Lecture - Questions - Student Answers
This is a good time to pause and consider if you would like to take the CLEP exam for college credit at the end of this course. The cost is less than $100, the time is at your convenience at a local community college, and the credit earned can be worth thousands of dollars. Please let me know if you are interested in this.
We will have a midterm exam in this course in two weeks, covering all the material through this Lecture (through Reconstruction, which means through 1876). The distribution of questions will be similar to the distribution on the CLEP exam, so do not spend too much time on an area that will not have many questions. There is no written homework this week; instead, study for the exam.
In 1835, a Frenchman named Alexis de Tocqueville published a book entitled "Democracy in America," which was collection of observations about our young nation based on his nine-month visit. This book remains the most comprehensive analysis of American culture, and includes many insightful statements like "the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention." De Tocqueville also observed about America, "I have nowhere seen woman occupying a loftier position."
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Review
In the 1850s, the Whig Party collapsed. Its antislavery wing became the Republican Party in the North, and the wealthy southern Whigs joined the Democratic Party in the South. There have always been geographic strengths and weaknesses in political parties: in areas of the country where one party is strong, the opposing party is weak. Recall that the Federalist Party in 1800 was strong in Massachusetts, while the Democratic-Republican Party was strong in Virginia. Jackson's Democratic Party was strong in the West (Tennessee) and South, while the Whig Party was strong in the northeast.
In the late 1850s, the Republicans were strong in the North, and Democrats were strong in the South (the opposite is true today). At that time the Republican Party was young and had not fully developed, and there were still many northern Democrats, which gave the Democrats the upper hand in elections. The Democratic Party presidential candidates won both in 1852 (Franklin Pierce) and in 1856 (James Buchanan). Both Pierce and Buchanan were Democrats and pro-slavery.
For the presidential election of 1860, the Republican Party platform supported the Wilmot Proviso and rejected slavery in the territories, and thereby rejected Stephen Douglas's approach of "popular sovereignty." Abraham Lincoln, the Republican nominee for president, had switched from the Whig Party to the Republican Party in 1856, and in 1860 campaigned for president by advocating saving the Union (keeping the North and South together in one country).
Secession
In 1860, the South threatened to secede (break away) from the United States if the Republican Abraham Lincoln were elected president. Lincoln and many of his supporters considered that to be election rhetoric or bluffing by the South to try to influence the election. After all, the South had threatened to secede before (as South Carolina did during the Jackson Administration), and never did actually leave. Lincoln did not expect the South to secede after he won.
The Republican Party was antislavery with respect to the (western) territories and many in the Republican Party also wanted slavery abolished even in existing states (though that was not the official position of the Party). Several southern states, particularly South Carolina, considered opposition to slavery to be opposition to South Carolina itself, which depended heavily on slavery. Many in the South felt so strongly about slavery that they wanted to break away if and when a Republican became president. Note that the South also had fundamental differences with the North on other issues, such as the tariff and the significance of state's rights.
Lincoln was elected in November 1860, but presidents then were not inaugurated until four months later, in March of the following year. (That has since been moved to the earlier date of January 20 for inaugurations after a presidential election.) That gave the South a long period to act, before Lincoln had any power to do anything about it.
Merely four days after the election of the new President Lincoln, on November 10, 1860, the South Carolina legislature called for a convention to consider secession from the United States. South Carolina, the state of John Calhoun (who died in 1850), always had one of the largest slave populations (by percentage) and for decades had been the leader in calling for secession. South Carolina residents were well-informed about the issues of states rights and how their heroes of John Calhoun and even Thomas Jefferson had championed the rights of states in the past by nullifying federal law.
South Carolina moved quickly. The first convention met in Charleston, South Carolina on December 20, and unanimously passed the first ordinance of secession:
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We, the people of the State of South Carolina in convention assembled, do declare and ordain ... that the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States, under the name of 'the United States of America,' is hereby dissolved. |
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With that, South Carolina declared herself a new and independent country, and her residents celebrated with parties, fireworks, and revelry in the streets.
By the end of January 1861, six other southern states imitated South Carolina and declared their independence from the United States, all prior to the inauguration of Lincoln as the new President. They were Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. A diarist in the South, Mary Boykin Chesnut, summed up the feeling of many southerners: "We are divorced, North and South, because we have hated each other so."[1]
After that, there was some calm as the nation awaited Lincoln's Inaugural Address, which is the speech a president gives to the nation on the day he is sworn it. Fearful for his own life, Lincoln rode the train from Illinois to D.C. wearing a disguise. In his Inaugural Address, Lincoln tried to preserve the Union by appeasing the southern states: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."[2] Lincoln was not yet a prayerful man (he would soon become one), and his speech contained only a passing reference to God. He concluded by both begging and warning the South: "The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'preserve, protect, and defend it.' I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. ..."[2]
Lincoln's weak speech persuaded no one. Some of my prior students have suggested that the real problem in 1861 was a lack of leadership just when the nation needed it most. Where was George Washington, or someone like him, at our nation's crucial moment? Instead, Lincoln was at our helm and he used a lawyer-like approach to a problem that cried out for something more meaningful. Lincoln had the respect and confidence of virtually no one in the South.
One month after his inauguration, in April, Lincoln told South Carolina that he needed to re-supply a federal garrison there called Fort Sumter. South Carolina did not trust Lincoln and felt this was a trick to fool and possibly attack it. So South Carolina demanded the surrender of federal troops at Fort Sumter. Shots were fired (it's unknown who fired first), and South Carolina quickly captured Fort Sumter on April 12th. Lincoln called for Union (North) troops on April 15th. Within weeks more states seceded, bringing the total to 11 of the states overall that seceded by the end of June 1861: Arkansas, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.
There had been compromises between the North and South in 1820, 1850 and 1854. One last attempt at compromise occurred in 1861, led by Senator John Crittenden of the border state of Kentucky. Congress passed a constitutional amendment in 1861 to protect slavery in the South, in the hope that would satisfy it. But this amendment was never ratified by the States because war broke out before the States could even consider it. It seems unlikely that the northern states would have agreed anyway.
Meanwhile, Congress passed two "Confiscation Acts" in order to help the President win the war. The Confiscation Act of 1861 authorized the Union to seize any property, including slaves, which were being used to aid the South in its "insurrection" against the North.[3] The Second Confiscation Act was next passed in 1862, taking the additional step of ordering freedom for any slaves belonging to slave-owners engaged in "treason" against the United States:[4]
That every person who shall hereafter commit the crime of treason against the United States, and shall be adjudged guilty thereof, shall suffer death, and all his slaves, if any, shall be declared and made free; or, at the discretion of the court, he shall be imprisoned for not less than five years and fined not less than ten thousand dollars, and all his slaves, if any, shall be declared and made free ....