THE GREAT EXPERIMENT: A NATION DIVIDED

PART IV — WHY THE CIVIL WAR HAPPENED

Slavery, Secession, States' Rights, and the Union

By the winter of 1860–1861, the United States was coming apart.

For generations, Americans had argued over slavery.

They had argued about its expansion.

They had argued about federal authority.

They had argued about states' rights.

They had argued about fugitive slaves.

They had argued about the territories.

Again and again, they had compromised.

But after the election of Abraham Lincoln in November 1860, compromise began to fail.

States started leaving the Union.

A new government was created in the South.

Federal forts became surrounded by forces belonging to states that no longer considered themselves part of the United States.

Within months, Americans would be shooting at Americans.

The Civil War was beginning.

But before following the armies onto the battlefield, we need to answer one of the most important questions in American history:

Why did the Civil War happen?

The answer requires more than a slogan.

It requires looking at what the people making these decisions actually said.

The Election That Changed Everything

Abraham Lincoln won the presidential election of 1860.

His Republican Party opposed the expansion of slavery into the western territories.

Lincoln had repeatedly expressed opposition to slavery, but he had also distinguished between opposing slavery's expansion and possessing constitutional authority to abolish slavery inside states where it already existed.

That distinction mattered.

The Republican victory nevertheless created enormous alarm across much of the slaveholding South.

For decades, southern political leaders had fought to protect their influence within the federal government and preserve slavery's ability to expand westward.

Now a president had been elected without carrying the Deep South and while representing a party explicitly opposed to slavery's territorial expansion.

Before Lincoln could even take office, secession began.

South Carolina Goes First

On December 20, 1860, South Carolina voted to secede from the United States.

Days later, its convention issued a declaration explaining its reasons.

This document matters.

Instead of asking generations afterward why South Carolina left, we can read what its own secession convention said.

South Carolina presented a constitutional argument.

The state argued that the Constitution was a compact among sovereign states and that other states had failed to fulfill their obligations under that compact.

But what obligation was at the center of the complaint?

The return of people escaping slavery.

South Carolina specifically complained that northern states had resisted or obstructed enforcement of laws concerning fugitive slaves.

It also objected to the growing political movement against slavery and to the election of a president whose party opposed slavery's expansion.

So states' rights were part of South Carolina's argument.

But the particular rights and constitutional obligations being disputed were deeply connected to slavery.

That distinction is important.

Other States Followed

South Carolina was not alone.

Mississippi seceded in January 1861.

Florida followed.

Then Alabama.

Georgia.

Louisiana.

Texas.

Seven states had left the Union before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated.

Several of them produced declarations or ordinances explaining their decisions.

Those documents provide some of the clearest evidence we have about the secession crisis.

And slavery appears repeatedly.

Mississippi Said It Directly

Mississippi's declaration was unusually explicit.

It stated:

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery…”

The declaration then described slavery as an enormous economic interest and argued that threats to the institution threatened Mississippi's prosperity and social order.

There was little ambiguity in the state's explanation.

Mississippi believed slavery was endangered.

And its convention identified that danger as a justification for leaving the Union.

Georgia Explained Its Grievances

Georgia also issued a lengthy declaration.

It discussed political conflict between North and South.

It complained about northern opposition to slavery.

It discussed fugitive slaves.

It criticized efforts to prevent slavery's expansion into the territories.

And it argued that the political relationship between slaveholding and non-slaveholding states had fundamentally changed.

Again, constitutional questions and sectional politics were present.

But slavery was woven throughout them.

Texas Did the Same

Texas also issued a declaration explaining its reasons.

It discussed the history of Texas entering the Union as a slaveholding state.

It complained about northern hostility toward slavery.

It criticized resistance to fugitive-slave enforcement.

And it defended a social system explicitly based upon racial slavery.

These documents make something important possible.

We do not have to guess what secession leaders believed.

They told us.

So Was the Civil War About States' Rights?

This question deserves a careful answer.

States' rights were absolutely part of the political and constitutional arguments surrounding the Civil War.

Americans had debated the relationship between state and federal authority since the founding.

Those debates were real.

They involved tariffs.

Banking.

Internal improvements.

Federal enforcement.

Territorial government.

Nullification.

And many other questions.

But when we examine the immediate secession crisis of 1860–1861, another question has to be asked:

A state's right to do what?

In the secession documents, many of the rights being defended were connected directly to slavery.

Slaveholding states asserted the right to maintain slavery.

They fought restrictions on slavery's expansion.

They demanded federal enforcement of constitutional and statutory requirements concerning fugitives from slavery.

And they objected when northern states attempted to interfere with that enforcement.

This creates an important complication.

Southern political leaders sometimes argued for state sovereignty while simultaneously demanding strong federal enforcement when federal power protected slaveholders' interests.

So “slavery” and “states' rights” cannot simply be placed on opposite sides of the explanation.

The states' rights argument of the secession crisis was frequently an argument about protecting slavery.

Not Every Southern State Seceded

Another important fact complicates the story.

There were fifteen slave states in 1861.

Eleven eventually joined the Confederacy.

Four did not:

Delaware.

Maryland.

Kentucky.

Missouri.

These became known as the border states.

Slavery remained legal within them during the early stages of the war, but they did not leave the United States.

That matters because the political geography of the conflict was not simply:

North equals free.

South equals slave.

The reality was more complicated.

There were slave states inside the Union.

There were southerners who opposed secession.

There were communities deeply divided internally.

In some places, neighbors and even families chose different sides.

A New Country Appears

In February 1861, representatives of the seceded states met in Montgomery, Alabama.

They created the Confederate States of America.

Jefferson Davis of Mississippi became its president.

The Confederacy adopted its own constitution.

Much of its governmental structure resembled that of the United States.

But there were important differences.

Among them were explicit constitutional protections concerning slavery.

The Confederate Constitution protected slave property and addressed slavery's status in Confederate territories.

The new government therefore did not merely inherit slavery as an existing state institution.

It constitutionally protected it.

The Confederate Vice President Speaks

In March 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens delivered a speech in Savannah, Georgia.

Stephens contrasted the new Confederate government with ideas he attributed to the American founding.

He described racial inequality and slavery as foundational principles of the new government.

His words are important because, like the secession declarations, they came from a leading Confederate official at the time the Confederacy was being created.

They reinforce what the secession documents themselves show:

Slavery was not a minor issue attached to a separate constitutional dispute.

It was at the center of the secession crisis.

But Why Did the United States Fight?

Here we have to make another important distinction.

Why states seceded is not exactly the same question as why the United States initially went to war.

Abraham Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861.

In his First Inaugural Address, Lincoln said he had no intention of interfering with slavery in states where it already existed.

His immediate position was that secession itself was unconstitutional.

Lincoln rejected the idea that a state could unilaterally leave the Union.

From his perspective, the Union remained legally intact.

The states claiming to have seceded were still part of the United States.

The federal government therefore faced an extraordinary question:

What happens when states declare themselves independent but the United States government refuses to recognize their departure?

That question soon centered on a federal installation in Charleston Harbor.

Fort Sumter

Fort Sumter was a United States military installation in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina.

South Carolina claimed to have left the Union.

But federal troops remained inside the fort.

The situation became increasingly tense.

Lincoln faced a difficult decision.

Abandoning the fort could appear to recognize Confederate authority.

Attempting to reinforce it could provoke fighting.

Lincoln decided to send supplies to the garrison.

Confederate authorities demanded that the fort be surrendered.

The United States refused.

Before dawn on April 12, 1861, Confederate artillery opened fire.

The Civil War had begun.

After bombardment, the federal garrison surrendered.

No compromise had stopped it.

No congressional agreement had prevented it.

Americans were now at war.

Then Four More States Left

Lincoln responded by calling for 75,000 militia to suppress the rebellion.

That decision transformed the crisis again.

Four additional slave states that had not initially joined the Confederacy now seceded:

Virginia.

Arkansas.

Tennessee.

North Carolina.

Their timing matters.

The first seven states had seceded before Fort Sumter.

These four left after fighting began and after Lincoln called for troops.

For many people in these states, the question had become not only slavery and its future, but whether they would provide forces to fight against other southern states.

Virginia's departure was particularly significant.

The Confederacy soon moved its capital from Montgomery to Richmond, Virginia.

Eleven states now made up the Confederacy.

Why Did Confederate Soldiers Fight?

This is another place where history becomes more complicated.

A government's reason for entering a war does not tell us the personal motivation of every soldier who fights in it.

Hundreds of thousands of Confederate soldiers served during the war.

They did not all leave behind explanations.

Those who did expressed different motivations.

Some wrote about protecting slavery or the racial and social order connected to it.

Others wrote about defending their states.

Some described defending their homes and families.

Some fought because their communities were fighting.

Some were motivated by loyalty to comrades.

Some were conscripted.

Some came from slaveholding families.

Many did not personally own enslaved people.

Individual motivation varied enormously.

That does not change what the secession conventions said.

It simply answers a different historical question.

Why did a government secede?

and

Why did an individual soldier fight?

are not necessarily the same question.

Why Did Union Soldiers Fight?

The same distinction applies to the United States.

When the war began, the federal government's central objective was preserving the Union, not immediately abolishing slavery everywhere.

Many Union soldiers fought because they believed secession threatened the survival of the United States.

Others had antislavery convictions.

Some would develop stronger antislavery views as the war continued.

Some fought primarily for their communities or comrades.

And eventually nearly 200,000 Black men served in United States forces, for whom destroying slavery and securing freedom carried an especially immediate meaning.

The purpose of the Union war effort itself would also change.

What began primarily as a war to preserve the Union would increasingly become a war against slavery as well.

But that transformation had not yet happened in April 1861.

Lincoln and Slavery

Abraham Lincoln personally regarded slavery as wrong.

But his political and constitutional position before and at the beginning of the war was more limited than immediate nationwide abolition.

He opposed slavery's expansion into federal territories.

He believed Congress lacked constitutional authority simply to abolish slavery inside states where it already existed.

And he believed his presidential responsibility in the opening crisis was to preserve the Union.

This distinction would become extremely important.

Because war would change what Lincoln believed the federal government could do.

As commander in chief during a rebellion, Lincoln would eventually invoke wartime powers against slavery in Confederate-controlled territory.

That development would lead to one of the most important documents in American history:

The Emancipation Proclamation.

But that was still ahead.

Was Slavery the Cause?

The historical record allows us to answer this carefully.

The United States contained many sectional disagreements before the Civil War.

Americans argued about economics.

Tariffs.

Political power.

Federal authority.

State sovereignty.

Western expansion.

Culture.

And the nature of the Union itself.

But slavery was deeply intertwined with the sectional crisis that produced secession.

The question of slavery's expansion repeatedly destabilized national politics.

The Fugitive Slave Act created conflict between federal authority and northern resistance.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act reopened territory to the possibility of slavery.

Dred Scott attempted to settle constitutional questions surrounding slavery and instead intensified them.

The Republican Party rose largely around opposition to slavery's territorial expansion.

Lincoln's election triggered the first wave of secession.

And several seceding states explicitly identified slavery, slave property, or northern opposition to slavery among their reasons for leaving.

So it would be incomplete to say:

“The war was only about states' rights.”

It would also be incomplete to pretend there were no constitutional, political, economic, or sectional disputes beyond slavery.

The stronger historical conclusion is more precise:

Slavery—particularly its preservation, political protection, and expansion—stood at the center of the sectional crisis that produced secession, while disputes over federal power, state sovereignty, political representation, economics, and the nature of the Union shaped how that crisis unfolded.

And Yet the War Would Change

In April 1861, neither side knew what the next four years would bring.

Many Americans believed the war might be short.

It would not be.

Armies would grow to enormous size.

Cities would be occupied.

Railroads would become military lifelines.

New technologies would transform warfare.

Hundreds of thousands would die.

Millions of enslaved Americans would see the war become an opportunity to pursue freedom.

Black Americans would serve in the United States armed forces.

Lincoln's policies would change.

The legal status of slavery would change.

And eventually the Constitution itself would change.

The country that emerged in 1865 would not be the same country that entered the war in 1861.

The Question Had Changed

For generations, Americans had asked:

Could slavery expand westward?

Then they asked:

Could free states and slave states continue sharing the same Union?

By 1861, that question had become:

Could a state leave the Union when it no longer accepted the political direction of the country?

And then came Fort Sumter.

After that, the question became something far more immediate:

Could the United States survive?

For the Confederacy, the question was whether its newly declared independence could survive.

For the United States, the question was whether the Union could be preserved.

For millions of enslaved Americans, another possibility was emerging from the conflict:

Could this war become the path to freedom?

All of those questions were about to meet on the battlefield.

NEXT — PART V

A Nation at War With Itself

Civil War, Emancipation, and the Price of Union

Fort Sumter was only the beginning.

Bull Run would destroy expectations of a quick war.

Antietam would become the bloodiest single day in American military history.

Gettysburg and Vicksburg would change the direction of the conflict.

Enslaved Americans would flee toward United States lines and force the question of freedom directly into the war.

Abraham Lincoln would issue the Emancipation Proclamation.

Black soldiers would fight in United States uniforms.

Grant and Lee would become two of the war's defining military commanders.

Sherman's armies would move through Georgia and the Carolinas.

Richmond would fall.

And at Appomattox Court House, Robert E. Lee would surrender the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant.

But victory would come at an extraordinary cost.

And only days after Appomattox, Abraham Lincoln would be assassinated.

The war would end.

Slavery would end constitutionally.

But the struggle over what freedom actually meant would not.

THE GREAT EXPERIMENT CONTINUES.

Our Money Matters.

Our Choices Matter.

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The People. The Voice. The Future.

Politics 1776