A HOUSE DIVIDED

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boasted its own higher sense of honesty and honor. Unity was already gone in hearts, in industry, in religious organizations. It was going in commercial intercourse. It could not long endure, on such terms, in government.

Lincoln carried every Northern State (including California) except for three of the seven New Jersey electors. Douglas received only those three votes and the Lincoln's nine from Missouri, though his popular vote was election nearly as large as Lincoln's. Bell carried the moderate Border States, Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. All the other Southern States went to Breckinridge. Lincoln had 180 electoral votes to 123 for his three competitors combined; but in the popular vote, he had only 1,857,610 out of a total of 4,645,380. The victory was narrow; and it was the victory of a divided section over a weaker but more united section.

Secession

States

PART X-NATIONALISM VIOTORIOUS, 1860-1876

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE CALL TO ARMS

NOVEMBER 10, four days after Lincoln's election, the legislature of South Carolina appropriated money for arms, and called a State convention to act on the question of seven of secession. All over the State, Palmetto banners unfurled and "liberty poles" rose. December 17, the convention met. Three days later, it unanimously "repealed" the ratification of the Federal Constitution by the State convention of 1788, and declared that "the State of South Carolina has resumed her place among the nations of the world." By February 1, like action had been taken in Georgia and the five Gulf States — the entire southern tier of States.

A popular movement

66

Northern writers long charged that the Southern leaders carried secession as a conspiracy," and that they were afraid to refer the matter to a direct vote. This is absolutely wrong. Public opinion forced Jefferson Davis onward faster than he liked; and the mass of small farmers were more ardent than the aristocracy whose large property interests tended, perhaps, to keep them conservative. For more than a year, in the less aristocratic counties, popular conventions, local meetings, and newspapers had been threatening secession if a President unfriendly to the Dred Scott decision should be elected; and when even the "Fire-eater" Toombs paused at the last moment to contemplate compromise, his constituents talked indignantly of presenting him with a tin sword. The South was vastly more united in 1861 than the colonies were in 1776. The leaders acted through conventions, not

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY

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because they feared a popular vote, but because their political methods had remained unchanged for seventy years and because they thought it seemly for their States to secede by the same machinery by which they had originally "acceded" to the Union.

Few Southerners questioned the right of a "sovereign State❞ to secede. The sole difference of opinion was whether sufficient provocation existed to make such action wise. When a State convention had voted for the "right" secession, even the previous "Union men

Doctrine of

of secession

with their State, conscientiously and enthusiastically. Thus, Alexander H. Stephens made a desperate struggle in Georgia for the Union, both in the State campaign and in the convention; but when the convention decided against him 208 to 69,' he cast himself devotedly into secession. He would have thought any other course treason. Allegiance, the South felt, was due primarily to one's State.

To understand the splendid devotion of the South to a hopeless cause during the bloody years that followed, we must understand this viewpoint. The South fought "to keep the past upon its throne"; but it believed, with every drop of its blood, that it was fighting for the sacred right of self-government, against "conquest" by tyrannical "invaders.'

The South

February 4, a convention of delegates from the seven seceding States met to form a new union — "the Confederate States of America." The constitution was modeled upon that of the old Union, with some new ern Conemphasis on State sovereignty. Jefferson Davis federacy was soon chosen President of the Confederacy, and Alexander H. Stephens Vice President.

The Confederacy did not believe the North would use force against secession. Still it made vigorous preparation for possible war. As each State seceded, its citizens in

1 The real test vote had come a little earlier — 165 to 130. This was the strongest Union vote in the Lower South. In Mississippi, the test stood 84 to 15; in Florida, 62 to 7; in Alabama, 61 to 39; in Louisiana, 113 to 17. In Texas the question was referred to the people, and in spite of a vigorous Union campaign by Governor Sam Houston they voted three to one for secession.

And the

Congress and in the service of the United States resigned their offices. The small army and navy of the Union was in this way completely demoralized,—losing nearly Union half its officers. Each seceding State, too, seized promptly upon the Federal forts and arsenals within its limits, sending commissioners to Washington to arrange for money compensation. In the seven seceded States, the Federal government retained only Fort Sumter in Charleston harbor and three forts on the Gulf. Federal courts ceased to be held in the seceded States, because of the resignation of judges and other officials and the absolute impossibility of securing jurors. Federal tariffs were no longer collected. Only the post office remained as a symbol of the old Union.

President Buchanan, in his message to Congress in December, declared that the Constitution gave no State the Buchanan's right to secede, but a curious paradox — that it message gave the government no right "to coerce a sovereign State" if it did secede. For the remaining critical three months of his term he let secession gather head as it liked. With homely wit, Seward wrote to his wife that the Message shows "conclusively that it is the President's duty to execute the laws-unless some one opposes him; and that no State has a right to go out of the Union — unless it wants to."

Hesitation

This flabby policy, moreover, was much like the attitude of the masses of the North during those same months. Even from Republican leaders resounded the cry, at the North "Let the erring sisters go in peace." In October, General Scott, Commander of the army, suggested to the President a division of the country into four confederacies, -for which he outlined boundaries. Northern papers declared "coercion "coercion" both wrong and impossible. Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, for years the greatest antislavery organ and the chief molder of Republican opinion, expressed these views repeatedly: "We hope never to live in a republic, whereof one section is pinned to another by bayonets" (November 9); "Five millions of people . can

HESITATION AT THE NORTH

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never be subdued while fighting around their own hearthstones" (November 30); "The South has as good a right to secede from the Union as the colonies had to secede from Great Britain" (December 17); "If the Cotton States wish to form an independent nation, they have a clear moral right to do so" (February 23, 1861). Even Lowell thought the South "not worth conquering back." And Wendell Phillips asserted (April 9), “Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter."

mise

The Border States urged one more try at compromise. Virginia called a Peace Convention which was well attended and which sat at Washington through February. Attempts This body, and many Republican leaders, pro- at comproposed various amendments to the Constitution to fortify slavery and so conciliate the South: especially to provide Federal compensation for escaped slaves, and to divide the National domain, present and future, between slavery and freedom, along the line of the old Missouri Compromise. But the only outcome of this compromise agitation was the hasty submission to the country of an amendment prohibiting Congress from ever interfering with slavery in the States. As Lincoln said, this merely made express what was already clearly implied in the Constitution, and it was wholly inadequate to satisfy the South. It passed Congress with a solid Republican vote, however, and was ratified by three Northern States before war stopped the process.

Lincoln's inaugural, on March 4, was a win- Lincoln's ning answer to Southern claims and a firm decla- inaugural ration of policy.

[As to the reason for secession]: "Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that . . . their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension.

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists."

[After demolishing the constitutional "right" of secession]: "I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws