Post #8
The first formal response to Abraham Lincoln's election was given by that of the outgoing President, the now rather battered Stephen A. Douglas. Despite his political reversals however, his aggressive stance was not diminished. Speaking at a public event in Washington DC just days after the election Douglas spoke on the topic saying “if the Southern States (not a part but all) shall secede from the Union, upon the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, it will be the duty of the President of the United States, who, in the case supposed, will be Lincoln, by arms to punish or subdue them.” He continued, even more bluntly to add, “ Yes my friends, I would hang every man higher then Haman who would attempt by force to resist the execution of any provision which our fathers made and bequeathed to us.”
These strong words were not merely empty bluster. Throughout the election Douglas had been preparing for any Southern moves toward secession with an eye to military force if required. He was greatly helped in this by his Secretary of War, Andrew Johnson. While Johnson found the Republicans 'strident and counterproductive' he was a unionist to the core and found the entire concept of southern insurrection abominable. To this end he had, all through 1860, been slowly preparing to protect Federal properties throughout the South. While defending every post office or custom house was impossible, Johnson made a determined effort to at least attempt to defend the forts, armories and other major military installations. In order to manage this, Johnson gave John E. Wool, the commander of the Department of the East, carte blanche in both repairing and preparing the various fortifications and outposts. Wool, although over seventy years old, was a determined and capable organizer who gave his all to the imposing task. Setting his command center not in DC but in Fort Monroe Virginia, Wool quickly began a crash course of re-vitalization of the various coastal defense systems throughout the South, with an eye to defending them from local rebels.
The aged but formidable Commander of the East, John E. Wool
Some were written off immediately either due to disrepair (such as Fort Gaines in Alabama) or due to being indefensible from land attacks (Fort Moultrie in South Carolina). In these cases and a few of the more exposed Federal armories, Wool stripped them of armaments and supplies, pulling everything back to defensible locations such as Fort Macon in North Carolina or the as yet unfinished Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Wool hoped that by depriving the secessionists with easy targets, he could dissuade them from action as well as preventing them from plundering Federal military stores. In other places he dramatically increased the number of soldiers, often pulling men out of Northern bases to send south. For example Fort Pulsaki at the mouth of the Savannah river was of critical importance but was manned by a mere two caretakers in the summer of 1860. Wool quickly rectified this, and other cases of lapsed protections throughout the South.
Southern politicians railed against these actions but could do little about it, at least legally. It was well within the rights of the Army to move troops and disposition them as the President and various commanders saw fit. The fire-eaters could rail about a tightening Northern noose all they liked, it was clear that every newly manned fort, every new cannon was a blow to any Southern hope of separation. This muscular response pushed many extremists into direct action.
Already faced with the doomsday scenario of a Republican president and now increasingly encircled by troops intent on forcing through whatever evil designs were cooked up by the Federal government, the time for action seemed to have arrived. In a number of Southern states extremists pressed the state governments to unilaterally declare secession, promising other states would follow. However with Federal troops prepared and Douglas showing no signs of backing down, no state wanted to be the first to stick their neck out. In South Carolina in particular the memory of the Nullification Crisis, where the Palmetto State had stood alone, was still fresh. Even in pro-secession Mississippi, governor John Petrus feared to “move alone”. Finally, stymied by inaction the fire eaters pushed for a new tactic. A general Southern Convention to discuss, debate and (hopefully) vote on secession.
It was not a new tactic. In 1850, at the behest of secessionist John C. Calhoun, had gathered in Nashville to discuss a proper response to the Wilmot Proviso, a proposed ban on slavery in the new Western territories. It had been a heated but ramshackle affair that had ended with no action being taken. The 1860 Convention appeared to be on quite another scale altogether. Hosted in Birmingham in late December, secessionists wrote to allies in every Southern state urging them to bring delegations, so the entire South “may be represented and heard”. The response, at least in terms of attendance, surpassed their wildest dreams. Well over four hundred delegates arrived from all over the South. Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Tennessee all sent official delegations while the border states of Maryland, Delaware, Arkansas, Kentucky and Missouri sent unofficial representatives. Uniquely, from Texas, came the sitting Governor, the Unionist Sam Houston.
Birmingham Alabama 1860, one of the few cities in the Deep South and host to the Southern Convention
The gathering crowd of southerners was divided into several competing factions, all with different aims, tactics and overriding goals. The loudest were, of course, the secessionists, those fire-eaters who pushed relentless for a full division from the Union. Having waited in the fringes of Southern politics for years, and in some cases decades, they saw in the election of a Republican President both their worst nightmare and greatest opportunity. To men like William Yancey or Edmund Ruffin, the South was surrounded by foes who were looking to attack their very way of life and the only acceptable response was immediate, unilateral withdrawal from the Union to protect both slavery and themselves from unwanted abolitionist sentiment and activities. Anything less then this extreme action was completely unsuitable.
A much larger group were the co-called Cooperationists. These men made up a wide swath of opinions about the impending crisis and the best reaction to it. Some of them held that while secession was inevitable the entire South should do it as a bloc, to best intimidate even President Douglas into backing down into acceptance. Their influence is what had brought about the Birmingham Convention and had so far stopped the ‘Stampeders’, their derisive name for the radical secessionists, who balked at any delay. Esteemed Southerners like Stephen Toombs or even former presidential candidate Breckenridge claimed that a united south leaving on ‘good terms’ might avoid a bloody civil war that the South could very well lose. Prudence and consideration for national opinion, as well as unamity among the slave owning states was the best path forward. Another bloc held that secession would only be valid if the actual people of the South were consulted, through referendums. While such democratic ideals were virtually nonexistent among the planter elite of the coastal slave states, they were widely held by upper South representatives. In addition, many of them felt that a true plebiscite on the issue would silence Northern cries that a ‘Slave Power’ was recklessly pressing a mass of southern whites into a war no one wanted. What better way to cement their cause then a direct appeal to the people?
Lastly there were the Unionists, who felt that compromise with the North was still possible, and that slavery, among other things, could still be protected and defend against a Republican Federal government. Secession was an unacceptable breach of the Constitution and the South best hope was to obtain Constitutional protection of slavery and other such institutions. While the smallest group, many of them were quite steadfast with the irascible Sam Houston, a slave owner and yet passionate Unionist, being their natural leader.
This welter of opinions made the Convention a very divided and fractious affair. At first the fire-eaters controlled the platforms, using their momentum from assembling the Convention, and pushed hard for secession. Every moment, they claimed, merely gave time for the Black Republicans time to further their agenda. The scare tactics were quite successful and the radical fringe seized many of the various committees to promote immediate secession. However, as the New Year came and went, sheer inenteria began to tell, with the Cooperationists arguing for all types of actions ranging from a South wide referendum on secession to a separate Constitutional Convention to formulate southern aims. Meanwhile the Unionists dismissed everything and constantly harragued the pro-secession speakers. Eventually the tension spilled over into actual violence as several Unionist representatives from Kentucky were attacked by a mob outside the doors of the hall. The fight spread into a general riot which eventually had to be quelled by the Birmingham police, who were forced to temporarily barricade the conventioneers inside.
A northern and exaggerated depiction of the Birmingham Secession Riot
After the disturbance settled down, the fire-eaters pressed and gained a major victory, a motion to dismiss all Unionists and those who would not back secession. The motion passed and the Convention, in a dramatic fashion, named each evicted member as they were forced to leave the chamber. Most left at once, but Houston remained to the end and gave a fiery speech ending with the now famous- "Our people may be going to war to perpetuate slavery, but the war will be its death knell." The stage seemed set for a secessionist victory. They had dominated the Convention, they had removed their opponents and sidelined most of their rivals. However, just as Yancey and his allies reached to seizes final victory a political explosion rocked the Convention, and indeed, the entire nation. For Douglas had not been idle.
As the nation watched in horrid fascination at the Southern Convention, Douglas threw himself into the many last ditch compromises being considered in Congress. Despite later revisionism it is important to not portray the President, at this stage, as a ideological enemy to the concerned Southerners. Indeed, Douglas would be the first to admit the South had legitimate grievances and generally blamed northern abolitionists for the current state of turmoil in the nation. That said, however, he was diametrically opposed to secession in any form, considering it not only a mark of failure against him but a blow to the entire American experiment. It was these twin concepts, of southern legitimacy and hatred of secession, that allowed Douglas to pursue any compromise in pursuit of peace, no matter the makeup.
The concerned president certainly had his choice. In the Congressional session that began in December 1860, more than 200 resolutions with respect to slavery and secession, including 57 resolutions proposing constitutional amendments were proposed. Some of these were elaborate affairs, such as the Crittenden Compromise which contained no less than six proposed amendments to the Constitution and four other congressional resolutions. Others were much simpler and it was one of these that Douglas latched onto in the first weeks of the New Year.
The Corwin Amendment had been written up by Thomas Corwin a Democratic Representative from Ohio. The amendment was quite straightforward and said thus, ‘No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.’
This idea, that the Federal government could not ban slavery was hardly a new one. Known as the Federal Consensus, it was subscribed to by everyone from proslavery radicals like John C. Calhoun and abolitionist radicals like William Lloyd Garrison. Still, Corwin’s firm restatement protected slavery in very clear and uncertain terms, and he hoped it would ease Southern minds about Republican domination at the Federal level. Douglas took up the idea and promoted it heavily among Congress. However, his most important move was to arrange a personal meeting with incoming president Lincoln to get the Republicans’ backing. After a long private meeting, much to the radical wing of his party’s outrage, Lincoln agreed to back the Corwin Amendment and made it clear he would sign any such document that made it to his desk.
The announcement landed like a bombshell in Birmingham and fractured the already fragile Southern consensus. In an instant the Cooperationists had their own victory and could point to this extraordinary concession by a Republican president. While an amendment protecting slavery was not all the South needed, it was a substantial start. It was enough to sway the more moderate center away from immediate secession and toward further negotiations with Washington or, to some of them, yet more reasons to hold state-wide votes. Perhaps with this law in place, more citizens would wish to stay? By the end of January, after more then a month of circular arguing and no signs of further progress, several of the more radical state delegations withdraw in disgust causing the entire Convention to collapse. This should not be taken as a sign of pessimism on the part of the radicals however.
Most simply saw it as a failure of method. The south-wide convention had, again, merely been a tool used by the moderates to block secession, a delaying method to curb passions. So they spurned it, and other democratic policies as betrayal of their cause. So they went home, not to lick their wounds, but to act.
The first formal response to Abraham Lincoln's election was given by that of the outgoing President, the now rather battered Stephen A. Douglas. Despite his political reversals however, his aggressive stance was not diminished. Speaking at a public event in Washington DC just days after the election Douglas spoke on the topic saying “if the Southern States (not a part but all) shall secede from the Union, upon the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, it will be the duty of the President of the United States, who, in the case supposed, will be Lincoln, by arms to punish or subdue them.” He continued, even more bluntly to add, “ Yes my friends, I would hang every man higher then Haman who would attempt by force to resist the execution of any provision which our fathers made and bequeathed to us.”
These strong words were not merely empty bluster. Throughout the election Douglas had been preparing for any Southern moves toward secession with an eye to military force if required. He was greatly helped in this by his Secretary of War, Andrew Johnson. While Johnson found the Republicans 'strident and counterproductive' he was a unionist to the core and found the entire concept of southern insurrection abominable. To this end he had, all through 1860, been slowly preparing to protect Federal properties throughout the South. While defending every post office or custom house was impossible, Johnson made a determined effort to at least attempt to defend the forts, armories and other major military installations. In order to manage this, Johnson gave John E. Wool, the commander of the Department of the East, carte blanche in both repairing and preparing the various fortifications and outposts. Wool, although over seventy years old, was a determined and capable organizer who gave his all to the imposing task. Setting his command center not in DC but in Fort Monroe Virginia, Wool quickly began a crash course of re-vitalization of the various coastal defense systems throughout the South, with an eye to defending them from local rebels.
The aged but formidable Commander of the East, John E. Wool
Some were written off immediately either due to disrepair (such as Fort Gaines in Alabama) or due to being indefensible from land attacks (Fort Moultrie in South Carolina). In these cases and a few of the more exposed Federal armories, Wool stripped them of armaments and supplies, pulling everything back to defensible locations such as Fort Macon in North Carolina or the as yet unfinished Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. Wool hoped that by depriving the secessionists with easy targets, he could dissuade them from action as well as preventing them from plundering Federal military stores. In other places he dramatically increased the number of soldiers, often pulling men out of Northern bases to send south. For example Fort Pulsaki at the mouth of the Savannah river was of critical importance but was manned by a mere two caretakers in the summer of 1860. Wool quickly rectified this, and other cases of lapsed protections throughout the South.
Southern politicians railed against these actions but could do little about it, at least legally. It was well within the rights of the Army to move troops and disposition them as the President and various commanders saw fit. The fire-eaters could rail about a tightening Northern noose all they liked, it was clear that every newly manned fort, every new cannon was a blow to any Southern hope of separation. This muscular response pushed many extremists into direct action.
Already faced with the doomsday scenario of a Republican president and now increasingly encircled by troops intent on forcing through whatever evil designs were cooked up by the Federal government, the time for action seemed to have arrived. In a number of Southern states extremists pressed the state governments to unilaterally declare secession, promising other states would follow. However with Federal troops prepared and Douglas showing no signs of backing down, no state wanted to be the first to stick their neck out. In South Carolina in particular the memory of the Nullification Crisis, where the Palmetto State had stood alone, was still fresh. Even in pro-secession Mississippi, governor John Petrus feared to “move alone”. Finally, stymied by inaction the fire eaters pushed for a new tactic. A general Southern Convention to discuss, debate and (hopefully) vote on secession.
It was not a new tactic. In 1850, at the behest of secessionist John C. Calhoun, had gathered in Nashville to discuss a proper response to the Wilmot Proviso, a proposed ban on slavery in the new Western territories. It had been a heated but ramshackle affair that had ended with no action being taken. The 1860 Convention appeared to be on quite another scale altogether. Hosted in Birmingham in late December, secessionists wrote to allies in every Southern state urging them to bring delegations, so the entire South “may be represented and heard”. The response, at least in terms of attendance, surpassed their wildest dreams. Well over four hundred delegates arrived from all over the South. Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Tennessee all sent official delegations while the border states of Maryland, Delaware, Arkansas, Kentucky and Missouri sent unofficial representatives. Uniquely, from Texas, came the sitting Governor, the Unionist Sam Houston.
Birmingham Alabama 1860, one of the few cities in the Deep South and host to the Southern Convention
The gathering crowd of southerners was divided into several competing factions, all with different aims, tactics and overriding goals. The loudest were, of course, the secessionists, those fire-eaters who pushed relentless for a full division from the Union. Having waited in the fringes of Southern politics for years, and in some cases decades, they saw in the election of a Republican President both their worst nightmare and greatest opportunity. To men like William Yancey or Edmund Ruffin, the South was surrounded by foes who were looking to attack their very way of life and the only acceptable response was immediate, unilateral withdrawal from the Union to protect both slavery and themselves from unwanted abolitionist sentiment and activities. Anything less then this extreme action was completely unsuitable.
A much larger group were the co-called Cooperationists. These men made up a wide swath of opinions about the impending crisis and the best reaction to it. Some of them held that while secession was inevitable the entire South should do it as a bloc, to best intimidate even President Douglas into backing down into acceptance. Their influence is what had brought about the Birmingham Convention and had so far stopped the ‘Stampeders’, their derisive name for the radical secessionists, who balked at any delay. Esteemed Southerners like Stephen Toombs or even former presidential candidate Breckenridge claimed that a united south leaving on ‘good terms’ might avoid a bloody civil war that the South could very well lose. Prudence and consideration for national opinion, as well as unamity among the slave owning states was the best path forward. Another bloc held that secession would only be valid if the actual people of the South were consulted, through referendums. While such democratic ideals were virtually nonexistent among the planter elite of the coastal slave states, they were widely held by upper South representatives. In addition, many of them felt that a true plebiscite on the issue would silence Northern cries that a ‘Slave Power’ was recklessly pressing a mass of southern whites into a war no one wanted. What better way to cement their cause then a direct appeal to the people?
Lastly there were the Unionists, who felt that compromise with the North was still possible, and that slavery, among other things, could still be protected and defend against a Republican Federal government. Secession was an unacceptable breach of the Constitution and the South best hope was to obtain Constitutional protection of slavery and other such institutions. While the smallest group, many of them were quite steadfast with the irascible Sam Houston, a slave owner and yet passionate Unionist, being their natural leader.
This welter of opinions made the Convention a very divided and fractious affair. At first the fire-eaters controlled the platforms, using their momentum from assembling the Convention, and pushed hard for secession. Every moment, they claimed, merely gave time for the Black Republicans time to further their agenda. The scare tactics were quite successful and the radical fringe seized many of the various committees to promote immediate secession. However, as the New Year came and went, sheer inenteria began to tell, with the Cooperationists arguing for all types of actions ranging from a South wide referendum on secession to a separate Constitutional Convention to formulate southern aims. Meanwhile the Unionists dismissed everything and constantly harragued the pro-secession speakers. Eventually the tension spilled over into actual violence as several Unionist representatives from Kentucky were attacked by a mob outside the doors of the hall. The fight spread into a general riot which eventually had to be quelled by the Birmingham police, who were forced to temporarily barricade the conventioneers inside.
A northern and exaggerated depiction of the Birmingham Secession Riot
After the disturbance settled down, the fire-eaters pressed and gained a major victory, a motion to dismiss all Unionists and those who would not back secession. The motion passed and the Convention, in a dramatic fashion, named each evicted member as they were forced to leave the chamber. Most left at once, but Houston remained to the end and gave a fiery speech ending with the now famous- "Our people may be going to war to perpetuate slavery, but the war will be its death knell." The stage seemed set for a secessionist victory. They had dominated the Convention, they had removed their opponents and sidelined most of their rivals. However, just as Yancey and his allies reached to seizes final victory a political explosion rocked the Convention, and indeed, the entire nation. For Douglas had not been idle.
As the nation watched in horrid fascination at the Southern Convention, Douglas threw himself into the many last ditch compromises being considered in Congress. Despite later revisionism it is important to not portray the President, at this stage, as a ideological enemy to the concerned Southerners. Indeed, Douglas would be the first to admit the South had legitimate grievances and generally blamed northern abolitionists for the current state of turmoil in the nation. That said, however, he was diametrically opposed to secession in any form, considering it not only a mark of failure against him but a blow to the entire American experiment. It was these twin concepts, of southern legitimacy and hatred of secession, that allowed Douglas to pursue any compromise in pursuit of peace, no matter the makeup.
The concerned president certainly had his choice. In the Congressional session that began in December 1860, more than 200 resolutions with respect to slavery and secession, including 57 resolutions proposing constitutional amendments were proposed. Some of these were elaborate affairs, such as the Crittenden Compromise which contained no less than six proposed amendments to the Constitution and four other congressional resolutions. Others were much simpler and it was one of these that Douglas latched onto in the first weeks of the New Year.
The Corwin Amendment had been written up by Thomas Corwin a Democratic Representative from Ohio. The amendment was quite straightforward and said thus, ‘No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.’
This idea, that the Federal government could not ban slavery was hardly a new one. Known as the Federal Consensus, it was subscribed to by everyone from proslavery radicals like John C. Calhoun and abolitionist radicals like William Lloyd Garrison. Still, Corwin’s firm restatement protected slavery in very clear and uncertain terms, and he hoped it would ease Southern minds about Republican domination at the Federal level. Douglas took up the idea and promoted it heavily among Congress. However, his most important move was to arrange a personal meeting with incoming president Lincoln to get the Republicans’ backing. After a long private meeting, much to the radical wing of his party’s outrage, Lincoln agreed to back the Corwin Amendment and made it clear he would sign any such document that made it to his desk.
The announcement landed like a bombshell in Birmingham and fractured the already fragile Southern consensus. In an instant the Cooperationists had their own victory and could point to this extraordinary concession by a Republican president. While an amendment protecting slavery was not all the South needed, it was a substantial start. It was enough to sway the more moderate center away from immediate secession and toward further negotiations with Washington or, to some of them, yet more reasons to hold state-wide votes. Perhaps with this law in place, more citizens would wish to stay? By the end of January, after more then a month of circular arguing and no signs of further progress, several of the more radical state delegations withdraw in disgust causing the entire Convention to collapse. This should not be taken as a sign of pessimism on the part of the radicals however.
Most simply saw it as a failure of method. The south-wide convention had, again, merely been a tool used by the moderates to block secession, a delaying method to curb passions. So they spurned it, and other democratic policies as betrayal of their cause. So they went home, not to lick their wounds, but to act.
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