Abraham Lincoln – U.S. to 1877

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Many events took part in factoring into the decision for South Carolina so secede from the Union. Of course they had been upset for quite some time with the abolitionists in the north and they were starting to feel that few if not no northerners could be trusted to hold represent them as president. They were shocked to see how far some northerners would go to see abolition when John Brown took hostage a federal armory. He had hoped to have many more people join him, especially other major figures like Frederick Douglass who firmly said no and it would be foolish to take the armory. Brown also intended to rally slaves as he went through to fight for him, but they were not very interested. Finally John Brown gave up after a day and half and was captured by Robert E. Lee. Just before his execution he wrote out his final prophecy and that was that the US was a guilty land and its crimes “will never be purged away; but with Blood.” (424) His words struck a large amount of the population who saw that maybe he war right and that a war was imminent. I think that Brown solidified the possibility of war in citizens’ heads. Many thought that it might occur, but Brown’s violent actions and his prophecy surely convinced a large amount of Americans that secession and war was in the future.

The final major event that lead to secession was the election of Abraham Lincoln into office. This election was very hard fought and caused the Democratic party to split in two, forming Northern and Southern branches. I think if anyone other than a pro-slavery president was elected, the South would surely secede. And that is exactly what happened when Lincoln was elected. ROMANGONE raises a good point regarding the fact that even though some Southern Democrats were divided on certain issues, they all stood together in opposition of Lincoln. Within the same month of Lincoln’s election South Carolina had seceded, closely followed by many other states who would go on to form the confederacy. I think that Lincoln’s election was the tipping point of the road to secession. It was as though the idea of secession had been brewing for so long and with the 1860 election, the South finally snapped. There were many events on the road to secession, but none more important than the election of Abraham Lincoln.

The country had been steadily moving toward Civil War arguably since the Missouri Compromise, which first prolonged the fight over slavery in the United States. In these chapters, Wilentz discusses how Lincoln won his party’s nomination and why his election was the breaking point for most Southerners. The Southern Democrats had been fighting a more radical Republican opponent in William Seward in the years leading up to the 1860 election. After John Brown’s raid of Harpers Ferry, the Republicans realized that radical Republicans could ruin their chance of winning an election. Seward, while not as radical as the Democrats made him out to be, seemed to be driving votes away as people attached Brown’s actions to him. This connection between Seward and Brown helped give the primary to Lincoln, who received his nomination after focusing his campaign in Chicago, near his hometown of Springfield. While other western-born candidates had won the presidency, Lincoln’s base in the lower north became even more integral to this election, since the Border States, or the Lower North, had the important swing votes from non-slaveholders who still benefited from a slave-holding economy. Lincoln was then able to win the general election mostly because the Democratic Party split during the nomination process and chose two candidates, splitting the party’s voters. Wilentz writes about Lincoln just as Davis does and backs up Mac’s point (http://sites.davidson.edu/his141/lincoln-moral-idol-yet-still-a-politician/) that while “historically, we see Lincoln as the just idol,” he still had to be a politician. He was not as radical as other Republicans of the time, and he won the Presidency by playing off the split in the Democratic Party. While Lincoln did run a politician’s campaign, he was committed to his platform of halting the spread of slavery, but at the same time would not interfere with slavery in the slave states or the Fugitive Slave Law. What seemed to scare Southerners the most about Lincoln was his commitment to the law. He would not do anything outside of the powers stated in the Constitution, whether they would benefit his party’s motives or not. Therefore, the Democrats could not fight him as easily because he never said he would use his powers illegally. His pledge to this platform is where the image of a “just idol” comes from.

Tag: Abraham Lincoln

Leading up to Secession

Abraham Lincoln: The Final Straw for Southerners