471 secession. States, V, 469; Rhodes's 327. Secession Threatened, November, 1860. - Alone of Threats of all the states, South Carolina adhered to the undemocratic Schouler's practice of choosing presidential electors by vote of the legis- United lature, instead of by popular vote, as in every other state. The South Carolina legislature assembled to perform this duty, chose electors pledged to Breckinridge, and remained in United session until the result of the election was assured. When States, III, it became certain that Lincoln was elected, it passed measures for the military defense of the state, and summoned a state convention to meet on December 17 (1860). To this latter action, it was urged by the governor, who had ascertained that other Southern states would probably cooperate with South Carolina in whatever steps it was deemed advisable to take. The legislature of Georgia assembled on November 8. In that state there was a good deal of opposition to the plans of the Southern leaders. Alexander H. Stephens, one of the foremost men in the South and long one of Georgia's representatives in the Federal Congress, made a strong speech in opposition, from which a few sentences are here given "The election of no man, constitutionally chosen to the presidency, is sufficient cause for any state to separate from the Union. Let the fanatics of the North break the Constitution . . . let not the South, let not us, be the ones to commit the aggression." Nevertheless the Georgia legislature followed South Carolina's example and summoned a state convention, as did the legislatures of several other Southern states. 115. 1860. 328. Compromise Suggestions. Congress met on Decem- Buchanan's ber 8, 1860, and listened to the reading of Buchanan's last message, message. The President appeared to think that the move- Schouler's ments in the South looking towards secession were partly United States, V, justified by the antislavery agitation in the North-apparently there was something sacred in slavery which placed Rhodes's it on a different ground from a rotten civil service or a protective tariff. The "personal liberty laws" were also mentioned as justifying the attitude of the South. Bucha 471; United States, III, 125. Crittenden scheme, nan did not believe with the Southern Democrats that secession was a legal right; on the contrary, he deemed it illegal. He thought, however, that there was no constitutional means whereby the secession of a state could be prevented. A state could not be coerced. It does not seem to have occurred to Buchanan that the Constitution had been expressly constructed to afford the general government the power to coerce individual men who interrupted James Buchanan the due execution of the federal laws. Later on, under the stress of war, the Northern Democrats invented a convenient doctrine that a Northern "sovereign state," as Pennsylvania, might wage war on a Southern SOVereign state," as South Carolina, through the agency of the general government. In his message, the President also suggested the adoption of amendments to the Constitution securing slav ery in the states where it existed and in the territories, and compelling the release of fugitive slaves. Buchanan was a Northern man, a Pennsylvanian; but he had been long under the influence of Southern leaders and seems at this time to have fallen in completely with their schemes. 329. The Crittenden Compromise. - Another and more promising attempt to arrange matters was proposed by Compromise Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. He suggested that amendments to the Constitution should be adopted: (1) to secure the fulfillment of the Missouri Compromise; (2) to provide that states should be slave or free as their constitutions should dictate; and (3) to make it the duty 1860. Schouler's United States, V, 504; 1860] Secession of Seven States 473 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. United 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, 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 488-492; suppressed. Three days later the convention adopted Rhodes's unanimously an "ordinance to dissolve the Union between United 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 475 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 physical, philosophical, and moral truth." great Stedman and of the Republican III, 211. 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 triumph. Southerners to stake their prosperity and their institutions on Johnston's Orations, the uncertain issue of civil war. Lincoln had gained a large majority in the electoral college,- one hundred and eighty votes to one hundred and twenty-three for the other three candidates combined. His opponents, however, had received nearly one million more votes than he had obtained. The Republicans would be in a 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. Southern leaders. The leaders of opinion in the South thought they saw in Fears of the aroused moral sentiment of the North immediate danger 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 at some future time, 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 |