"States Talk About Secession Before The Time Of The ACW?" Topic

If so, when and over what issues?

In other words, how soon after the Republic was founded did the State leaders start using the "S" word, and under what circumstances were they threatening secession? And was that coming mostly from the frontier States or did some of the original 13 make those threats?

Dan

There has been talk of secession since shortly after the country was founded. Probably the closest it came was when New England states were considering separating during the War of 1812.

South Carolina in 1832 over the tariff of 1828.

Bill N, were they considering re-joining the Brits?

John Switzer, do you recall what tariffs those were?

Thanks

Dan

Nice piece on New England and the War of 1812

link

The tariff controversy between North and South was a complicated matter of great dispute for decades. In its essentials -

Proceeds from duties upon imported goods and materials were the sole source of operating revenue for the federal government in the 19th century.

About ninety percent of revenue from these tariffs were related to import of finished goods from Great Britain by the Southern states.

Great Britain was the world's greatest industrial power of the era and could deliver better quality goods to the US market at prices well below those of similar types of goods being produced by domestic manufacturers, who were principally located in the northeast.

US manufacturers favored high tariffs on imported finished goods, at first to avoid being driven from their domestic market, later to gain a market price advantage by raising the tariffs higher, and ultimately to make funds available to the federal government which could then be granted or loaned for large capital improvement projects (canals, railroads, etc – the lion's share of which was directed to projects in the notheast).

The South complained that the northern states were effectively picking the economic pockets of southern business (read cotton) to advance their own interests.

The great Nullification Crisis of 1832 arose as a result of a huge increase in the tariff rates navigated through congress by northern interests. A compromise which reduced tariff rates defused that crisis, but constant pressure from northern produced an even greater tariff increase around 1858-59 IIRC which reignited the issue yet again and convinced the south IMO that the northern factions could not be trusted.

Of course, none of this is taught any longer in our schools, because the Civil War was "all about slavery".

Google "Nullification Crisis of 1832" and "Compromise Tariff of 1833" for fuller discussion.

B

This book deals with the New England secession movement:

Banner, James M. Jr. "To the Hartford Convention: The Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789-1815" (1970).

link

Nice piece on New England and the War of 1812

link

'Nice' in the sense of 'containing very little accurate history'?

"Meanwhile, leaders from across New England convened in Hartford, Connecticut, to discuss their grievances with the federal government and produce a list of demands on which their continued participation in the union would be conditional. But a funny thing happened on their way to present the document to Washington — President Madison won the war."

'Won' as in 'signed a peace treaty which gave the US none of its war aims'?

William Freehling's Prelude to Civil War is one of the most highly regarded books on the Nullification Crisis of 1932.

Less clearly related to secession is the Republic of Texas, which remained independent after it won independence because northern states wouldn't vote to admit it to the Union. It would upset the balance in the Senate between slave and free states. Not the same as the Hartford Convention or South Carolina, but an odd case all the same.

Irregardless of what schools are teaching in history these days, I don't think that there would have been an ACW had there been no slavery in the South.

To think otherwise…..

Do we really need to debate that point in this day and age?

William Freehling's Prelude to Civil War is one of the most highly regarded books on the Nullification Crisis of 1932.

And Freehling's Road to Disunion is an excellent history of Southern secessionism.

"Do we really need to debate that point in this day and age?"

It all depends upon what the exact topic of the debate would be:
> If the topic = "The causes of the Civil War included, slavery, tariffs, and the principle of states' rights", no debate is necessary.
> If the topic = "The sole cause of the Civil War was slavery", then a debate would most certainly be apropos IMHO.

B

It appears we do. Exhibit A: South Carolina's deceleration

link

MAKES NO MENTION of Tarriffs and the ONLY mention of states rights is in reference to slavery. It is revisionist history to state otherwise.

Can we get the ability to search back and can that stupid bug be killed once and for all?

This has been discussed many times on the ACW board. Well I started to say "just do a search for slavery", but I guess not.

I can make an excellent argument that slavery was the only cause. The Southern states said it themselves in one succession convention after another. If you have been to the Gettysburg Museum they have an excellent exhibit which spells it out in their own words.

The famous ""Corner Stone" Speech given by Alexander Stephens, which spells it out in detail.

link

Try finding them doing a Google search TMP/

Lets not beat this dead horse again.

This is my opinion but it is shared by many others. If the Compromise of 1820 had not worked. I do not believe the other states could have prevented, by force the succession of the Southern states.

If the New England States had succeeded in 1812 coupled with a British invasion. The British would have accomplished in 1812 what they couldn't do in the AWI. Isolate New England. It may have ended the Union.

Nice one Blutarski😄.

If the New England States had succeeded in 1812 coupled with a British invasion. The British would have accomplished in 1812 what they couldn't do in the AWI. Isolate New England. It may have ended the Union.

This is a meaningless 'what if' – the possibility of a British invasion in 1812 (as opposed to raiding to distract the US' attention from its invasion of Canada) was minimal – it was involved in a life-and-death struggle against the Corsican tyrant and his European empire.

All the US had to do to end the war was stop attacking Canada and abandon its claims to Canadian territory – which is what it did, whereupon the seccessionist threat dissolved.

The article Fatuous Natural disparages is in fact pretty accurate. Votes by the New England states against the war are a matter of record, as is the reluctance of some states militia to operate outside their own state. Secession was always a possibility up to the end of the Civil War because people at the time considered that they were citizens of their State, not the United States. It was common to refer to the United States "are" before the Civil War and "is" afterwards, rather like people in Europe generally consider themselves to French, German, British etc rather than European.

And South Caronlina's Declaration is dead set *against* states' rights — they were very explicitly upset at New York for exercising their rights to completely outlaw slavery in their state.

If the topic = "The sole cause of the Civil War was slavery", then a debate would most certainly be apropos IMHO.

In that case why do all the articles of Secession cite Slavery as the cause of the breaking away?

Alright, technically there are a couple that complain about the failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and SC whining about NY outlawing slavery – making it an "anti-states rights cause."

Don't see any references to Tariffs in the documents.

It's "secession".
Not "succession".
This thread is rife with autocorrect nonsense.

I wonder how seceding would have compelled New York to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act.
Oh well. When you're annoyed, you're annoyed.

Well maybe you can't "Search" but you can all get quietly older ploughing through this lot, which I think as the last time we all hammered slavery.(Or not)

TMP link

I don't think Dan was asking about the causes of the ACW but if there were any earlier instances of states talking about leaving the the union.
South Carolina threat to leave in 1832 was serious enough to cause Andrew Jackson to move federal troops into neighboring states.
And while slavery is the cause of the ACW; if the South Carolina had left in the union in 1832 and armed conflict resulted between federal and state forces the cause would not have been slavery but the tariff.

Well maybe you can't "Search" but you can all get quietly older ploughing through this lot, which I think as the last time we all hammered slavery.(Or not)
TMP link

Your link was probably the last time the 'slavery argument' was covered but it seems like an easy read compared with
theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=460333.

The only likelihood of avoiding déjà vu would be to focus on the actual question at the top of the thread:

If so, when and over what issues?
In other words, how soon after the Republic was founded did the State leaders start using the "S" word, and under what circumstances were they threatening secession? And was that coming mostly from the frontier States or did some of the original 13 make those threats?

[I suspect the probability of people focusing on the actual question is low.]

John Switzer: "I don't think Dan was asking about the causes of the ACW but if there were any earlier instances of states talking about leaving the the union."

Thanks. You are absolutely right. I was asking about specific examples between the birth of the US and the ACW, and NOT asking for a re-hash of the root causes of the ACW Secessions per se.

Maybe I made a mistake when I talked about an "S" word and just left it as such, thinking that the rest of the sentence made it clear enough. That's probably why Der Alte Fritz and others immediately assumed that I meant slavery.

I meant ANY serious talk of Secession, by ANY state(s), North or South, for whatever reason(s), from the time of the ratification of the US Constitution until the bloody mess that came to be known as the ACW.

I hope this clarifies the question now.

Dan

Very early, in fact just around the time of Yorktown, the Patriot (… cough cough…) Ethan Allen was engaged in negotiations with the British governor of the Province of Quebec, about separating the Republic of Vermont and joining the British. Then Yorktown happened.
That kind of put a stop to the negotiations. Note "Republic of Vermont". Allen was waging guerilla warfare against New York in that area with the Green Mountain Boys when the Revolution broke out.
See Haldimand Affair, or Negotiations.
link

Then there was the Aaron Burr affair. It may or may not have been about detaching the Western states or territories. The more I read about it, the less I know.
But that scoundrel and treasonous James Wilkinson was involved, so it cannot have been good.
Harrrr! I just Googled James Wilkinson, and Wikipedia calls him a "soldier and STATESMAN". Who says Wikipedia doesn't have a sense of humor?

A compromise which reduced tariff rates defused that crisis, but constant pressure from northern produced an even greater tariff increase around 1858-59 IIRC which reignited the issue yet again and convinced the south IMO that the northern factions could not be trusted.

I'm afraid that YDRC. The Tariff of 1857 was the lowest of the 19th century. There was no increase in 1858-59. A modest increase was proposed in Congress during that time, but it was not this proposal that "convinced the south IMO that the northern factions could not be trusted." The tariff had always been a sectional issue, on which Northern and Southern interests disagreed.

No revision of the low tariff of 1857 could pass the Senate as long as Southern senators resisted it. They did so until 1861, when they left the chamber as their states seceded, which they did (as they stated in their secession declarations) to protect their domestic institutions, slavery in particular.

As several others have suggested, consider reading Freehling's work, or David Potter's or Kenneth Stampp's or Michael Holt's. Without an accurate knowledge base, mere opinion IMO is of marginal value.

Very early, in fact just around the time of Yorktown, the Patriot (… cough cough…) Ethan Allen was engaged in negotiations with the British governor of the Province of Quebec, about separating the Republic of Vermont and joining the British.

Didn't a similar thing happen in South Carolina after Clinton's proclamation about slave confiscation? I seem to recall reading (can't remember where now) that SC offered to drop out of the war all together and become neutral, and even help to fight off any French incursion if they were spared from the proclamation's impact.

Clearly SC had a bit of an issue with Congress from the get-go.

gprokopo -
I was referring to the Morrill Tariff which passed the House of Representatives in the 1859/1860 session and, in a dramatic departure from the mutually agreeable compromise tariff levels going all the way back to 1846, represented a huge increase in tariff rates. Yes, the Morrill bill could not get through the Senate so long as the Southern bloc held sufficient votes to block it, but that is not the point. A delicate vote stalemate in the Senate was no long-term political guarantee of safety considering that the nation was at that point in time politically divided into Northern, Southern and Western blocs of interest. The Morrill tariff bill delivered the message that Northern interests would not rest with respect to protective tariffs. Lincoln was an ardent protectionist and had publicly announced after his election victory that passage of a new protectionist tariff was a main priority. The South could read the hand-writing on the wall – hence my remark about their perception of Northern business interests being untrustworthy.

You can argue that the financial distress of the federal government after the Panic of 1857 required a solution. But you can also argue that Northern industrial interests were not interested in footing any part of that expense and saw the South yet again as the source of such additional revenue. No federal income or consumption taxes to spread the burden among the nation as a whole was even proposed (TTBOMK), although all those means of taxation were very soon implemented after the secession exodus brought about a state of war.

What puzzles me about this argument that slavery was the one and only cause of the war is this: what exactly prompted so many Southern to secede at that precise moment in time? Yes, Lincoln had won the presidency, but he was not a radical abolitionist. He did hold anti-slavery sentiments and did not wish to see it expanded into new states, but he also openly stated that he would happily accept slavery if it meant keeping the nation intact. What did loom before the South at that moment was not a legislative threat against the institution of slavery, but the Morrill tariff bill and the election of a President with avowed protectionist tariff sentiments.

Once again, this is not to argue that Tariffs were THE cause of the war. It is not even an argument that Slavery was not an important or even the principal underlying cause of the political schism that resulted in war. It is simply an argument that several very important issues – slavery, tariffs, states' rights – were ingredients in the political witches' brew that resulted in the Civil War.

Feel free to disagree.

B

Seizing upon slavery as the sole cause of the ACW is the modern "bumper sticker" school of history.

Lincoln was an ardent protectionist and had publicly announced after his election victory that passage of a new protectionist tariff was a main priority.

No, he did not do this. His only public statement relating to the tariff was a speech on Feb 15, 1861, in which he said that the tariff wa an important issue but in which he explicitly took no position on the Morrill tariff.

Nor was Lincoln an "ardent protectionist." He was a Henry Clay-style Whig (and later a Republican) who supported his party's stance on the tariff, but he was not particularly ardent about it. He nearly left politics altogether in the early 1850s "until the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again" (Speech at Peoria, Oct. 16, 1854); in other words, it was the expansion of slavery that brought him back into politics, and was the one issue about which he could be described as "ardent." In The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, from 1832 to 1860 references to "slavery" outnumber those to "tariff" by 1,760 to 65.

What puzzles me about this argument that slavery was the one and only cause of the war is this…

No serious historian of my acquaintance holds that "slavery was the one and only cause of the war"; nor do I. Most do hold that slavery was by far the most significant cause of the war, underlying all the others. As Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural, "all knew that this interest [slavery] was, somehow, the cause of the war."

what exactly prompted so many Southern to secede at that precise moment in time? Yes, Lincoln had won the presidency, but he was not a radical abolitionist. He did hold anti-slavery sentiments and did not wish to see it expanded into new states, but he also openly stated that he would happily accept slavery if it meant keeping the nation intact.

This is an excellent question. For a persuasive answer, I highly recommend Crofts, Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other 13th Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union. Crofts makes the point that Lincoln and others in the North asked exactly the same question. At the risk of oversimplifying, Croft's argument is that Southern politicians in the 1850s increasingly portrayed all anti-slavery Northerners, including moderates like Lincoln, as "Black Republican abolitionists," to win local political support. There being no Republican party and almost no-antislavery sentiment in the South, elections there were contests between pro-slavery candidates who competed to vilify the North more than their opponents. W. L. Garrison's The Liberator abolitionist newspaper had only a few thousand subscribers in the North, but its articles were widely reprinted by fire-eating Southern editors whose readers assumed that Garrison represented Northern thinking on slavery. Real Northern politicians (including Lincoln) found the idea that they were all radicals so absurd (as it was) that they failed to realize how widespread it had become in the South. Mainstream Southern politicians who had gotten elected in part by such propaganda knew it wasn't true--Jefferson Davis, for example, knew that his Northern colleagues in the Senate weren't all radicals--but when a Republican was elected president in 1860, Davis and other established Southern leaders found themselves powerless against the tide of grass-roots secessionism that was unleashed. Southern voters believed what they had been told for ten years (that Lincoln et. al. were hell-bent on destroying slavery tomorrow), and ignored what Lincoln himself said or did. Even the proposed 13th Amendment of 1861, protecting slavery where it already existed in the states, was too little too late to change their minds.

One clarification is necessary. Lincoln believed that slavery was "in the course of ultimate extinction" as long as it could be confined to the states where it was already legal. He was willing to accept its temporary continuation on those terms, but no others.

It is not even an argument that Slavery was not an important or even the principal underlying cause of the political schism that resulted in war. It is simply an argument that several very important issues – slavery, tariffs, states' rights – were ingredients in the political witches' brew that resulted in the Civil War.

Well put. The problem that often comes up in these discussions is that there are still people who would deny that slavery was the "principal underlying cause of the political schism that resulted in war," as it clearly was. They refute the straw man argument that slavery was the only cause of the war, and then having demonstrated that slavery wasn't the only cause, they imply that tariffs and states' rights were equivalent in importance with slavery, despite abundant historical evidence to the contrary.

Some are even talking about it now !

Regardless of all the discussion, rhetoric, opinions, etc., it seems to me once Ft. Sumter was fired upon by elements of the CSA. Followed by Union Forces crossing into CSA territory … the War was on.

Many in the Union saw the shelling of Sumter an attack on the Federal Gov.

Many in the CSA/South believed Union forces were invading their states.

Seems to me that whatever the factors that brought the southern states to secede, the war itself was fought principally over the issue of secession. Lincoln would have pursued his war whatever the cause or causes were for secession.

As Lincoln stated in his letter to the Abolitionist Horace Greeley:

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views. [emphasis added]

link

To 'save the Union' was Lincoln's aim. Saving the Union meant defeating secession and reestablishing Washington's hegemony over the rebel states. Lincoln wasn't fighting to end slavery, unless it helped achieve his principal aim.

I have to agree with that … Slavery was secondary, a means to an end a long the way. Albeit a heinous institution that should have been abolished decades before. If not longer …

Hi gprokopo -
> It seems that you and I have different ideas on what constitutes an "ardent protectionist". Protectionism was a foundation stone of Lincoln's belief system from his earliest entry into politics up to his election as president. His famous debates with both Douglas and Calhoun focused upon that very topic. He may have muted his opinions at times as a matter of political expediency, but there can be IMO no doubt about his fundamental position.

> Lincoln may well have "taken no position on the Morrill Tariff" in his speech. What he did do, however, was inform the seceding states that he fully intended to collect all duties and imposts due to the Federal government (per the Morrill Tariff now enacted into law) and – reducing the diplomatic phraseology to its unpleasant basics – signaled an intention to employ force of arms if necessary to do so.

I think we will have to agree to disagree on this matter.

Nice chatting, though.

B

His famous debates with both Douglas and Calhoun focused upon that very topic.

No, Lincoln's famous debates with Douglas focused on the expansion of slavery into the territories. In seven debates, Lincoln never once used the word "tariff." Between them, Lincoln and Douglas mentioned "protection" 16 times, but every time it was in relation to legal protection of slavery, not a protective tariff. Anyone who has read the debates with any care knows that they were not focused on protection or the tariff. As for Calhoun, Lincoln never debated him at all.

I think we will have to agree to disagree on this matter.

Nice chatting, though.

Agree.

Hi gprokopo -
You are absolutely correct that the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858 did not touch upon tariffs or finance, but I was not referring to that event. Lincoln, Douglas and Calhoun had debated tariffs and finance (and banking IIRC) back in 1839/1840.

B

You keep moving the goalposts. The "famous debates with both Douglas and Calhoun," as you called them, were not those of then-obscure Illinois state legislators in 1839-1840. The Calhoun of the 1839-40 debates (which were never published and hardly "famous") was not Senator John C. Calhoun, as most readers would assume, but was actually John Calhoun, the surveyor of Sangamon County, a local Democrat.

Yes, Lincoln had been an orthodox Whig who supported high tariffs, but by the time the Whig party disintegrated in the mid-1850s, tariffs were no longer the central issue defining the parties. See Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party and Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856. The new Republican Party included ex-Democrats and ex-Know Nothings as well as ex-Whigs. Support for a high tariff was not a test of party orthodoxy for Republicans, as it had been fifteen years earlier for Whigs, but resistance to slavery expansion was. Evidence of what concerned Lincoln in 1839-1840 doesn't contradict the fact that he, Stephen Douglas, and the American electorate were far more focused on the expansion of slavery than on the tariff in the late 1850s.

It seems many are stuck on just the 1850s, and with the North/South differences. There were many other decades I really wanted to hear about.

Maybe crossposting to the ACW Board was a mistake.

Dan

Hi gprokopo -
Not trying to move any goalposts. I was acknowledging that you were correct in saying that tariffs were not featured in the "famous" Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. My poor memory.

As regards other issues and questions touched upon, we will have to agree to disagree.

Enjoy your day.

B

There was a significant amount of talk about secession between 1776 and 1860. Most of it was just that-talk. It was by people whose primary interest was in altering policy, rather than about breaking up the union. It typically ended either when policy concessions were made or when those talking about it found out they had become isolated politicly. Because of this most of that secession talk has since been forgotten about.

One reason secession talk transitioned to secession in 1860 was because the country had reached a point where it wasn't possible to make policy concessions. This is what history books focus on. The other equally important reason was that those talking about secession, or at least splitting the union, were no longer politicially isolated. During the Nullification Crisis South Carolina politicians found themselves isolated. When South Carolina left the union in 1860 it was confident of the support of protectionist Louisiana and frontier Arkansas and Texas, and at least the sympathy of more industrializing states such as Virginia, Maryland, Tennesse and Kentucky. In northern circles it was acceptable before the war began to speak of letting the slave states go.