Why The Confederacy?

By Edward Bonekemper · Originally published August 2016 · pp. 20–21

This article discusses one aspect of the Myth of the Lost Cause – whether secession and the Confederacy were the result of concerns for promoting states’ rights or preserving slavery and white supremacy. That is the part of the Myth that causes the most controversy today and is the one that drives the disputes over Confederate flags, monuments and other symbols. There is much contemporary (1860-61) evidence that contradicts the myth that slavery was not the cause of secession and the war. Demographics Only slave states seceded from the Union. Additionally, the following demographics reveal a direct correlation between states’ slave ownership and slave populations and their likelihood of seceding. The higher the percentage of slaves and the higher the percentage of slaveholding families, the likelier a state was to secede. In 1860 there were 15 slave states. In the seven states that seceded before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, slaves constituted 47% of the population and 37% of families owned slaves. In the four states that seceded after Fort Sumter, slaves constituted 39% of the population and 31% of families owned slaves. In the four slave states that never seceded, slaves were 14% of the population and 16% of families owned slaves. These statistics make it clear that the higher the percentage of slaves and the higher the percentage of slaveholding families, the likelier a state was to secede. They support an analysis that the timing and occurrence of secession were directly correlated to a state’s interest in maintaining or protecting the institution of slavery. Secession Resolutions of Seceding States Indisputable evidence of the seceding states’ reasons for secession comes from their own secession resolutions and declarations. South Carolina, of course, went first. Its declaration said: “But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations … .” It complained that Northern states had condemned slavery as sinful and that Northerners had elected as President a man who had said, “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free.” The South Carolinians even criticized Northern states for allowing free blacks to vote. Far from respecting individual states’ rights, they wanted to compel the Federal and other state governments to enforce slaveholders’ rights and white supremacy. Mississippi’s declaration got right to the point: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world… . There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.” After a long list of 16 slavery-related grievances, the declaration concluded, “We must either submit to degradation, and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property.” Florida’s “Cause for Secession” explained: “All hope of the preservation of the Federal Union, upon terms consistent with the safety and honor of the slave-holding States, has finally dissipated by the recent indications of the strength of the anti-slavery sentiment of the free states.” Next, Alabama’s Secession Ordinance gave only one reason: “Whereas, the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin … by a sectional party avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions [slavery] and to the peace and security of the State of Alabama, preceded by many and dangerous infractions of the Constitution of the United States [its fugitive slave provision] by many of the States and people of the Northern section, is a political wrong of so insulting and menacing a character as to justify … adoption of prompt and decided measures for their future peace and security … .” In its Declaration of Causes, Georgia solely addressed “numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.” Its declaration went on for pages about Northern challenges to slavery. It complained that “The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of [the Republicans],” and that “by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union …” Texas’s secession convention provided a laundry-list of slavery-related reasons for its withdrawal from the Union. It criticized Republicans’ “unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color… .” It continued, “We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial and tolerable.” Thus, the first seven seceding states left no doubt that they were leaving the Union because of slavery and slavery-related issues. They announced that they were dissatisfied, not about insufficient states’ rights, but about fugitive slave issues, potential prohibition of slavery in the territories, threats to the institution of slavery, possible loss of the property value of their slaves, and the threat that abolition posed to the Southern economy and white-controlled society. Settlement Efforts Many politicians attempted to settle the festering 1860-61 dispute to avoid additional state secessions and civil war. An examination of those efforts sheds light on what issues were thought to be causing secession and threatening civil war. Congressional settlement efforts resulted in the Crittenden Compromise, named for Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky. In introducing his compromise Constitutional amendments, Crittenden explained their context: “The questions of an alarming character are those which have grown out of the controversy between the northern and southern sections of our country in relation to the rights of the slaveholding States in the Territories of the United States, and in relation to the rights of the citizens of the latter in their slaves… . .” All his compromise proposals related to slavery. They were all aimed at enhancing protections for slavery. The February 1861 Washington Peace Conference was a final effort at reconciliation and war avoidance. For 19 days, 131 delegates from 21 states met in Washington in a quixotic attempt to prevent the Civil War. A Washington Star article said the arriving delegates faced the “only question upon where (sic) there bids fair to be any considerable difference of opinion – the territorial slavery question.” The conference recommended constitutional amendments similar to the Crittenden amendments. Like those, these conflict-avoidance proposals dealt solely with slavery-related issues. Seceding States’ Recruitment Efforts Early seceding states, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana, named pro-secession commissioners to reach out to other slave states to urge their immediate secession. Charles B. Dew has explored their activities, speeches and letters in a revealing little book, Apostles of Disunion. In a concurrent article, he stressed the importance of these commissioners’ presentations to other slave states: “The explanations the commissioners offered and the arguments the commissioners made, in short, provide us with extraordinary insight into the secession of the lower South in 1860-61. And by helping us to understand the ‘why’ of secession, these apostles of disunion have gone a long way toward answering that all-important question, ‘The Civil War was fought over what important issue?’” The commissioners’ documents, letters and speeches are often-overlooked diamonds in the rough. Mississippi’s commissioner addressed the Georgia General Assembly. His primary issues were slavery and race relations. He began with a recital of Northern “outrages,” including the North’s 1850s failure “to yield to us our constitutional rights in relation to slave property.” The recently victorious Republicans, he said, “have demanded, and now demand, equality between the white and negro races, under our Constitution; equality in representation, equality in the right of suffrage, equality in the honors and emoluments of office, equality in the social circle, equality in the rights of matrimony.” The new administration promised “freedom to the slave, but eternal degradation for you and for us.” He continued: “Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality.” He warned that Lincoln would impose a “new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races.” South Carolina’s delegate to Florida told the Florida secession convention that he welcomed the open break in American society along racial lines: “The one is the society of one race, the other of two races. The one is based on free labor, the other slave labor. The one is braced together by but the two great relations of life – the relations of husband and wife, and parent and child; the other by the three relations of husband and wife, parent and child, and master and slave. The one embodies the social principle that equality is the right of man; the other, the social principle that equality is not the right of man, but the right of equals only.” Every argument and statement he made left no doubt that South Carolina had seceded over the slavery issue and that Florida should join them for the same reason. Louisiana’s commissioner to Texas explained Louisiana’s secession rationale: “Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery … . Louisiana and Texas … are both so deeply interested in African slavery that it may be said to be absolutely necessary to their existence, and is the keystone to the arch of their prosperity.” Mississippi’s delegate wrote to North Carolina’s governor that the South faced “common humiliation and ruin,” Northerners who hated Southern institutions were coming to power, and they would overthrow slavery in the name of freedom. He warned that our “Common Government will be revolutionized” and “it will be perverted into an engine for the destruction of our domestic institutions, and the subjugation of our people.” Therefore, he ended, “all questions arising out of the institution of slavery, should be settled now and settled forever.” Georgia’s commissioner to Virginia predicted slavery’s demise within the Union and then explained abolition’s significance in a racist tirade: “By the time the North shall have attained the power [to end slavery], the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything.” He foresaw a Northern invasion of the South to enforce abolition – with dire consequences: “We will be overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth, and, as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination… . We will be completely exterminated and the land will be left in the possession of the blacks, and then it will go back to a wilderness and become another Africa or St. Domingo.” Alabama’s commissioner to Kentucky explained the need to secede. His argument boiled down to the preservation of slavery and racial supremacy. He explained that the Constitution protected African slavery, the North had abandoned it, and it “has not only become one of the fixed domestic institutions of the Southern States, but forms an important element of their political power, and constitutes the most valuable species of their property, worth … not less than $4,000,000,000…” As to the South, he concluded: “Will the South give up the institution of slavery and consent that her citizens be stripped of their property, her civilization destroyed, the whole land laid waste by fire and sword? It is impossible. She cannot; she will not.” Mississippi’s commissioner to Delaware complained of the Lincoln administration’s threat to “the rights of the South” – specifically the right “by which one man can own property in his fellow man.” “Slavery was ordained by God,” he asserted, and Southerners would not relinquish their slaves because their cotton fields then would become “barren wastes.” He further warned that Lincoln’s minions would repeal laws that “prohibit circulation of incendiary documents” in order to incite slaves against their masters and they would “excite the slave to cut the throat of his master.” In summary, the commissioners designated by Deep South seceding states to convince other states to join them in seceding from the Union were sent only to slave states and made arguments that reveal their motivations for secession. They carried a message of disgust with Northern actions against and threats to slavery followed by fear-mongering warnings about racial equality, a race war and racial amalgamation. Their own words make it clear that the only states’ right they were interested in was the right to maintain slavery. Confederate Leaders’ Statements In his farewell address to the U.S. Senate, soon-to-be-Confederate president Jefferson Davis claimed Mississippi’s right to maintain slavery was being attacked by misuse of the Declaration of Independence’s “all men are created equal” language, which the Constitution made clear did not apply to slaves. In summary, he said, Mississippi was being denied the right to treat blacks as inferiors to whites. His inaugural address followed the same script. Confederate Vice President Alexander delivered his famous “Cornerstone Speech” explaining the Confederacy’s basic foundations, especially slavery. He said: “The new [Confederate] constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution – African slavery as it exists amongst us – the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution… . The prevailing ideas entertained by [Thomas Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically… . This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time… . Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of the races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the ‘storm came and the wind blew.’” Stephens continued by explaining the Confederacy was different: “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. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.” Thus, Stephens left no doubt that the Confederacy represented a rejection of the “all men are created equal” philosophy of the Founding Fathers and instead was built on the foundation of Negro subordination and slavery. The Confederate Constitution On March 11, 1861, the Confederate Congress adopted the Constitution of the Confederate States.

Although similar to the U.S. Constitution, it added protections for slavery. Thus, it stated, “No … law impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.” It also provided that the Confederacy could acquire new territories and establish slavery there. It concluded: “In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and by the territorial government… .” It is noteworthy that the Confederate Constitution differed from the U.S. Constitution almost exclusively in ensuring the existence of slavery in its states and territories—but that it was virtually identical on the issue of states’ rights, as evidenced by its central government-oriented Supremacy Clause. It read: “The Constitution and the laws of the Confederate States … shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary.” This clause is another piece of evidence that slavery, not states’ rights, was the moving force in establishing the Confederacy. Summary In summary, contrary to the Myth of the Lost Cause, contemporary evidence from the time secession and formation of the Confederacy were occurring shows that preservation of slavery and white supremacy, not states’ rights, was the primary cause of Southern states’ secession and their creation of the Confederacy. Evidence of this connection is found in the slavery-related demographics of the South, the secession resolutions and declarations of the seceding states, prewar settlement efforts, recruiting activities by earlyseceding states, Confederate leaders’ statements, and the Confederate Constitution. Edward Bonekemper, Civil War News Book Review Editor, has American history degrees from Muhlenberg College and Old Dominion University, as well as a law degree from Yale. Ed is a nationwide Civil War speaker. He was an adjunct lecturer in military history at Muhlenberg for eight years. He is the author of six Civil War books, including his recent The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won. He served as a Federal Government attorney for over 34 years and is a Commander (retired) in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve.