Secession Dbq Essay

There were some people who were for secession and they were mainly the slave owners. There were also people that were against secession and that was a large number of people in the south.The South was an agricultural state and they did want to secede and the North didn’t want to secede because they was and industrial state and they were not slave state. Not every state was apart of slavery.There were certain groups that opposed to the decision to secede.
Certain groups opposed the decision to secede and there are many different reasons of why that happened.In the Newt Article the confederate armies were taking so much stuff from the people like meat,horses,smokehouses,and the even took clothes that mothers had saved for their

children.When you think about it the Confederate armies was really wrong for doing that because the women of those different countries were already struggling to do things. According to the Newt Knight article it says,“The women of Jones, Jasper, and Smith counties were struggling to feed their hungry children.” “ Even worse, the Confederate authorities had imposed the hated “tax-in-kind” system in which tax collectors took what they wanted for use by the Confederate armies.” “They took meat from the smokehouses.” “They took horses, hogs, chickens, and corn. They took cloth the women had saved to make clothes for the children.” While reading the article Declaration of Causes of Seceding States the people were not being treated fairly either and that made them oppose secession. The author in that story stated, “We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property.”So they opposed to secession because they wanted to keep slavery because it was their way of life and they wanted to keep that lifestyle and they didn’t want to lose it so that’s why they opposed secession.
In the article Road To War the different people/ groups were getting called different types of bad names,treated wrong,etc.

Do to the fact that they opposed secession they were being called traitors and cowards, getting treated bad.So because they were tired of living like this they opposed secession because they couldn’t take it anymore. In the text it states,”Issues such as state’s rights and high tariffs are frequently cited as causes of the war, but Mississippi's defense of the institution of slavery was the ultimate reason the state seceded from the Union.” “They viewed the rebellious Confederate government as the invading body.” “But the state was swept up in war-fever, and those who opposed the new Confederate government were labeled cowards or traitors.” “All across Mississippi, the opponents of the Confederacy were often persecuted in what witnesses described as “… a reign of terror … Many are forced into the army, instant death being the penalty in case of refusal, thus constraining us to bear arms against our country ….” Under these circumstances, Knight reluctantly enlisted in the Confederate Army in the early fall of 1861.” The final story that I read was the Letter By Fitzgerald and it was about how State rights could have been another reason MS seceded. Another reason could be because of disagreements and states rights. One example from the Letter by Fitzgerald could be,”Slavery has been a curse of the poor white man of the south and he would be mad indeed to desire to perpetuate it.” “Several parts of the letter stand out: first, Fitzgerald’s unequivocal belief that the destruction of slavery should be a prime object of the war, and, second, his advice to Lincoln to financially compensate slaveholders who supported the Union as a strategy for maintaining their support.” “Since then you can not desire the innocent to suffer for the misdeeds of the guilty, that the loyal should receive — the wages of treason, let another proclamation be

issued, promising loyal citizens of the South reasonable compensation for the slaves liberated, out of the confiscated property of the disloyal, and the two proclamations together will quickly prove, with assistance of the army now in the field, the heaviest blows, and the death blows of the rebellion.” So basically what that story was saying was that slavery could have been the reason for Mississippi’s secession also.
In conclusion,certain groups were opposed to the decision to secede.There were many different reasons of why the different groups opposed secession. The opposed secession because of the way they were being treated,suffering,living like that,etc. In the Newt Knight article they opposed for secession because the confederate armies were taking things from the people such as meat,horses,smokehouses, and even clothes that the mother’s had saved for their children. In the Declaration of Causes of Seceding States they opposed secession because they were tired of losing property that was worth millions of money and they were just getting fed up with it. While reading the Road to War article they wanted to secede from the union because of the terrible names they were being called,how they were being treated, and the things that the Confederate armies were doing. Finally in the Letter by Fitzgerald the people wanted to secede from the union because they thought that because of the Poor white people that tended to oppose secession could have been the reason for that. Also because of the states rights.