe, 2015). The book became known across the US and made the issue of slavery more open and caught the attention of many people who had did not understand what was going on. Therefore, it made the gap between the south and the north wider.

1854-1861- Kansas-Nebraska Act

In 1854, Senator Douglas Stephen came up with the Kansas-Nebraska Act (Crane, 2018). This act was passed amidst utterance of threats in the House Chambers. According to this act, Nebraska Territory was to be split into the Nebraska Territory and the Kansas Territory which is against part of the Missouri Compromise (Crane, 2018). The bill passed and gave way for the development of the proslavery government in both territories. However, the antislavery settlers in Kansas formed their government, and sporadic war broke in the region claiming the lives of fifty-six people (Crane, 2018).

References

Calomiris, C. W., & Pritchett, J. (2016). Betting on secession: Quantifying political events surrounding slavery and the civil war. American Economic Review, 106(1), 1-23.

Chamberlain, A. (2018). Perceptions and Policy Failure: Explaining President James Buchanan’s Policy Priorities Through Latent Opinion. Journal of Policy History, 30(3), 429-451.

Crane, J. M. (2018). Slavery on the Periphery: The Kansas-Missouri Border in the Antebellum and Civil War Eras.

Dew, C. B. (2017). Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War. University of Virginia Press. 156-205

Hamilton, H. (2015). Prologue to Conflict: the Crisis and Compromise of 1850. University Press of Kentucky.

Stowe, H. B. (2015). A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents Upon Which the Story is Founded. Courier Dover Publications.

Wood, N. P. (2017). Dividing the Union: Jesse Burgess Thomas and the Making of the Missouri Compromise by Matthew W. Hall. Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 115(3), 428-430.

Woods, M. E. (2018). The Slaveholding Crisis: Fear of Insurrection and the Coming of the Civil War by Carl Lawrence Paulus. Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, 116(1), 111-113.