Well, at least you slightly right.
10/1860.....South Carolina officials agreed to pursue secession from the Union if Abraham Lincoln was elected.
Since the very beginning of the union, many northern politicians insisted upon a concept of federalism consisting of a national community of individuals with sovereignty being a national phenomenon. Southerners adhered to a model of a community of states, with the citizens in their respective states functioning as the repositories of sovereignty and thus controlling their own social and economic interests.
Many in the South believed that if the Republicans were successful in gaining control of the House of Representatives and the White House, that the election would place Northern interests in control of the national government. They would then use the government to enact and enforce their platform, which was composed of measures designed to foster Northern industrial and commercial interests.
This would convert the prosperous Southern states into poor agricultural colonies of the Northern capitalists. The Southern commitment to state sovereignty grew even stronger because they knew that if the North gained control, that their rights guaranteed in the Constitution would be subverted. They would no longer be governed with their consent, but instead bullied by the Northern majority.
Long before the secession of the slave States, it had become almost impossible, without the assistance of armed forces, to reclaim a fugitive slave openly in the free States. Fourteen of the sixteen free States had provided statutes which rendered any attempt to execute the fugitive slave act so difficult as to be practically impossible, and placed each of those States in an attitude of virtual resistance to the laws of the United States.
Mr. Toombs, in the Senate of the United States, during the session in which he withdrew from that body, referred to these laws and charged the free States with their violation of constitutional obligation, in evidence of which he produced these statutes.
At the era of secession the Constitution had not only ceased to be a protection for the rights of the slaveholder, but was hardly recognized to be binding at all. If, then, this instrument was to be relied upon by the slave States to protect them, it was only in the event that they could arm themselves with enough political power to enforce its provisions.
Therefore, truly believing that the economic, political, and sovereign interests of the States of the South were in danger, a conference of South Carolina state leaders in October of 1860 decided to secede from the Union if Lincoln were elected President. To these men, the reserved sovereign ‘right of secession’ was the only peaceable choice between the two alternatives of submission to a central government that had become the judge of its own authority, or being forced to remain in the Union under coercion by this same central government.
The Southern States were turning their backs on what they perceived as the deterioration of American constitutional federalism as originally set in place by the Founding Fathers.
Thus, the political divisions between North and South regarding constitutional issues were so great that the Constitution ceased to be the instrument of a ‘more perfect union’ and rather became the vehicle for manipulation and self-serving sectional dissension. In his farewell speech, George Washington had warned the country against this sectional dissension.
11/6/1860.....Presidential Election. Abraham Lincoln was elected President with 38% of the popular vote.
Lincoln’s election signaled the long-fought-for victory of the defunct Whig Party, the political descendants of the Federalists. Lincoln considered himself the political heir of Henry Clay, the leader of the Whigs, and had stated so in his speeches.
He would be the prime supporter of the Republican platform, which was....
5/18/1860.....The Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln as their candidate. The Republican platform specifically pledged not to extend slavery west, but stressed a noninterference policy regarding slavery where it already existed. It called for enactment of free-homestead legislation, mail service, a government supported transcontinental railroad, and support of a protectionist tariff. The platform defined the union as perpetual and permanent, and defined any section that would leave it as treasonous activity.
The issue of a protectionist tariff was both beneficial to some and abusive to others. Northern manufacturers welcomed it to protect their pricing and markets. The proposal in Congress was to raise the average tariff from 18.4% to 40% or higher on imports, and to expand the list of products under tariff. This would cause more than 20% price inflation on imported goods headed for Southern consumers.
Hmmmm.....I can think of two Virginians named James Madison and George Washington who didn't think that.
Walt