In what way? How was leaving the Union going to change slavery in their states? How was it going to change anything about slavery?
“In what way? How was leaving the Union going to change slavery in their states? How was it going to change anything about slavery”
Of the first seven seceding states, four issued “Reasons for secession” documents.
1. 1st out, South Carolina (12/20/1860): mentioned no reasons other than slavery.
“On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government.
It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States.”
2. 2nd Mississippi (1/9/1981) mentioned no reasons other than slavery.
“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery— the greatest material interest of the world.”
3. Florida (1/10/1861) listed no reasons period.
4. Alabama (1/11/1861) Ordnance of Secession mentions only slavery.
“Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin to the offices of president and vice-president of the United States of America, by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions...”
5. Georgia (1/19/1861) Reasons for Secession focuses primarily on slavery and does not mention either tariffs or taxes, but does complain about bounties for fishing smacks and other such Northern “aggrandizements”.
“A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia.
The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin.
It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party.”
6. Louisiana (1/26/1861) listed no reasons period.
7. Texas (2/18/1861) focused primarily on slavery but does also complain, saying Secretary of war Jefferson Davis’ new army brigades (1856 — R.E. Lee 2nd in command) sent to protect Texans against “Indian savages” and Mexican “banditti” did a lousy job of it.
Texans said nothing about taxes, tariffs or bounties to northern industries.
“In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color — a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law.
They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States. “
Two other “reasons for secession” documents are worth mention:
• South Carolina — Fire Eater Robert Rhett’s December 1861 address says more about slavery than any other reason, but does go on about Britain’s 1776 taxes, comparing them to 1861 US taxes.
Rhett says nothing specific about tariffs or “bounties”.
“The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue — to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.”
Of course, those duties would also promote “mines and manufactures” in the South, had Southerners been interested.
• Georgia, CSA VP Alexander Stephen’s “Cornerstone Speech” March 21, 1861 puts the case as clear & simple as can be imagained:
“Our new government is founded upon exactly [this] idea; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition.
This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.[1]”
While not in its Secession declaration Arkansas’s view also apply:
Arkansas, like the entire Upper South, was torn on the issue of secession during Spring 1861. The state’s secession convention assembled on March 4, 1861, to consider the state’s future vis-à-vis the Union. It is clear that conditional unionists in Arkansas quickly took control of the gathering, as on March 20 rather than seceding, the convention issued a series of resolutions expressing its grievances and making constitutional demands to satisfy them. The March 2o resolution demonstrates that in Arkansas, like other southern states, the crisis that would shortly lead to the outbreak of the Civil War, centered on slavery.
Section 1 of the resolution statements criticized the Republican Party that the convention believed was an enemy of slavery.
“1. The people of the northern States have organized a political party, purely sectional in its character; the central and controlling idea of which is hostility to the institution of African slavery, as it exists in the southern States, and that party has elected a President and Vice President of the United States, pledged to administer the government upon principles inconsistent with the rights, and subversive of the interests of the people of the southern States.”
Section 2 expressed a number of grievances common to the southern states related to slavery, including the Republican Party’s intention of closing the territories to slavery and the refusal of northern states to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.
“They have denied to the people of the southern States the right to an equal participation in the benefits of the common territories of the Union by refusing them the same protection to their slave property therein that is afforded to other property, and by declaring that no more slave states shall be admitted into the Union. They have by their prominent men and leaders, declared the doctrine of the irrepressible conflict, or the assertion of the principle that the institution of slavery is incompatible with freedom, and that both cannot exist at once, that this continent must be wholly free or wholly slave. They have, in one or more instances, refused to surrender negro thieves to the constitutional demand of the constituted authority of a sovereign State.”
Section 3 exhibited the Arkansas convention’s fear the Lincoln administration would seek to end slavery in areas of exclusive federal jurisdiction.
“They have declared that Congress possesses, under the constitution, and ought to exercise, the power to abolish slavery in the territories, in the District of Columbia, and in the forts, arsenals and dock-yards of the United States, within the limits of the slaveholding States.”
Section 4 berated northern state legislatures for passing personal liberty laws to obstruct the Fugitive Slave Act.
“They have, in disregard of their constitutional obligations, obstructed the faithful execution of the fugitive slave laws by enactments of their State legislatures.”
Section 5 complained the northern states would not allow slaveholders temporarily to bring their slaves securely into free territory.
“They have denied the citizens of southern States the right of transit through non-slaveholding States with their slaves, and the right to hold them while temporarily sojourning therein.”
Section 6 manifested the contempt of white Southerners for those northern states that had given African Americans suffrage, clearing articulating a radicalized view of citizenship.
They have degraded American citizens by placing them upon an equality with negroes at the ballot box.”