1860

Election and Secession of the lower South

Nominating Conventions

• Democratic Schism in Charleston

• Douglas, Breckinridge nominated

• Constitutional Union—John Bell

• Republican Convention—May, 16, 1860 (Chicago)

Lincoln—1,864,735 (180); Opponents—2,821,157 (123)

Opinions• “The idle canvass prattle about Northern

conservatism may now be dismissed. A party founded on the single sentiment . . . of hatred of African slavery, is now the controlling power.”—Richmond Enquirer

• “Lincoln’s election has vitiated and broken [the slavepower]. It has demonstrated the possibility of electing, if not an Abolitionist, at least an anti-slavery reputation to the Presidency.” -S. Douglas

• “For the first time in our history, the slave has chosen a President to the United States.” –W. Phillips.

Lower South Secession

• S. C.—Dec. 20, 1860 (169-0)

• Ms.—Jan. 9, 1861 (851-15)

• Fl.—Jan. 10, 1861 (62-7)

• Al.—Jan. 11, 1861 (61-39)

• Ga.—Jan. 19, 1861 (208-89)

• La.—Jan 26, 1861 (113-17)

• Tx.—Feb. 1, 1861 (166-8)

Robert Barnwell Rhett(1800-1876)

So what?

• Immediatists, Cooperationists, Conditional Unionists, Unionists.

• Large planters shift from support of John Bell to Immediatism

• Internal Subversion Thesis—Michael Paul Johnson and Others

• Rhetorical justifications for secession

Explanations

• Northern violations of Revolutionary era compact.

• “The parties to this conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders – they are atheists, socialists, communists, red Republicans, Jacobins, on the one side, and the friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is a battleground – Christianity and atheism are the combatants and the progress of humanity is at stake.” (J. H. Thornwell, 1850)

Explanations

• “Much of the benevolence of our own time is malignant; much of its philanthropy selfish; much of its charity cruel—what a spectacle is presented by the abolitionists of our own country! With the self-complacent spirit of the Pharisee, denouncing whole classes and communities of men as brutal and God forsaken, for sustaining a relation co-eval with human history and recognized as legitimate by the Maker and Redeemer of man and His inspired Apostles, while themselves partakers of the sin, if sin it be—growing fat on the proceeds of slave labor, not merely subsisting on its products and clothed in its fabrics—but glorying in the wealth which this system has directly supplied.” North Carolina Standard

North Responds

• Buchanan’s waiting game.

• House Committee of 33

• Senate Committee of 13

• Discussion of a 13th Amendment

John Jordan Crittenden(1786-1863)

Thomas Corwin(1794-1865)

CSA CONSTITUTION

• Montgomery Convention

• Provisions

• “The Man and the hour have met.”

• “Deo vindice”

William Lowndes Yancey (1814-1863)

Jefferson Finis Davis (1808-1889)

Alexander Hamilton Stephens (1812-1883)