Sectional Tensions In 1860

During the height of westward expansion and the ideas of ‘manifest destiny”, the United States began to gain a substantial amount of territory which did help increase the power of the young republic but also spark sectional tensions over slavery. These tensions would continue to be prevalent throughout the 1850’s as national politics kept debating the issue of the expansion of slavery. Acts such as the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott Decision helped to increase sectional tensions even more. Eventually this all culminated in the Election of 1860 with a Republican victory, and a couple months later; states had began to secede due to conflicting societal differences. The argument can be made that the causation of the American Civil War

can be attributed to the South seceding from the Union over the issues of states’ rights,adherence to an Jeffersonian farmhold society., and southern unity.
First of all, when talking about the South’s political system, it is important to note that slavery was vital to the political success of the South as seen with the 3/5ths compromise and how it helped gain more representation. When the states first seceded, they had began to write their own constitutions which helped link together the Confederacy. One such ordinance came from the state of Georgia in January of 1861. They talked about how their rights were being trampled upon as northern states desperately tried to end slavery along with the increasing number of abolitionists at the time. Georgia’s politicians also believed that the North was encroaching upon their political rights as well. “Under this equally just and beneficent policy law and order, stability and progress, peace and prosperity marked every step of the progress of these new communities until they entered as great and prosperous commonwealths into the sisterhood of American States...The North demanded the application of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts of the public domain then and in all future time. It was the announcement of her purpose to appropriate to herself all the public domain then owned and thereafter to be acquired by the United States. The claim itself was less arrogant and insulting than the reason with which she supported it. That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists.” What this is trying to show is that the South and the North initially were fine on the issue of slavery, but as time progressed, Southern politicians felt that the North was gradually encroaching on their rights so they felt their way of life was being threatened. After the election of 1860, many Southerners were outraged at the “Black Republicans” for encroaching upon their institution of slavery.

A newspaper from the time, “The New Orleans Crescent”, spoke about the recent sectional tensions that were going on at the time. “The idle canvas 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. No one can any longer be deluded … that the Black Republican party is a moderate party...it is in fact, essentially, a revolutionary party.” This again reinforces the idea that the South feels that their rights were being violated especially by the Republicans, who were composed of free-soilers and ex-Whigs from the North. The South would ultimately want to secede as if their political power was being strippped away, then they would not be able to have any form of power or representation. Therefore they felt that it was necessary to secede. A couple years ago, the Huffington Post posted up an article discussing the causes of the American Civil War and how states’ rights were intertwined with slavery. “Specifically, eleven southern states seceded from the Union in protest against federal legislation

that limited the expansion of slavery claiming that such legislation violated the tenth amendment, which they argued trumped the Supremacy Clause…So yes, the South clearly fought to defend slavery as a means of protecting their sordid economic system and way of life, but they did so with slavery serving as the most glaring example of federal usurpation of state powers of self-determination...Claiming the Civil War was about slavery alone is like saying that the recent revolution in Egypt was about unseating Mubarak and nothing else. That conclusion misses the more important point that the real issue was self-determination and the right to a representative government. Mubarak was not the issue, only a specific example of the larger problem of a non-representative government.” Jeff Schweitzer, the writer of the article, used modern day evidence(Mubarak) to the South during the eve of the Civil War. Like the other historical sources used, this proves that one of the reasons for the cause of the Civil War was the argument over the issue of states’ rights with slavery being the underlying factor.
Another factor that contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War was how it would affect the Jeffersonian idea of a freehold society.

The idea of an agrarian society first came long during the early years of the United States as debates existed over the course of the young nation. Thomas Jefferson proposed an agricultural economy with independent workers and farmers while Alexander Hamilton proposed more industry. These two conflicting visions would go all the way up to the Civil War with the North and the South. The South chose to rely more on cotton agriculture which produced a lot of profit for them, but when sectional tensions, southerners were very worried. In an account from E.B. Heyward, a cotton planter from South Carolina, to a friend in Connecticut;he describes various economic troubles. “We have on hand about three millions Bales of Cotton and plenty to eat and clothe ourselves with, and what is most important our working population will have masters to take care of them and will not feel any pressure such as will soon come up on the operatives in the manufacturing States at the North...I have plenty of Beef & mutton to feed my family upon and I think I and all around me could stand hard times better than some of the rich abolitionists of your part of the World.” This is trying to show that the South depends on an agrarian economy to thrive and abolitionist movement threaten that as well as the election of Lincoln in 1860. Due to this fact, the South decided to

secede fearing that their way of living might be extinguished by the North. After the war broke out, the Confederacy started to pursue closer ties with Great Britain and France in order to receive aid. During this time, one William Howard Russell(war correspondent for the London Times), would write on the experiences of the South to inform Londoners about the war. “ ‘He will make a great fuss about non-interference at first, but when he begins to want cotton he’ll come off his perch.’ I found this was the fixed idea everywhere. The doctrine of ‘cotton is king-to us who have not considered the question...without distracting heresies or schisms.” This is trying to show South is composed of an agrarian fashion while trying to increase productivity.(EDIT). Dr. David W. Blight, a history professor from Yale University, has also listed a threat to Jeffersonian farm ideas to be a possible factor of the secession of the southern states which caused the Civil War. “That the South was ultimately — they liked to think of themselves, even the leadership — as a people or a republic of farmers, small farmers. Now the majority of them were small farmers. The real South, this argument was, was not in the slave owning master class but in the men of the soil, protecting a way of life against all that ignoble, go-getter, money grubbing, Yankee individualism. And there’s something to this. You can find these arguments all over the secession debates as well.” In conclusion, the southern states seceded to protect the Jeffersonian ideas of a agrarian society set up by independent farmers working together in a democracy.
Lastly, the argument can be made that southern unity or “southern nationalism” played an important role in the secession of the southern states. This idea was centered around the fact that the South did not have to rely on the federal government and go off on their own as they were an agrarian society. This meant that they could produce a lot of agricultural goods on their own and promote free trade with other countries. Southern nationalists also believed that compromises could not as they were deemed to be dangerous to the nation. Dr. Blight mentions this in Lecture 11 of his course(The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877). “And now to many southern secessionists it would be compromises with people they couldn’t even conceive of compromising with, these free soil, anti-slavery, they believed, abolitionist Republicans. These southern nationalists were led by people like Edmund Ruffin of Virginia, William Lowndes Yancey of Georgia, Robert Rhett of South Carolina, James D.B. DeBow, who published the DeBow’s Review, a very important southern magazine out of New Orleans. It was a vision now of an independent southern nation.” The idea of southern unity and the desire to be independent self-sufficient also was present in Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address given at Montgomery, Alabama. The address had a lot of reasons for why the South decided to secede. “For this your Constitution makes adequate provision;but beyond this...a reunion with the States is neither practicable nor desirable. To increase the power, develop the resources, and promote the happiness of a confederacy, it is requisite that there should be so much of homogeneity that the welfare of every portion shall be the aim of the whole.” This therefore supports the idea that

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