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In today’s readings from Sean Wilentz’s The Rise of American Democracy, the “big bang” takes place… so to speak. On November 6, 1860, on the day of Lincoln’s election to power, all of the talks concerning secession finally come true, as South Carolina passes legislation to “strike back at the North and secede from the Union before Lincoln could take office” (Wilentz, 436). After years of tension between northern and southern states, failed compromises and extremist politicians, South Carolina has finally had enough and has left the Union. More states were to follow, as Wilentz writes that the “swiftness with which the rest of the Deep South followed suite was breathtaking” (Wilentz, 437), as Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee all leave the Union by June 8, 1861. According to Wilentz, Lincoln’s rise to power “turned many Deep South moderates and even erstwhile Unionists into secessionists” (Wilentz, 436), as the question was “not whether to secede but when and how” (Wilentz, 436). It shocks me that one president (whose party described themselves as a “white man’s party (Wilentz, 433) could inspire so much disagreement. It made me wonder whether secession was an inevitable result of the presidential turnover, or was it really due to Lincoln’s particular election?
What has always baffled me concerning secession is the debate between “the preservation of a traditional Southern heritage and states rights vs. the preservation of slavery” as the main cause for secession. Personally, I see the two issues being completely interconnected. Antebellum Southern culture (the culture the states so desperately wanted to preserve) was essentially a culture founded on and maintained by human bondage. When Wilentz discusses the South’s desire to “[leave] the Union to preserve their old institutions from a revolution [that] threatened to destroy their social system” (Wilentz, 439), the social system that the North was attempting to destroy and the South was trying to preserve was one where daily life was routed in and informed by slavery.
Just before secession, one of the most interesting characters we have run into so far over the entire course has easily been John Brown, a radical abolitionist who attempted to achieve abolition by any means necessary. Although he failed, I agree with ALKAROUT where Brown opened the door for possibilities of more organized forms of insurrection against slavery. What amazes me is the impact one figure (and relatively small raid) had on the South’s relationship with the North, with “new funds for military preparations and expressed solidarity with their sister slaveholding states” (Wilentz, 426) emerging in the immediate aftermath of Brown’s defeat and how. Many southerners saw it impossible to live in in a country under a government where Brown was considered a Christian martyr, as they considered his actions to be dangerous and unjust. Had a violent Southern rebellion be led against Northern abolitionists, it would have most likely been condemned by the government.