This paper examines the multifaceted causes of Southern secession in 1861, drawing on a range of scholarly literature to analyze the political, economic, social, and ideological factors that drove the Confederate states to break from the Union. It traces the South's confidence under the Buchanan administration, the shock of Lincoln's election, the role of cotton diplomacy, sectional animosity, and the collapse of the Whig and Democratic parties. The paper also considers why many Southerners believed the North would not fight, the demands made by so-called "ultimatumists," and how historians such as Eric Foner, James McPherson, Bruce Levine, and Shearer Davis Bowman have interpreted the secession crisis.
Why did the South decide to secede from the Union? What were the circumstances — political, social, economic, and moral — that led the South to split the nation in two? This paper reviews those issues, including all the political and economic factors leading up to secession, through the use of available scholarly literature.
Prior to the national presidential election of 1860, the South was in very good shape politically in terms of its influence over the federal government. In Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Volume 1: To 1877, the authors explain that through the Jacksonian Democratic coalition, Southern political leaders had "maintained effective control of the national government right up to 1860" (Boyer, et al, 2010, p. 427). As long as the pliant James Buchanan occupied the White House, southerners did no more than talk about secession, Boyer explains.
A letter from South Carolina's governor, Francis Pickens — a politician who had been very much in favor of Southern secession — tells part of the story. Pickens's letter to a fellow South Carolinian in 1857 outlined why he believed, however, that the South would not necessarily need to secede at that time.
"We have the Executive (President James Buchanan) with us, and the Senate & in all probability the House of Representatives too," Pickens wrote, going on to point out that the Supreme Court had ruled the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional. (The Missouri Compromise was an agreement intended to prevent slavery from spreading to newly admitted states.) "So… before our enemies can reach us, [they] must first break down the Supreme Court, change the Senate & seize the Executive… repeal the Fugitive Slave Law & change the whole government. As long as the Govt. is on our side I am for sustaining it & using its power for our benefit & placing the screws upon the throats of our opponents" (Boyer, 427).
Unfortunately for Governor Pickens, Abraham Lincoln was elected president, and the House and Senate also went to the Republicans — the progressive, anti-slavery party of the time — which turned out to be Pickens's worst-case scenario, according to Boyer. A South Carolina newspaper referred to the election as a "revolution" designed to "cripple slavery" and "place it in course of ultimate extinction" (Boyer, 427). The editorial went on to predict that with Lincoln as president, "Northern Black Republicans would force racial equality on the South, and Abolition preachers will be on hand to consummate the marriage of your daughters to black husbands" (Boyer, 428).
In addition to Governor Pickens, many Southerners had talked secession for years, but on December 20, 1860, a convention in South Carolina formally voted — unanimously — for secession, Boyer explains. South Carolina was quickly joined by Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, and the Confederate States of America was established.
In The American South: A History, Volume 2, the authors explain that "Southern leaders believed that the economic power of their cotton would force France and especially Great Britain to intervene on their behalf" (Cooper, et al, 2009, p. 384). Hence, the "misplaced faith in the omnipotence of cotton governed Confederate diplomatic strategy… [and moreover] in cotton the Confederate government thought it had the lever that would force Great Britain to recognize the Confederacy as an independent nation" — and as a result England might even send troops to help the South (Cooper, 385). "They made a grave miscalculation," Cooper asserts. That miscalculation notwithstanding, the belief that cotton would be a trump card helped drive the decision to break away from the North.
Bruce C. Levine insists that secession was brought about by "sectional animosity," by the breakdown of the Whig Party, and by the "fragmentation of the Democrats, [and] the rise of the Republicans" (Levine, 2005, x). Of course, the animosity between North and South was exacerbated by the slavery issue; but Levine does not believe secession was a result of "mere political clumsiness, careerism, chicanery, or coincidence" (xi). The secession and war issues "grew organically out of large-scale societal changes and the slave economy" — the same economy that helped the South produce "two-thirds of all the cotton grown in the world" — and encouraged the South to believe it could become independent of the North and fight successfully if it came to that (Levine, 21).
William Cooper lists a number of reasons for secession in his article in The Journal of Southern History: (a) historian William L. Barney believes "a serious drought had a central role"; (b) Michael P. Johnson explains that in Georgia, "arch-conservatives plus bad weather on election day combined to drown the opponents of immediate secession"; (c) John M. Sacher believes the "widespread distress over Lincoln's election" brought on secession; and (d) there were "mysterious fires in the Dallas region that spawned hysteria spreading through the state… believing abolitionist activity and slave unrest responsible, and fearful of what might be forthcoming, Texans raced for safety outside the Union" (Cooper, 2011, p. 6).
When a vote came up in Texas in 1861 on the question of secession, voters in Northeast Texas took a stand against it while voters in southern Texas backed it (Lundberg, 2009, p. 29). Lundberg explains that the northern Texas voters were largely from the Upper South and "looked with suspicion and distrust on the cotton interests of the Lower South." But slaveholders lived in the Lower South and outnumbered the northern voters; hence, when Lincoln was elected it "sent shock waves through the South," and many who had "threatened secession if a Republican should be elected" took action and secured a majority vote to secede (Lundberg, 31).
Arthur Versluis points out that some legislators in both the North and South believed that secession was possible and legal, based on the Declaration of Independence, which reads: "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another… a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation… It is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government…" (Versluis, 2007, 308–09).
Shearer Davis Bowman believes secession occurred because the lives and thoughts of diverse influential people in both the North and the South had created a climate in which "each side had come to view the other as a conspiratorial, ruthless power that would not stop until it had subjugated its rival" (Bowman, 2010). Bowman goes further, asserting that the South saw the Republican strategy of containing the "peculiar institution" as a plan for "its ultimate extinction." Northerners, meanwhile, saw the South's strategy as an effort to spread slavery into new territories and to ensure that slaveholders could take their property into federal territory.
Russell McClintock's book embraces the idea that the Civil War began "not when Southern states seceded but when the Northern states acted forcibly to stop them" (McClintock, 2008, p. 3). That said, McClintock believes that secession gained a foothold in the South "in direct response to the outcome of a national election, specifically to the triumph of a particular party" — in this case, the Republicans with Lincoln as president (McClintock, 5).
"Economic change, Lincoln-Douglas debates, and rising tensions"
"Ultimatumist demands and Southern confidence before war"
"Southern underestimation of Northern resolve and will to fight"
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