Election of 1860 and Secession in two minutes
- John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry failed in October 1859, and Virginia hanged him on December 2. Northern bells tolled, Republicans disowned him, and white Southerners feared Northern support for slave revolt.
- In 1860 the Democrats split over a federal slave code for the territories. Douglas and Breckinridge led rival Democratic tickets, John Bell led the Constitutional Union Party, and Republicans chose Lincoln.
- Lincoln won 180 electoral votes with about 40 percent of the popular vote. He carried the free states except New Jersey, which split, and no slave state.
- South Carolina's convention voted 169 to 0 to secede on December 20, 1860. Six more states left by February 1, 1861, and the seven formed the Confederacy at Montgomery, Alabama.
- Secession declarations put slavery at the center. Alexander Stephens's Cornerstone Speech (March 1861) said the Confederacy rested on racial inequality and slavery. Lincoln opposed the Crittenden Compromise, which would have extended slavery.
- After Confederate guns forced Fort Sumter to surrender in April 1861, Lincoln called for 75,000 militia, and Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee seceded. Four slave states stayed in the Union.
- On the exam: expect causation, separating long-term causes from the immediate trigger, and sources such as secession declarations. Show slavery as the central cause and link it to Kansas and Dred Scott.
Topic 5.7 key terms
- John Brown
John Brown (1800–1859) · White abolitionist who believed only force could end slavery. He led the 1859 raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, hoping to spark a slave uprising, and Virginia hanged him for treason. Many white Southerners took the raid as proof the North wanted slave revolts.
- Sectionalism
Sectionalism · Loyalty to one region's interests over the nation's. By the late 1850s, fights over slavery's spread had split North and South into rival sections, and each side saw the other as a threat.
- Election of 1860
Election of 1860 · A four-way race for president on November 6, 1860. Republican Abraham Lincoln won with about 40 percent of the popular vote and no electoral votes from any slave state. South Carolina voted to leave the Union six weeks later.
- Harpers Ferry raid (1859)
John Brown’s attempt to seize a federal armory and start an uprising of enslaved people in Virginia. It failed within two days and convinced many white Southerners that Northerners wanted slave revolts.
- John Brown (1800–1859)
White abolitionist who believed only violence would end slavery. Convicted of treason against Virginia, murder and conspiring with slaves to rebel, he was hanged on December 2, 1859.
- Martyr
Someone honored for dying for a cause. Many Northern abolitionists called Brown one. Republican leaders called his raid a crime and denied any link to it.
- Insurrection
An armed revolt, here by enslaved people against slaveholders. White Southerners had dreaded one since Nat Turner’s revolt in Virginia in 1831. After Harpers Ferry, many feared a Republican president would tolerate more John Browns.
- Federal slave code
The Southern demand that Congress protect slavery in every territory. It built on Dred Scott (1857) and rejected Douglas's popular sovereignty.
- Constitutional Union Party (1860)
Former Whigs and Know-Nothings who ran John Bell of Tennessee on one idea: save the Union by not arguing about slavery.
- Free soil
The Republican goal of keeping slavery out of the western territories, not abolishing it in the states.
- What free soil did not mean
Most Republicans wanted slavery out of the West, not equal rights for Black Americans. Many free-soil voters wanted the territories kept for white farmers.
- Fire-eaters
Southern politicians who wanted secession and said so.
- Electoral College
The electors each state chooses to pick the president. A state gets one for every House seat plus two for its senators, and a candidate needs a majority of all electoral votes, not of the popular vote.
- Plurality
More votes than any other candidate, but under half of all votes cast. Lincoln won a plurality of the popular vote, and a majority of the electoral vote.
- Fusion ticket
A joint slate of electors backed by more than one party against a common rival. In 1860, anti-Lincoln forces really did fuse in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
- Secession
A state’s claim that it could leave the Union by its own convention’s vote. South Carolina argued the Union was a compact among sovereign states.
- Lame duck
An official serving out a term after a successor has been elected.
- Crittenden Compromise
December 1860: proposed amendments to restore the 36°30′ line to the Pacific, protect slavery south of it, and bar any later amendment from changing that. Republicans rejected it.
- Confederate States of America
The government the seceded states of the Deep South formed at Montgomery in February 1861. It began with seven states.
- Confederate Constitution
Adopted March 11, 1861. It copied much of the U.S. Constitution, banned protective tariffs and named slavery for protection. It banned only the foreign slave trade; trade among slave states stayed legal.
- Cornerstone Speech
Stephens's March 21, 1861 speech in Savannah. He said the Confederacy rested on the claim that Black people are not equal to white people and that slavery is their natural condition.
- Contextualization (skill 4.B)
Placing a development in its broader setting. Secession: fear after Harpers Ferry, the free states' electoral majority, and the density and value of slavery.
- First Inaugural Address (1861)
Lincoln's speech of March 4, 1861. He promised not to touch slavery where it already existed, said he would hold federal property, and told the South that civil war would be its choice, not his.
- Corwin Amendment (1861)
An amendment Congress proposed in its last days before Lincoln took office (House 133–65, Senate 24–12). It would have barred Congress from ever abolishing or interfering with slavery in any state. The states never ratified it.
- Perpetual Union
Lincoln's argument that the Union was older than the Constitution and could not be dissolved by one state's choice. If he was right, secession was not a right. It was rebellion.
- Fort Sumter (1861)
The federal fort in Charleston Harbor that Confederate batteries bombarded on April 12–13, 1861, starting the Civil War. After the attack most Northerners rallied to the Union, and four more slave states seceded.
- Call for 75,000 militia
Call for 75,000 militia · Lincoln's April 15, 1861 proclamation asking the states for troops to retake the forts and enforce the laws. It forced the eight slave states still in the Union to choose between fighting other slave states and leaving.
- Upper South
Upper South · Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas. They refused to leave the Union through the winter of 1860–61, then seceded after Lincoln called for troops to use against other slave states.
- Border states
Border states · Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri: slave states that stayed in the Union. Lincoln worked to keep them, because losing them would have made the war much harder to win.
- Southern Unionists
Southern Unionists · white Southerners who opposed secession, often in regions with few enslaved people. Western Virginia was one: its counties stayed loyal and became West Virginia, a new state, on June 20, 1863.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
A Beautiful Country
December 2, 1859
Key terms: John Brown, Sectionalism, Election of 1860
Charles Town, Virginia. December 2, 1859. Some fifteen hundred soldiers guard a field. The governor has kept civilians out.
The prisoner rides in on his own coffin, beside his jailer. He looks around and says it's a beautiful country.
Before leaving the jail, he handed a guard a note.
John Brown
I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood.
A Virginia Military Institute professor, Thomas Jackson. Edmund Ruffin, who wants the South out of the Union. And an actor in a borrowed uniform, John Wilkes Booth.
Eighteen months later, the country he called beautiful was at war with itself.
In between came an election. Seven states left the Union before Lincoln took office. Why? Four of them wrote it down.
Harpers Ferry
October 16 – December 2, 1859
Key terms: Harpers Ferry raid (1859), John Brown (1800–1859), Martyr, Insurrection
In October 1859, John Brown and twenty-one followers seized the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Five were Black.
The plan: arm enslaved people, then spread a revolt south through the mountains.
The first person the raiders killed was Heyward Shepherd, the railroad’s baggage master. He was a free Black man.
The first raider killed was Dangerfield Newby, who was trying to free his wife and children. His wife, Harriet, had written to him that spring.
Harriet Newby
oh Dear Dangerfield com this fall with out fail monny or no money I want to see you so much that is one bright hope I have before me
No uprising came. Marines under Colonel Robert E. Lee stormed the engine house where Brown held out.
Virginia tried him for treason against Virginia. At his sentencing, he spoke.
John Brown
…mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country… I submit; so let it be done!
On the day he died, church bells tolled across the North. Republican leaders disowned him.
White Southerners heard the bells, not the denials.
Edmund Ruffin sent Brown’s pikes to Southern governors, each with a label.
“Sample of the favors designed for us by our Northern Brethren.”
Four Candidates
April – November 1860
Key terms: Federal slave code, Constitutional Union Party (1860), Free soil, What free soil did not mean, Fire-eaters
In April 1860 the Democrats, the last party with voters in both North and South, met in Charleston. Southern delegates demanded federal protection for slavery in every territory. Douglas's men refused. About fifty Southerners walked out.
57 ballots Charleston · April 23 – May 3, 1860
The rest voted fifty-seven times and adjourned without a nominee.
The party split in two. Northern Democrats nominated Douglas. Southern Democrats nominated Vice President John C. Breckinridge.
Old Whigs formed the Constitutional Union Party. Its platform began by condemning party platforms. Its fans rang hand bells, for John Bell.
In Chicago the Republicans passed over their best-known man, Senator William Seward. On the third ballot they chose a safer one: Abraham Lincoln.
Their free-soil platform: no slavery in the territories, and no touching it in the states. Plus a tariff, free homesteads and a Pacific railroad.
Lincoln made no campaign speeches; candidates weren't supposed to. Douglas broke the rule and toured the South, warning against secession.
He grew them anyway.
In the Deep South, the fire-eaters made a promise: elect Lincoln, and we leave.
The Line
November 6–7, 1860
Key terms: Electoral College, Plurality, Fusion ticket, Sectionalism
Lincoln spent election night in the Springfield telegraph office.
In ten Southern states, Lincoln’s name wasn’t on the ballot. In South Carolina, the legislature chose the electors.
He won every free state, though New Jersey split its electors, four to three. He won no slave state. One hundred eighty electoral votes.
But he took only about forty percent of the popular vote. So didn’t the Democrats’ split hand him the presidency?
Test it yourself.
In December, South Carolina described what you just saw.
Reading clerk
A geographical line has been drawn across the Union,
Reading clerk
and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man
Reading clerk
to the high office of President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.
Now the free states could elect a president without the South, if they held together.
The Union Is Dissolved!
December 1860 – February 1861
Key terms: Secession, Lame duck, Crittenden Compromise
December 20, 1860. South Carolina’s convention voted 169 to nothing to leave the Union. That night they signed in Institute Hall, where the Democrats had split.
By February 1, six more states had followed: Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.
In six of the first seven, more than two people in five were enslaved. Texas was the exception.
Nearly four million people were held in slavery. The law counted them as property, worth more than all the country’s railroads and factories combined.
Elsewhere, it wasn’t unanimous. In Georgia, Alexander Stephens argued against leaving.
Alexander H. Stephens
In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause for any State to separate from the Union.
Georgia voted to go anyway, 208 to 89. Alabama split 61 to 39.
In Washington, President Buchanan had called secession revolution, and said he had no power to stop it.
Senator John Crittenden offered a last deal: restore the thirty-six thirty line. South of it, slavery would be protected, even in land taken later.
Lincoln had already sent word to his party.
Abraham Lincoln
Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery.
Abraham Lincoln
If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again.
The deal died.
In Their Own Words
December 1860 – March 21, 1861
Key terms: Confederate States of America, Confederate Constitution, Cornerstone Speech, Contextualization (skill 4.B)
Lincoln and Stephens had been friends in Congress. In December 1860, Lincoln wrote to him privately.
Abraham Lincoln
You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted.
the only substantial difference between us
Abraham Lincoln
That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.
By February, Stephens was in Montgomery, Alabama, as vice president of the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis was its president.
Four seceding states wrote down why they left. Here are their words.
Their constitution banned protective tariffs. It also protected slavery by name, in every state and every new territory.
Ten days later, in Savannah, Stephens explained the new government. He said the founders had thought slavery wrong, and called that an error.
Alexander H. Stephens
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone 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.
After the war, Stephens described secession twice. In his private prison diary, he wrote:
Alexander H. Stephens
Slavery was without doubt the occasion of secession.
Three years later, in a book for the public, he called people who blamed slavery for the war "superficial observers." Who was each written for, and when?
Most historians today begin where the seceders began: with their own words.
4:30 A.M.
March 4 – April 14, 1861
Key terms: First Inaugural Address (1861), Corwin Amendment (1861), Perpetual Union, Fort Sumter (1861)
March 4, 1861. Lincoln took the oath under a Capitol dome that was still half built.
Abraham Lincoln
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.
Congress had just proposed an amendment protecting slavery in the states forever. Lincoln said he had no objection. It changed nothing.
Abraham Lincoln
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.
Major Robert Anderson's garrison at Fort Sumter was running out of food. Lincoln told South Carolina he'd send food only, no troops. Now the choice was theirs.
At 3:20 a.m. on April 12, Confederate officers handed Anderson a note. In one hour, the guns would open.
The war had begun.
After thirty-four hours and more than three thousand shots, Anderson surrendered. Nobody on either side had been killed.
The next day, as Anderson's men saluted their flag, a cartridge went off too soon. Private Daniel Hough was killed, usually counted as the war's first death.
Mary Boykin Chesnut
People talk before them as if they were chairs and tables. They make no sign.
Mary Boykin Chesnut
Are they stolidly stupid? or wiser than we are; silent and strong, biding their time?
The Border
April – July 1861
Key terms: Call for 75,000 militia, Upper South, Border states, Southern Unionists
On April 15, Lincoln called for seventy-five thousand militia to retake the forts and enforce the laws.
Governors of the slave states still in the Union wired back.
Rather than fight other slave states, four more left: Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee. The Confederate capital moved to Richmond.
Robert E. Lee, who had captured John Brown, resigned from the U.S. Army and went with Virginia.
On April 19, eighty-six years to the day after Lexington, a Baltimore crowd attacked a Massachusetts regiment. Four soldiers and twelve civilians died.
Four slave states stayed: Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. Lincoln needed every one.
Abraham Lincoln
I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game.
Virginia's western counties refused, and broke away.
The new border ran between slave states. Stephens called slavery the cornerstone. Lincoln called it the only substantial difference. They meant the same thing.
By July, Massachusetts soldiers were marching through Boston to that old hymn tune, with new words about John Brown. Almost everyone expected a short war.