Agreed, but Wise was one of those inclined to speak off the cuff. He invited Southern governors to meet in Raleigh to discuss what Southern States should do if Fremont was elected, and only NC and SC showed up. And they didn’t do anything in the end. There was no popular clamour for secession in 1856, I would assert, because the violence I spoke of had largely not occurred yet.
If Fremont had shown more signs of winning, secession talk would have been louder, and if he'd won, there might well have been a secession in 1856.
You didn’t have State legislatures passing resolutions about secession in 1856 like you did in 1860 (e.g. Alabama and Mississippi). It is not coincidental that the Alabama Resolutions (Feb. 24, 1860) were issued in the immediate aftermath of Harper’s Ferry, when there was talk of northerners rescuing Brown before his execution, northerners publicly praising his efforts, and public mourning of his execution. These acts by private citizens indicated how they intended to conduct themselves in the future.
In 1850-1 there was a lot of talk about secession. I would surmise that it failed because neither party was anti-slavery, Calhoun and Clay were still alive, and the country had just passed through a victorious and unifying war, rather than six or ten years of sectional conflict.
You needed a run-up to rebellion. Enough Southerners had to feel that they'd exhausted alternative approaches before they would take such a radical step.
In 1860, by contrast, Southern Democrats split their party, ensuring the election of a Republican, an event which could serve as a pretext for secession. What was going on there?
Obviously, there were elements in the South that demanded either (A) complete acquiescence in Southern demands, or (b) secession. That is the mindset of some of the delegates who went to Charleston.
As for the Compromise measures of 1850/51, those advocating their adoption (e.g. Clay and Webster) presented them as a “final adjustment” of the slavery issues. These measures were accepted by the people of the South on that basis. When the compromise measures weren’t honoured by the Northern people, the people of the South felt betrayed, and had reason to doubt the sincerity of any future compromise proposal.
Clearly John Brown was a factor, but I doubt one could say he was the main one. He was something demagogues could use to scare voters, but politicians had a pretty clear assessment of what was going on, and weren't so easily cowed themselves.
To be sure, there was fear in the South in the days leading up to war, but there was also a great enthusiasm for taking a revolutionary step. Those who believe in the Southern version of victim history leave that out of their accounts.
But that step only resonated with the people of the South after the violents events I wrote of.
Also, I doubt Republicans "winked and nodded" at Brown. That's the sort of claim that people love to make then or now about this party or that, but when you look at the record there's usually less to such allegations than people want to believe.
By winking and nodding, I meant certain concrete acts that were taken by Northern Republican office holders. For example (as I mentioned in an earlier post), Gov. Samuel Kirkwood (Republican, Iowa) and Governor William Dennison (Republican, Ohio) refused to extradite to Virginia those wanted for their connection to the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. Kirkwood’s excuse was that the extradition request wasn’t notarized. (I went to Richmond and saw the original letter from Kirkwood to Letcher). Dennison informed Letcher that there was no statute in the Ohio statute book that would allow him to extradite someone wanted to trial in another State. (Letcher then found the Ohio statute for Gov. Dennison.) Additionally, Dennison wrote that the indictment did not specify that the accused had ever been in Virginia, and thus he could not have fled to State to escape prosecution. Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, refused to allow a deputy of the US Senate apprehend Frank Sanborn and take him to Washington to testify to the Mason Committee investigating the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. These incidents were noted in newspapers all across the South at the time. In addition, the incidents were specifically referenced in the secession declarations of South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia in laying out their reasons for wanting out of the Union.
Ultimately, however, the decision to secede (and thus go to war, although these two things are not the same thing) was a complex one. There were a number of reasons, some directly related to protecting the investment of Southerners in that form of “property” others not directly related, and some not related at all. And the key thing is that any particular individual could have felt any or all of these reasons. And some of those reasons are completely honorable.
As for the Compromise measures of 1850/51, those advocating their adoption (e.g. Clay and Webster) presented them as a “final adjustment” of the slavery issues. These measures were accepted by the people of the South on that basis. When the compromise measures weren’t honoured by the Northern people, the people of the South felt betrayed, and had reason to doubt the sincerity of any future compromise proposal.
Unfortunately, things like the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Dred Scott decision gave Northerners the idea that the Compromise of 1850 wasn't going to be the final answer to the disputes over slavery. Those changes which hurt the interests and expectations of the free states and did more to break down the Compromise than anything anti-slavery forces did in the Fillmore or Pierce years. Southerners clearly resented the refusal of Northern authorities to return runaway slaves, but in the big picture of regional politics, it wasn't anti-slavery forces that disrupted the Compromise of 1850.
Isolated local refusals to return a slave on demand wouldn't have amounted to much if not for provocations like Kansas-Nebraska or Dred Scott. And John Brown himself first attracted public attention in the struggles over Kansas. So it's not as though the Northerners were unprovokedly striking out against the South in the years after 1850. Much of what the Republicans said and did was in response to Southern pressures for the expansion of slavery into the territories.
Most historians would agree that John Brown's raid had a great effect on what happened in 1860-1. But it wasn't some sort of deus ex machina, some unmotivated force from outside that compelled otherwise unwilling Southern leaders to push for secession against their inclinations. It did something to win over waverers and affected the tactics of the proponents of secession, but there was a hard core that was seriously thinking about separation for sometime. John Brown didn't convince them.
I think you draw too solid a line between the elections of 1856 and 1860, and attribute too much to Brown and too little to the working of time, but I'd have to do more research to be sure. I do know that however much Brown's raid horrified Southerners, it didn't in itself convince the Upper South to rebel. Those states voted against secession before Sumter.
And it's also possible that had there been no John Brown, radical propagandists would have created something very much like him. The Texas fires of 1860 were built up into a horrifying tale of a conspiracy to free slaves by an ambitious editor. Admittedly this was after Brown's raid, but it indicates that the fears of slave revolt ran deep in antebellum America.
Ultimately, however, the decision to secede (and thus go to war, although these two things are not the same thing) was a complex one. There were a number of reasons, some directly related to protecting the investment of Southerners in that form of “property” others not directly related, and some not related at all. And the key thing is that any particular individual could have felt any or all of these reasons. And some of those reasons are completely honorable.
I suppose so, but national or sectional or individual honor is a tricky concept. Few nations or peoples ever will consider that they went to war for "dishonorable" reasons. Even the most self-interested or mercenary wars have found justifications in national honor. Britons could believe that the Opium Wars were honorable, and indeed, a war for national honor. Indeed, it sometimes seems like the only way for a country to lose its honor is to be defeated.
I sympathize with the argument about group honor. Northerners fought for honorable reasons as well, and not, as some would have it, simply to rob or crush the South, but it would probably be more useful to argue about whether political positions and wars were wise or just or constructive, rather than whether they were honorable or not, since every battle of material interests can be turned into an affair of honor. Moreover, countries and people can be quite reckless and irresponsible and yet still believe that they have acted honorably.