1860] Secession of Seven States 499 United States, III, of Congress to secure the return of fugitive slaves to their Rhodes's masters or pay the value of the fugitive to the claimant. Mr. Rhodes thinks that this scheme might have furnished the basis for a compromise, but other writers hardly agree with him. The plan was finally rejected on March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln's inauguration. 150; Johnston's Orations, III, 275-293. Secession of the cotton states, 1860-61. United States, V, 488-492; United States, III, 330. Secession of Seven States, 1860-61.-On the day (December 17, 1860) that Senator Crittenden brought forward this conciliatory proposition, the South Carolina convention met at Charleston. "Commissioners" and leading Schouler's men from other Southern states were present to urge haste, but there was at least one memorial urging delay; it was suppressed. Three days later the convention adopted Rhodes's unanimously an "ordinance to dissolve the Union between the state of South Carolina and other states united with her under the compact entitled 'The Constitution of the United States of America.'" It also adopted a " Declaration of the immediate causes which induce and justify the secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union." Before March, 1861, six other states had joined her: Mississippi (January 9, 1861), Florida (January 10), Alabama (January 11), Georgia (January 19), Louisiana (January 26), and Texas (February 1). Nothing shows more clearly the stagnation of Southern constitutional life than the action of these conventions. They proceeded precisely on the lines of the conventions of the Revolutionary epoch. The democratic spirit of the nineteenth century, which had so profoundly influenced political action in the North, had not produced the least effect in the South. Only one of these ordinances of secession was submitted to the people for ratification, and that one (Texas) only because the election of delegates to her state convention had been so irregular that it could not well be avoided. The conventions which had been elected to consider this question exercised the power of the people of the states which had chosen them, and did many things which probably the majority of the voters had no 196. Confederate thought of authorizing. Spurred on by the political chiefs, the conventions elected delegates to a "constitutional convention," which met at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4, 1861. This convention adopted a provisional constitution for the "Confederate States of America," whose principal business was "to recognize and protect . . . the institution of slavery as it now exists in the Confederate States." The convention also chose Jefferson Davis provisional Jefferson The United States, 1861 president and Alexander H. Stephens provisional vicepresident of the Confederacy. Davis had no fear of war, but "if war must come, it must be on Northern and not on Southern soil," he said; "we will carry war where it is easy to advance, where food for the sword and torch awaits our armies in the densely populated cities." On his return to Savannah, Stephens addressed his state compatriots in language whose strange sound shows how completely the South was out of sympathy with modern civilization. The new 1861] Cause of Secession 501 government's "foundations are laid, its corner stone rests A. H. upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white Stephens. man; that slavery, subordination to the natural race, is his natural and normal condition. This our new government is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." Stedman and 39-50. of the Republican Johnston's 331. The Underlying Cause of Secession. A student who knows nothing from personal experience of the passions Measure and humors of that time finds it difficult to understand why Lincoln's election to the presidency should have impelled the Southerners to stake their prosperity and their institutions on the uncertain issue of civil war. Lincoln had gained a large majority in the electoral college, — one hundred and eightythree votes to one hundred and three for the other three candidates combined. His opponents, however, had received one million more votes than he had obtained. The Republicans would be in a helpless minority in the new House of Representatives, and the Senate would be hostile to them. No possible immediate danger threatened Southern institutions: the Republicans could not have legislated against slavery, had they so desired. It is extremely probable that, had the South remained in the Union, it would have taken years to bring about abolition. The levying of war by the seceded states, and the departure of their representatives and senators from Congress, changed the whole course of affairs, as will appear in a moment. leaders. The leaders of opinion in the South thought they saw in Fears of the aroused moral sentiment of the North immediate danger Southern to Southern institutions. For years they had held the chief power in the national councils; in the future they would have to take the second place. It is also reasonably certain that they felt the sting of the moral reproach under which they were living, and they must have realized that in the nature of things slavery was doomed to extinction ultimately, though when and by what means it would be brought about, no one could say in 1860. The mass of the Southern voters, who elected the seces Rhodes's States, I, 345. Southern blunders. sion conventions and acquiesced in secession, had no thought of permanent separation from the Union when they cast their ballots. They expected to make better terms for themselves out of the Union than could be gained while members of it. Stephens says that it was this argument which brought about the defeat of the Southern moderates in 1860. The step of secession once authorized, the further step of Southern confederation was achieved without again taking the sense of the voters. It must be admitted, however, that after the conflict was once begun, the Southerners were substantially unanimous for its prosecution. No doubt it is true that only one voter in seven was a slaveholder, and that only two million whites were supported directly by the forced labor of negroes, but the slaveholders were the leaders of public opinion. They were distinctly in a minority, but the majority followed blindly whither they led. 332. Southern Blunders. -The slaveholders were in a minority in the South, the Southerners were in a minority in the country as a whole, and the South-economically and physically-was hopelessly inferior to the North. Notwithstanding this, the Southern chiefs seem never to have looked the facts squarely in the face and asked themselves what the cost of failure would be. Perhaps they never deemed failure possible: the Northerners had often yielded to their aggressive onslaughts; why should they resist now? Prudent leaders in these circumstances would have done nothing to increase the fighting strength of their opponents; the Southerners did their best to augment it. They formed a new government and waged war on the Union. The withdrawal of their representatives and senators made the Republicans supreme in Congress and gave the President the support of the legislative branch. Their attack on the Union soldiers at once brought the President's "war powers" (p. 269) into operation, and aroused hostile sentiment in the North as nothing else would have done. In time of peace the President's functions are circumscribed; in time of internecine conflict it is difficult to dis 1861] Southern Blunders 503 cern a limit to his authority-except the approval of the The Presimass of the nation. He is obliged to see to it that "the dent's "war powers." laws are faithfully executed"; he is the commander in chief of the land and naval forces of the United States, and there is no limit to his use of this power. In time of war, too, civil institutions give way to military authority. "So far from it being true," said ex-President Adams in 1842, "that the states where slavery exists have the exclusive management of the subject, not only the President of the United States, but the commander of the army has power to order the universal emancipation." Six years earlier Adams had distinctly warned the slave owners of their danger: "From the instant that your slaveholding states become the theater of war," he said, "from that instant the war powers of the Constitution extend to interference with the institution of slavery in every way." Until 1860 the contest between slavery and freedom had been fought out in the halls of Congress, where the compromises of the Constitution protected the slaveholders at every turn; the conflict was now transferred to the field of battle, where the weaker combatant would have no protection whatever. Apathy of the Northerners. 333. Apathy of the Northerners. As soon as secession and confederation were accomplished, the Southerners set to work to possess themselves of the federal property in the South they seized arsenals and forts without resistance; coln, I, 190. the administration remained passive or only uttered mild and unheeded expostulations. In this Buchanan and his advisers but echoed the general feeling in the North. "Let the erring sisters depart in peace" was heard on every side. On February 23, 1861, Horace Greeley wrote in the New York Tribune that if the cotton states "choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear moral right so to do," and very many Republican journals agreed with him. Even as late as April 9 Wendell Phillips said from the lecture platform: the Southern states "think that their peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate government. They have a right to decide that question without |