Why did the South want to secede from the United States? Many believe that the main issue was slavery. The South wanted to keep slaves, and the Union found this to be immoral and unjust. But, reasons for the Confederate States to secede were more than just slavery.
The Confederate Constitution can help explain the reason for the South’s secession. It is a duplicate of the United States Constitution, with several changes. It did not abolish slavery, but neither did the original Constitution. The original even protected property rights in slaves.
In 1856, the Republican Party emerged with its first election. Lincoln won the election, and the Southern Democrats hated him because they felt he was a threat to their way of life, of owning slaves. A number of Southern states were upset by his win. They decided to nominate their own politician by the name of John C Breckinridge. The country was now dividing.
On December 20, 1860, South Carolina stated that they were leaving the Union. Many Union states said “good riddance” to the southern states, but other abolitionists wanted to get the states back and end slavery. Lincoln never called for abolishing slavery, just limiting it. Before the war, Lincoln himself had pledged to leave slavery intact, to enforce the fugitive slave laws, and to support an amendment that would forever guarantee slavery where it then existed.
Lincoln wanted to keep the country together. He wanted the seceding states back, but he did not want to make the first move militarily. The South was concerned about the possibility of no longer owning slaves. They did not want to compete with the freed slaves for jobs.
The secession of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas was followed by the attempt to create a new nation, the Confederate States of America. Representatives of the states met in Alabama where they elected Jefferson Davis the President of the Confederate States. They drafted their own constitution, and created armies. They also seized forts, which led to the first battle of the Civil War, the battle at Ft. Sumter.
Some of the states were slow to join the Confederacy. Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Arkansas did not secede until after Fort Sumter’s surrender. The giving up of this fort gave these states hope that they could win this war, which they were before doubtful. All eleven of the seceded states proclaimed that Lincoln’s election was a threat to slavery.
Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri were three states that the South wanted to join with them. Lincoln went out of his way to ensure that Maryland remained in the Union for D.C.’s sake. To protect communication lines to the Pacific and the southwest and to guard federal supplies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and St. Louis, Missouri, Union troops were deployed in eastern Kansas and across central Missouri. Union troops fought a drawn battle at Wilson’s Creek, and Missouri became a state divided against itself. The loss of Kentucky, in Lincoln’s judgment, would be “nearly the same as to lose the whole game”; so he carefully respected Kentucky’s decision to remain neutral in the beginning. After Bull Run, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio volunteers were assembled north of the Ohio at exposed river towns to keep watch on the situation in Kentucky.
For the Union cause in Kentucky, the new General in Chief’s move came none too soon. A Confederate force from Tennessee had violated Kentucky’s neutrality by occupying the Mississippi River town and railroad terminal of Columbus. The next day, Illinois troops under Ulysses S. Grant seized Paducah and Smithland, two planned river towns in Kentucky at the meeting of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers with the Ohio River. After Kentucky declared for the Union in September 1861, both sides rapidly concentrated forces in western Kentucky.
Another issue besides slavery prompted the South to leave the Union. If the original American model of federalism and constitutionalism was still in tact in 1860, the South would not have wanted to secede from the Union. The Northern tariff was one issue that caused the South to want to leave the Union. The Northern tariff was invented to benefit Northern industrial markets, but it had the effect to force the South to pay more for manufactured goods. It also injured the South’s trading with other parts of the world. The South was also forced to pay more in taxes due to the Northern tariff.
The battle over this tariff began in 1828. By the time the south was ready to secede, they were paying 87 percent of federal tariff revenue, while having their way of life threatened by the legislation. It became impossible for the two regions of the United States to be governed by the same administration. Some Southerners viewed their home as a region that was being reduced to a slave status, with the federal government as its master.
