Disunion
GRADE 11
Infantry regiment in camp circa 1861. Courtesy of the National Archives,
NWDNS-111-B-487
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! Disunion: Teacher’s Eyes Only
Start the class off by asking the students to write a short journal entry about the Civil War.
They should answer the following questions: What do I know about the Civil War? What
caused the Civil War? How has the Civil War changed America? If you have time, you may
want to take a minute to ask volunteers (or victims!) to share a few points with the rest of
the class.
If you would like, you can play the soundtrack to Ken Burns’ The Civil War as students
enter the room. (Ashokan Farewell is a good mood-setter.) Another good option would be
selections from Camp Chase Fife and Drum.
Hand out the sheet entitled “Disunion” and ask the students to read it. Inform them that it
will help them better understand the causes of the war.
Hand out the assignment entitled “Is Secession Constitutional?” and ask the students to
read it and then on a separate sheet of paper, answer whether or not they believe that the
South was justified in seceding or if they were committing treason.
Ten minutes before class is over collect the assignment and then explain to the students
that although there were many causes of the Civil War, many Northerners believe that
cause to be slavery, and many Southerners believe that cause to be states’ rights.
Explain that tomorrow they will have a debate over the issue. Explain that you will divide
the class into two parts – one half arguing that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, and
the other half defending states’ rights as the cause of the Civil War. Each part will receive
the same documents; some supporting slavery as the main cause, and some supporting
states’ rights. You will give everyone a document to take home and read. (Depending on
the number of students, you may need to double up on some documents or cut some
out.) After reading the document, they need to answer the questions.
Divide the class and hand out the documents and assignment sheets. (Give the shorter
documents to students who are less advanced and the more complicated documents to
advanced students.) Please encourage students to take notes in the margins.
Optional activity
Watch part of the movie Gettysburg. At one point, Tom Chamberlain (Col. Joshua Lawrence
Chamberlain’s brother) is speaking with captured Confederate soldiers. They discuss why
they are fighting.
Optional books for students to read are James McPherson’s What they Fought For, or Dr.
Charles Dew’s Apostles of Disunion. Both books are relatively short and provide wonderful
insight. McPherson’s book discusses the reasons the common soldier fought, and Dew’s
book discusses why the politicians of the South chose to secede, in the words of its own
secession commissioners. (Be sure to discuss the difference between why the politicians
chose to secede, and why the common soldier fought.)
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Disunion
Step back in time to the year 1860. The Union was less than 100 years old, and it was already
having problems. More than seventy years after the adoption of the Constitution, a nation
founded on principles of liberty and equality still allowed human enslavement and quarreled
over the balance between state and federal powers.
GRADE 11
The North and the South had developed into two very different regions. The South was an
agricultural region with few large cities. The majority of the South’s population was involved
in the production of cotton and tobacco on plantations. These crops had made the South
wealthy, and there had been little need to develop factory industries in this region. The South
owned about four million slaves, which was 38% of the Southern population, and they were
crucial to the plantation system. Most Southerners in 1860 were Democrats and believed in
states’ rights, which held that the state governments should have more power than the national government. Read the words of James Stirling as he describes Georgia:
“…one is struck with the rough look of the whole face of civilization. The country is nowhere well cleared; towns and villages are few and far between, and even those which you have
seen have an unfinished look… How different from the face
of a New England State, dotted over with neat farm-houses.”
— The Museum of the Confederacy, The Road to War
The North was a developing industrial region with many cities, small towns, and family farms
in the country. Many Northerners in 1860 were Republicans who believed in a strong, central,
national government. Slavery was illegal in most parts of the North, and most Northerners
also believed that it was immoral. These feelings led to an almost universal disregard for the
Fugitive Slave Law that required non-slave owners to return runaway slaves. This disregard
angered the South.
The North sought internal improvements like roads, railroads, and canals sponsored by the
Federal government, but the South didn’t want their taxes to pay for these improvements in
the North. The North also wanted a high tariff placed on imported goods to protect
Northern manufacturers. This directly hurt the South because they traded their crops for foreign goods. Read as James Stirling compares the North to the South:
“In Illinois the cars were crowed with emigrants, or speculators, or men looking as anxiously for new homes… At every
station a new city, at lowest a new farm or village was springing up; and on every hand the click of the hammer and the
rasping of the saw… In Georgia, how different! Some growth
there is in one or two towns; some increase of cotton, too
there may be; but there lacks the animation and spirit of
Illinois. There is none of that bustle or hopeful eagerness.”
— The Museum of the Confederacy, The Road to War
In the first half of the 1800s, the Union was growing at an enormous rate. The population
more than quadrupled in size and the nation’s borders pushed westward at a furious pace.
Tension grew as the question of whether the new western territories would be slave or free
kept cropping up. This question was important primarily from the perspective of the balance
of power between the free states and the slaveholding states in the political parties and nationC I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
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al government. If a state allowed slaves, it was more likely to tip the balance of power in favor
of the Democrats. If it didn’t, it would tilt the power in favor of the Republicans. Neither
party wanted to upset the precarious balance.
The following timeline details the major events leading up to secession and war.
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Countdown to War
GRADE 11
United States Constitution Ratified endorsing slavery.
1787-1790
Fugitive Slave Law requires non-slaveholders to return runaway slaves.
1793
Constitutional ban on the slave trade is placed into effect.
1808
Admission of Alabama to the Union creating an equal balance of power in the Senate between
free and slave-holding states.
1819
Missouri Compromise – In 1818, Missouri sought admission to the
Union as a slave-holding state. After two years of bitter debate, the
Missouri Compromise was agreed upon. This compromise admitted
Missouri to the Union as a slave state and admitted Maine as a free
state to maintain the balance in the Senate. The compromise prohibited slavery north of latitude 36° 30’ in the Louisiana Purchase territory, with the exception of Missouri, and allowed it south of that line.
1820
Secretary of State Henry Clay asks Canada for help returning slaves
who have escaped there; the Canadian government refuses.
1826
Nat Turner’s Rebellion – Nat Turner, a slave, and about 60 other
slaves went from plantation to plantation one night in Virginia, murdering whites. They killed over 50 people before the revolt was put
down. Nat and many others were executed for their part, or suspected
part, in the revolt. Nat Turner’s Rebellion struck long-term fear in the hearts of
slave owners, engendered new restrictions on slaves, and prompted a debate on
the slavery question.
1831
Wilmot Proviso – excluded slavery from most of the territory acquired in the
Mexican War. It was approved by the House but rejected in the Senate causing increased hostility between the North and the South.
1846
Henry Clay. Courtesy of
The Library Of Congress,
LC-USZ62-109953 DLC
Compromise of 1850 – Disagreements erupted over whether land acquired
from Mexico after the Mexican-American War would be slave or free.
The compromise admitted California as a free state, and the inhabitants
“The Confessions of Nat
Turner, the Leader of the
of the territories of New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah would be
Late Insurrection in
allowed to decide whether or not to permit slavery in their territories
Southampton, Virginia”
when they applied for statehood. The compromise also included the
Courtesy of the Library of
Congress, African
Fugitive Slave Act, which denied captured blacks any legal power to
American Odyssey
prove their freedom and required U.S. Marshals and deputies to help
Collection Digital ID:
slave owners capture their property and fining them $1000 if they
rbcmisc ody
refused. Lastly, the compromise ended the slave trade in the District of
Columbia.
1850
Harriett Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin published in response to the Fugitive Slave Act of
1850. Within two years, it had sold two million copies worldwide. After the Bible, Uncle Tom’s
Cabin was the biggest seller of the 19th century. Stowe’s arguments against slavery had little to
1852
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do with racial equality; her arguments centered on religion and the sanctity of motherhood
and family. These, she felt, were the arguments most likely to affect public opinion in the
North. President Lincoln read Uncle Tom’s Cabin before announcing the Emancipation
Proclamation in 1862, and when he met Stowe, he exclaimed, “So this is the little woman who
started this great war!”
1855
Kansas-Nebraska Act – repealed the Missouri Compromise, allowing settlers in the territories
of Kansas and Nebraska to decide whether they would allow slavery within their borders when
they applied for statehood. The Kansas-Nebraska Act split the Democratic Party and virtually
destroyed the Whig Party. The northern Whigs joined the antislavery Democrats to form the
Republican Party.
1856
“Bleeding Kansas” - Disagreements over slavery led to violence between the settlers.
1857
Dred Scott vs. Sanford – Dred Scott, a slave, sued for his freedom on the grounds that since
his master had taken him to live in free territories, he should be free. The controversial decision of the Supreme Court of the United States stated that no slave or descendant of a slave
could be a U.S. citizen. As a non-citizen and a slave viewed as property, Scott was not entitled
to file suit. The court also ruled that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories, therefore, the Missouri Compromise and other legislation limiting slavery were unconstitutional.
Panic of 1857 – an economic depression was sparked when a ship carrying
two million dollars of California gold sank.
1858
Lincoln-Douglas Debates – Debates between Abraham Lincoln and
Stephen Douglas, sponsor of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, over slavery. The
debates forged Lincoln into a prominent national figure and solidified his
Republican Party’s anti-slavery platform.
1859
John Brown and his abolitionist followers, who had previously killed proslavery settlers in Kansas, seized the U.S. Armory and Arsenal and Hall’s Rifle
Works at Harpers Ferry hoping to spark a slave uprising. Their undertaking
was unsuccessful, and Brown and many of his accomplices were captured,
tried, found guilty of murder, treason, and inciting slaves to rebellion. They
were hanged. Although both Southerners and Northerners condemned John
Brown’s actions, Northern abolitionists viewed Brown as a martyr and many
Southerners viewed the raid as a Northern plot to incite a servile insurrection.
1860
Presidential Election – Abraham Lincoln was elected by only 40% of the
popular vote. His vice-president was
Hannibal Hamlin. When he won the election, it was the last straw for the
Southerners. He was a member of the
Republican Party, which wanted to ban
slavery in the territories. The Southerners
were afraid that Lincoln would also try to
abolish slavery nationwide.
November 6: Slave states call conventions
to consider secession.
December 20: Secession of South Carolina
72
John Brown, the
abolitionist, was
hung for his raids
on December 2,
1859. Courtesy of
the National
Archives,
NWDNS-111-SC101021
TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR
Abraham Lincoln.
Courtesy of the Library
of Congress, LC-B8161321
Secession of several states:
January 9: Mississippi
January 10: Florida
January 11: Alabama
January 19: Georgia
January 26: Louisiana
February 1: Texas
1861
GRADE 11
February 4: Convention of seceded states in Montgomery, Alabama to draft a Provisional
Constitution for the Confederacy.
February 4: Conference of the states (representatives of 7 slave and 14 free states were
present) in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to save the Union. An amendment was
passed stating that Congress could never interfere with slavery in the states but was not
ratified by the necessary number of states.
February 8: Constitution of Confederate States of America adopted. The CSA
Constitution was very similar to the U.S. Constitution, but it also strengthened the
rights of slaveholders.
February 9: C.S.A. elects Jefferson Davis provisional president and Alexander H.
Stephens provisional vice president.
February 18: Inauguration of Jefferson Davis.
March 4: Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States: “In your hands,
my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war… You
have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most
solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ it.” Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address
Jefferson Davis,
President of the
CSA. Courtesy
of the National
archives,
NWDNS-111B-5158
April 12: At 4:30 a.m., the Civil War begins with the Confederates firing on Union held
Forth Sumter (South Carolina). “Our Southern brethren have done grievously wrong, they
have rebelled and have attacked their father’s house and their loyal brothers. They must be
punished and brought back, but this necessity breaks my heart.” – Major Robert Anderson, commanding officer at Fort Sumter
April 13: Fort Sumter surrenders.
April 15: Lincoln calls for 75,000 troops to fight for the Union for 90 days. This alarmed
slaveholding states that had not necessarily planned to secede. It showed a threat of federal
force against states conducting themselves legally. It prompted additional states to join the
Confederacy in protest of what they perceived to be an abuse of Federal power.
April 17: Secession of Virginia
May 6: Secession of Arkansas
May 7: Secession of Tennessee
May 20: Secession of North Carolina
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Secession:
A Constitutional Remedy for the Breach
of the Organic Law
by Kent Masterson Brown
“Secession”, it brings to mind a Civil War that was the costliest, in terms of loss of life and
property, this nation has ever known. It was a war which pitted the Federal government (on
behalf of twenty-three northern States) against eleven southern States. Sadly, that same
Federal government was created by a Constitution which was drafted and ratified by the
States. So instrumental were the States in the making of the Constitution that it was referred
to in the Constitutional Convention and the ratifying conventions as a “compact” among and
between the States. If the Constitution was a compact among and between the States, could it
not be rescinded or annulled by a State or group of States if one or more other States
breached its terms? Was not the secession of States in 1860 and 1861 nothing more than the
exercise of that right?
To understand secession, one must examine the development of Anglo-American law. First,
one must examine the development of the law of equity and its application to the law of contracts. Then, one must examine the drafting and ratification of the Constitution itself. In the
end, one reaches the inescapable conclusion that secession was perfectly constitutional. Here,
note a word of caution. To read law is a dry undertaking. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
spoke of reading law as akin to eating sawdust. But to understand any legal doctrine or theory
requires the reader to grin and bear the exercise.
I. The Evolution of Equity and Equitable Remedies
From the reign of Edward I in England (r. 1272-1307) the phrase jus commune began being
applied to the unenacted, nonstatutory law common to all Englishmen. The “common law”
came to refer to the law as applied by the three then-developing courts in England: King’s
Bench, the Common Bench (or Court of Common Pleas) and the Exchequer.
Within the Exchequer, the King’s fiscal office, evolved the Chancery, the secretarial department. At its head was the Chancellor whose duty, among other things, was to issue writs over
the great seal of the King to begin actions in the courts of law. The department came to be
known as the Court of Chancery. By the fourteenth century, the Court of Chancery developed
two sides, a common law side and an equity side. The common law side evolved into a court
system that heard cases involving all sorts of damage claims.
Often, however, a petitioner would seek a remedy that, in the ordinary course of justice, could
not be obtained. The King was literally asked by the petitioner to find a remedy. Many of the
cases involved the poor or dispossessed who petitioned the crown for help against one who
was more wealthy and powerful and who was threatening harm or harming the petitioner. By
the fourteenth century petitioners in these cases went to the Chancellor, not directly to the
King. The Chancellor, without the use of a jury, would order the defendant to appear before
him and be examined to determine whether some extraordinary relief ought to be granted to
the petitioner. By the sixteenth century the Chancellor’s powers were defined by “the rules of
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equity and good conscience.”
The two great pillars of civil justice – law and equity – denote the bodies of law – and the specific courts which enforce same – which provide the means by which citizens may seek redress
for the whole panoply of civil wrongs committed, or which are being committed, against them
by others. They have evolved over seven hundred years and are applied in all American courts
to this day. If a party is injured in property or person by another, and such injury can be quantified by an amount of money (damages), the action would be one “at law” and brought in a
law court presided over by a judge who would often empanel a jury to decide questions of disputed fact. If, on the other hand, a party is about to be injured or is in the process of being
injured by another – and no monetary relief would be adequate to redress the wrong – and the
offending party can be restrained by some extraordinary action by a Court, the action would
be one “in equity” and brought in a court of equity. The judge would sit as a “chancellor,”
deciding all questions of law and fact.
GRADE 11
The law-equity division of the courts was planted in the American colonies upon settlement.
English settlers established their English jurisprudential system. Courts of chancery existed in
one form or another in every one of the thirteen colonies prior to the Revolution. After the
Revolution, most of the new States established courts of chancery, although there was little or
no American equity jurisprudence. Nevertheless, the English tradition of the division of law
and equity was known by the American colonists. It was particularly well known and understood by the Framers and Ratifiers of the Constitution. No greater evidence of such knowledge may be found than the words the Framers chose for Article III, Section 2, of the
Constitution of the United States: “The judicial power [of United States courts] shall extend
to all cases, in Law and Equity.”
II. The Evolution of the Law of Contracts and Judicial Enforcement
Thereof, Including the Equitable Remedy of Rescission.
How the two great pillars of civil justice are actually used is understood when one examines
the law of contracts, a body of law as old as the Anglo-American division of law and equity. A
contract is a promise, or set of promises, for the breach of which the law gives a remedy, or
the performance of which the law in some way recognizes as a duty. Synonyms for the term
“contract” are “agreement” and “compact.” When asked to define the term contract, courts
have stressed the classic concept of an agreement resulting from mutuality of assent between
two or more parties having capacity to contract, and an obligation based on consideration in
the form of an agreement.
Thus, if two parties enter into a contract whereby each promises to perform a particular task,
and one of the parties fails to perform as promised – or breaches the contract – the other
party may seek certain remedies which Anglo-American law has historically provided. A
“breach” of a contract is simply a failure on the part of one or more of the contracting parties,
without legal excuse, to perform any promise which forms the whole or part of the contract.
Throughout Anglo-American judicial history, to remedy a breach of a contract, aggrieved parties were given certain choices by the law. First, they could choose to proceed to a law court
and seek damages for the loss of money in reliance upon the contract being fulfilled. In the
law court, they would seek from the party in breach such sums as would place them in as good
a position as they would have been had the contract been fully performed. Second, there were
also equitable remedies which aggrieved parties could choose to employ instead of pursuing
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an action at law. A court of equity could enforce the contract for the aggrieved parties by making the defaulting party “specifically perform” his contractual obligations. If the defaulting
party failed to comply with the court order, the court would exercise its contempt powers
against him.
Finally, Anglo-American equity jurisprudence historically provided for another remedy for
breach of contract - “rescission,” or, the annulment of the contract. Since the end of the eighteenth century in England, rescission has often been used as a remedy in conjunction with
“restitution.” The aggrieved parties would ask the court to annul the contract and, at the same
time, ask that they be made whole for their own performance, thereby placing them in the
same position they occupied before they entered into the contract.
III. The Call for the Federal Convention and the Framing of the
Resulting Constitution was Performed by the Several States
During the waning years of the Revolution, the thirteen sovereign States entered into a “firm
league of friendship” by the Articles of Confederation. The Articles, however, did not create a
sovereign national government, rather, they created a government wholly dependent upon the
several states. With national post-war finances in crisis, most people lost faith in the
Confederation government. Trade was chaotic and the “nation” was unable to pay its debts.
Stability in foreign relations had never been achieved.
Congress called upon the States to send delegates to a convention. The call, dated February
21, 1787, “recommended to the states composing the Union that a convention of representatives from the states respectively be held... for the purpose of revising the Articles of
Confederation....” Clearly, if anything was to be accomplished to amend the Articles of
Confederation, it had to be done by the States. The States agreed to formulate the Articles of
Confederation, and the States had to be called upon to revise them. The Articles of
Confederation formed a classic “compact” and the States were the parties thereto.
The Convention began in Philadelphia on May 25, 1787. Fifty-five delegates attended some
or all of the proceedings. By the end of the Convention on September 17, 1787, only thirtyeight delegates would cast votes for their respective States on the proposed Constitution of
the United States.
After meeting, debating, drafting and redrafting the document through an intensely hot
Philadelphia summer, the Convention agreed to a Constitution that did, in fact, create a more
powerful Federal government than had the Articles of Confederation. Article I of the proposed Constitution created the Congress with a Senate and House of Representatives. Each
State would have two Senators and the makeup of the House would reflect the population of
each of the States. Article I, Section 8, set forth the powers of Congress. They were “enumerated” powers and included, among other things, the power to coin money, regulate interstate
commerce and declare war. The section even included a “necessary and proper” clause, giving
Congress the power to do those things necessary and proper to carry out its enumerated powers. The Constitution withheld from Congress the power to pass bills of attainder and ex poste
facto laws and further limited Congress’s power to lay direct taxes or suspend the writ of habeas
corpus. Article II created the Office of President of the United States and Vice President of the
United States and defined the limits of their authority. Article III created the Supreme Court
of the United States and defined the jurisdiction thereof. Finally, subsequent Articles, among
other things, provided that full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the public acts,
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records and judicial proceedings of every other State, granted to all citizens of each State all
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States, and guaranteed a republican form
of government to every State. Importantly, Article VI provided that the laws and treaties of
the United States would be the “supreme law of the land,” a provision not without significant
controversy.
GRADE 11
Finally, the document made crystal clear the role of the States as the parties thereto by setting
forth the terms whereby it could be amended and was to be ratified. Article V required all
amendments to be “ratified by the legislatures of three fourths of the states, or by conventions
in three-fourths thereof....” According to Article VII, for the Constitution to become effective
required the “ratification of the conventions of nine states.”
The delegates finally signed the formally-drafted document for and on behalf of their respective States on September 17, 1787, sending it to the Congress of the Confederation and, ultimately, the States for ratification.
IV. The States Ratified the Constitution; Some Ratified it With
Specific Reference to Their Right to Rescind if Necessary
The ratification of the Constitution followed a somewhat difficult path. Although the proponents of the Constitution wanted the document quickly ratified, that did not happen.
Proponents, known as Federalists, received initial momentum when in December, 1787 and
January, 1788 the conventions of five states promptly ratified the Constitution: Delaware
(December 7, 1787), New Jersey (December 18, 1787), Georgia (January 2, 1788) – all unanimous – Pennsylvania (December 12, 1787) and Connecticut (January 9, 1788) by narrower
margins. Between February 6 and June 2, 1788 the conventions of four more States ratified
the Constitution: Massachusetts (February 6, 1788) by a vote of 187-168 after recommending
nine amendments, Maryland (April 28, 1788), South Carolina (May 23, 1788) after recommending multiple amendments, and finally New Hampshire (June 2, 1788). Although New
Hampshire’s ratification gave the Federalists the nine States necessary to approve the
Constitution, Virginia and New York had not ratified the document. They were the largest
States, and without their support the new “Federal Union” would never be realized.
Virginia proved to be a battleground. At the Virginia convention in Richmond, Virginia, such
eminent statesmen as George Mason, Patrick Henry and James Monroe argued against ratification, while James Madison, John Marshall, George Wythe and Edmund Pendleton urged
ratification. From June 2 to June 26, 1788 heated debates continued until a vote was taken and
the Constitution was ratified by the narrow margin of 89 to 79. The ratification was agreed
to, however, subject to the right of the people to rescind if necessary. The resolution of June
26, 1788 read, in part:
We, the delegates of the people of Virginia... Do, in the name and in behalf of
the people of Virginia, declare and make known, that the powers granted
under the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United
States, may be resumed by them, whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression....
After identifying multiple rights which should forthwith be added as amendments to the
Constitution, the delegates formally ratified the document. Importantly, Virginia ratified the
Constitution expressly subject to its peoples’ right of recission.
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In New York the battle was every bit as fierce as in Virginia. Held in Poughkeepsie, the New
York Convention was bitterly divided. Alexander Hamilton, a New Yorker, along with fellow
New Yorker, John Jay, and Virginian, James Madison, were compelled to publish arguments in
the New York press advocating ratification. Those arguments became known collectively as
The Federalist Papers. Finally, on July 26, 1788 New York narrowly ratified the Constitution by
a vote of 30 to 27. In New York, like in Virginia, the resolution of ratification was made
expressly subject to the State’s peoples’ right to rescind. It read, in pertinent part:
We, the delegates of the people of the State of New York...
Do declare and make known —
That the powers of government may be reassumed by the
people whensoever it shall become necessary to their
happiness ...
The delegates then presented a veritable catalogue of rights that they believed should be
added to the Constitution by way of amendment.
Interestingly, North Carolina and Rhode Island never ratified the Constitution until after
George Washington was sworn in as President of the United States. North Carolina, on
August 2, 1788, voted to defer any action on the Constitution until a second Federal convention considered a declaration of rights and other amendments. Only on November 21, 1789
did North Carolina finally ratify the document. Rhode Island, likewise, expressed deep misgivings. In fact, the state legislature defeated resolutions calling for a convention to consider
ratification seven times! Finally, on May 29, 1790 Rhode Island ratified the Constitution after
the Federal government threatened it with economic sanctions. Like Virginia and New York,
Rhode Island ratified the Constitution, or, what it expressly deemed was a “social compact,”
subject to its peoples’ right of rescission. The resolution of ratification – a virtual copy of
New York’s resolution – read, in pertinent part:
We the delegates of the people of the state of Rhode Island
and Providence Plantations, duly elected and met in
Convention... do declare and make known–
I. That there are certain natural rights of which men, when
they form a social compact, cannot deprive or divest their
posterity – among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty,
with the means of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
III. That the powers of government may be reassumed by
the people whensoever it shall become necessary to their
happiness....
V. The Constitution Was a Compact Among the Several States
No one can seriously dispute that the Constitution was the product of the efforts of the thirteen sovereign States. Notably, at least three States, including the two largest States, Virginia
and New York, ratified the Constitution expressly subject to their citizens’ right to rescind or
annul it if necessary.
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Not only did the document, in form, contain all the elements of a contract, but the prevailing
political thought of Revolutionary America underscored the fact that written constitutions
were “compacts.”
GRADE 11
Probably no political writer had more influence on American thought during and immediately
after the Revolution than John Locke. In his Second Treatise on Civil Government, Locke developed a theory that government was the creature of a “social compact” between individuals in a
state of nature to combine in society. As the war progressed, Americans used Locke’s theory to
develop and understand the relationships established between themselves and their States.
The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 actually declared itself to be a “social compact by
which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people,
that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.” Massachusetts was not alone
in the 1780s. “From South Carolina to New Jersey,” Professor Gordon S. Wood has noted,
“the constitution [as applied to the written organic documents of the States] had become ‘a
social compact entered into by express consent of the people.’” And there was historical precedent for such a conclusion. Was not the first written constitution on the North American continent called the “Mayflower Compact” for the very same reasons?
So embedded was the concept that a State constitution was a social compact, that many of the
Framers and Ratifiers of the Constitution used the term to describe the Articles of
Confederation and the United States Constitution. The only difference was that the Articles
of Confederation and the Constitution were considered to be compacts among and between
the States, not among and between the people. Wrote arch-Federalist Alexander Hamilton of
the Articles of Confederation in Federalist No. 21:
The United States as now composed, have no power to exact
obedience, or punish disobedience to their resolutions....
There is no express delegation of authority to them to use
force against delinquent members, and if such a right should
be ascribed to the federal head, as resulting from the nature
of the social compact between the states, it must be by
inference and construction....
James Madison declared long after the ratification of the Constitution:
Our governmental system is established by a compact, not
between the Government of the United States and the State
governments, but between the States as sovereign communities, stipulating each with the other a surrender of certain portions of their respective authorities to be exercised by a common government, and a reservation, for their
own exercise, of all their other authorities.
On the floor of the Convention, Madison eloquently argued that the document the delegates
were drafting was a compact. On June 19, 1787, Madison argued the classic theory of contract
law as applied to the possible rescission or annulment of the Constitution:
If we consider the federal union [as existing under the Articles
of Confederation] as analogous to the fundamental compact
by which individuals compose our society, and which must in
its theoretic origin at least, have been the unanimous act of
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the component members, it can not be said that no dissolution of the compact can be affected without unanimous consent. A breach of the fundamental principles of the compact
by a part of the Society would certainly absolve the other part
from their obligations to it.
Madison then argued that the Federal union was not analogous to social compacts among
individual men, but “to the conventions among individual states.” Then, again drawing upon
the ancient law of contracts, he concluded:
Clearly, according to the Expositors of the law of Nations,
that a breach of any one article, by any one party, leaves all
other parties at liberty, to consider the whole convention to
be dissolved, unless they choose rather to compel the delinquent party to repair the breach.
But in the Constitution then being debated, Madison had earlier abhorred the use of force
against any State, again referencing the ancient law of contracts:
The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment, and would
probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution
of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.
In the ratification conventions in the States, the Constitution was repeatedly referred to as a
“compact.” In those proceedings, unlike the proceedings in the Federal Convention, delegates
freely resorted to the invocation of political theory. Although it is not good form to assert
what the Framers and Ratifiers understood the Constitution to mean (because no one can
assert that they all had one understanding), it is unquestionably correct to state that virtually
all of them understood the Constitution to be a compact in some form, and that they understood the sole remedy for its breach. Few of the Framers or Ratifiers would have understood
the Constitution to be an instrument from which a State could not extricate itself if necessary.
The idea that the Constitution that they had drafted and ratified was entered into “by the
People,” as opposed to the States, and was irrevocable, once ratified, was absolutely unknown
to the Framers and Ratifiers. The only legal construction for the Constitution that any of
them understood was that it was a compact, and, like all compacts, was subject to the equitable
remedy of rescission or annulment upon a breach.
In the years after the ratification of the Constitution, the document was often referred to as a
compact. Both the legislatures of Kentucky and Virginia referred to the Constitution as a
compact in their famous resolutions of 1798-1799, passed in response to the enactment by
Congress, and the enforcement thereof by John Adams’s administration, of the hated Alien
and Sedition Acts. [These laws would have allowed the government to deport or jail non-citizens who might (or might not) be a threat to the government, would have silenced any criticism of the government (therefore revoking First Amendment rights), and would have postponed citizenship until immigrants had resided in the country for 14 years (instead of 5).]
Written largely by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, the Virginia and Kentucky
Resolutions are virtual lessons in the compact theory. Reads the Kentucky Resolution of
November 10, 1798:
Resolved, that the several States composing the United States
of American are not united on the principles of unlimited
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TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR
submission to their General Government; but that by compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United
States.... and that whensoever the General Government
assumed undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative,
void, and of no force. That to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral party, its co-States forming as
to itself, the other party.
GRADE 11
Kentucky did not seek secession but, rather, the “nullification” of the despised Federal laws.
Virginia sought to “interpose” itself between the challenged laws and those against whom they
were enacted to operate. States, claimed Virginia, were “duty-bound to interpose for purposes
of arresting the evil.” The issue resolved itself short of hostilities, but the compact theory and
the related doctrines of “nullification” and “interposition” were firmly enunciated in a crisis
only eleven years after the ratification of the Constitution by two of the nation’s foremost
“founding fathers.”
Then in 1814 the shipping embargo imposed by the James Madison administration during the
War of 1812 led the New England States to openly speak of secession. Relying upon the compact theory, and speaking of the Constitution as an association of States, one Boston newspaper, the Columbian Centinel, wrote:
Whenever [the Constitution’s] principles are violated, or its
original principles departed from by a majority of the States
or of their people, it is no longer an effective instrument, but
that any state is at liberty by the spirit of that contract to
withdraw itself from the union.
Again, the issue passed without a confrontation, although the 1814 Hartford Convention
came close to actually embracing secession as a remedy.
These arguments would be repeated over and over again in the first half of the nineteenth
century. John C. Calhoun would echo the compact theory and the “Resolutions of ‘98” in the
great “nullification” crisis over the Tariff in the 1830s. And, in the end, the Compact theory
would form the basis for the secession of South Carolina and her ten sister southern States in
1860 and 1861.
The theory was absolutely sound. Unquestionably, the Constitution was a compact. It had all
the requisites of a contract. There were parties: thirteen States, to which were added those
that similarly ratified the document in the years after 1789. There was mutuality: each State
promised to give up some of its sovereignty in exchange for what the Union promised to
deliver. The Constitution was created by the States and ratified by the States. It could only be
amended by the States. If then, the Constitution was a compact, what was the remedy for a
State or a group of States if there was a breach by other States? The only remedy, short of
persuading the party or parties in breach to conform, was the equitable remedy of rescission.
If the Constitution was a compact, and it could have been rescinded or annulled upon a
breach, what would have been sufficient to constitute a breach? The answer is simple.
Whatever would have constituted a breach was left wholly to the State seeking the extraordinary remedy of rescission. Obviously, in the words of the Virginia Resolution of 1799, the
offensive act would have had to have been “a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of
power not granted by the compact.” To argue whether a breach occurred in 1860 and 1861 is,
of course, beyond the scope of this discussion. Volumes have been written about it. A few
C I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
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GRADE 11
words about the issue are appropriate, however. The “threat of abolition,” in the eyes of the
slaveholding States, was viewed as an act constituting a breach. To understand why it was so
viewed, one must place oneself in the shoes of the Southerners of 1860 and 1861. With four
million slaves in the southern States by 1860, the sudden release of them was unthinkable.
Where would the freed slaves go? What would they do? How would they be cared for? If the
slaves were suddenly freed, the region would be torn apart. There was no public assistance
then. The Southerner then believed that if slavery was to be abolished, only the States should
be responsible for the method and timing.
Slavery was actually recognized then by the Constitution. That was never questioned. For the
northern States, through the Federal government, to threaten the abolition of slavery was
unquestionably contrary to the compact. There had been threats of slave uprisings, and John
Brown’s Harpers Ferry raid in 1859 added fuel to the fear of the abolition movement. After
years of intense argument and bitterness over the issue of slavery and its extension into the
new territories, the election to the presidency of Abraham Lincoln, a candidate who did not
even run in the southern States and who was openly supported by abolitionists in the northern
States, was, to Southerners then, sufficient cause for alarm. Secession may well have been the
result of a “crisis of fear,” but the fear of those Southerners living then was real nevertheless.
The actions of Southerners in 1860 and 1861 must be viewed in the context of their times,
not with hindsight and our very different values.
South Carolina rescinded its ratification of the Constitution on December 20, 1860. Her sister southern States followed.
No Southerner on the eve of the Civil War was more erudite than Judah P. Benjamin, then a
United States Senator from Louisiana. A lawyer of significant distinction, Benjamin delivered
a speech on the right of secession before the Senate on December 31, 1860. Relying upon the
ancient law of contracts, Benjamin said:
I say, therefore, that I distinguish the rights of the States
under the Constitution into two classes; one resulting from
the nature of their bargain; if the bargain is broken by the sister states, to consider themselves freed from it on the ground
of breach of compact; if the bargain be not broken, but the
powers be perverted to their wrong and their oppression,
then, whenever that wrong and oppression shall become sufficiently aggravated, the revolutionary right – the last inherent
right of man to preserve freedom, property, and safety – arises, and must be exercised, for none other will meet the cause.
This article was
printed in North and
South, August
2000, Vol. 3,
Number 6.
Please consult the
original article for
information on
works cited.
Reprinted by permission of Kent
Masterson Brown
and North and
South.
82
Only a Civil War – the use of brutal force – crushed the attempt by States to secede. As a
result of the Civil War, the Constitution is viewed differently now. It has been seen by many
since the war as the instrument creating among the “People of the United States” an “indissoluble union,” and granting to the Federal government plenary powers over virtually all
aspects of the lives of its citizens. That meaning is not one understood by either the Framers
or the Ratifiers. Rather, it is the result of the use of force against the States by the very government the States agreed to create in 1787 to 1789. Again, Justice Holmes, a thrice-wounded
veteran of the Civil War, may have said it best when, in the landmark case of Missouri v.
Holland, he wrote that the Constitution he was interpreting was one which “has taken a century and has cost [the] successors [of the Framers and Ratifiers] much sweat and blood to prove
that they created a nation,” a classic reference to the changed interpretation of the document
as a direct result of the Civil War and nothing more.
TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR
Bacon’s Military Map of America
GRADE 11
This map depicts the states that gave allegiance to the Confederacy versus those who
remained loyal to the Union.
Bacon’s Military map of the United States showing forts and fortifications marked by small flags. “Free or non-slaveholding
states” are colored green, “border slave states” are yellow, and “seceded or Confederate States” are pink. Description derived
from published bibliography (Bacon and Company, London 1862). Courtesy of the Library of Congress, G3701.S5 1862. B3
CW 24
C I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
83
GRADE 11
84
! Teacher’s Note:
Vocabulary: the following words can be used for a vocabulary lesson. Team up with the
English teacher on this project.
TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR
Name: __________________________
Date Due: _______________________
GRADE 11
Vocabulary
South Carolina and Texas
FORBEARANCE: _______________________________________________________________
PURSUANCE: __________________________________________________________________
COMPACT: ____________________________________________________________________
ACCEDE: ______________________________________________________________________
ARBITER: ______________________________________________________________________
EVINCED: _____________________________________________________________________
TRIBUNALS: ___________________________________________________________________
RENDITION: __________________________________________________________________
EMISSARIES: ___________________________________________________________________
SUBVERTING: _________________________________________________________________
SANCTION:____________________________________________________________________
ANNEXATION:_________________________________________________________________
FORAYS: _______________________________________________________________________
ADVERT:_______________________________________________________________________
AMITY: ________________________________________________________________________
COMITY: ______________________________________________________________________
FIREBRAND: ___________________________________________________________________
EXACTIONS: __________________________________________________________________
SEDITIOUS: ___________________________________________________________________
ABROGATED: __________________________________________________________________
C I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
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Name: _________________________
GRADE 11
Date Due: ______________________
Vocabulary
Mississippi and Georgia
CONSUMMATION: ____________________________________________________________
SUBVERTED: __________________________________________________________________
INCENDIARISM:_______________________________________________________________
INDUBITABLE: ________________________________________________________________
AGGRANDIZEMENT: __________________________________________________________
CLAMORED: __________________________________________________________________
MOLLIFIED:___________________________________________________________________
ACQUIESCENCE: ______________________________________________________________
CLAMOROUS: _________________________________________________________________
IMPREGNABLE: _______________________________________________________________
PROTRACTED: ________________________________________________________________
VENERABLE: __________________________________________________________________
CARDINAL:____________________________________________________________________
REFUTATION: _________________________________________________________________
USURPATION: _________________________________________________________________
ADMONISHES: ________________________________________________________________
AMBIGUITY:___________________________________________________________________
PUNIC: ________________________________________________________________________
REVILINGS: ___________________________________________________________________
IMPUNITY: ____________________________________________________________________
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Is Secession Constitutional?
GRADE 11
“We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government
whenever they choose.”
– Abraham Lincoln, 1861
“It is known to senators who have served with me here that I
have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of
state sovereignty, the right of a state to secede from the
Union.”
– Jefferson Davis as he resigned his seat in the Senate
You have been assigned a reading in which various Southern states explain their reasons for
seceding from the Union. Use the points in your reading for tomorrow’s debate.
★ Take notes in the margins to help you understand your reading.
C I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
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GRADE 11
Notes:
Declaration of Causes
South Carolina
Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South
Carolina from the Federal Union
Wanted to secede
in 1852 but was
persuaded not to
Telling the world
why it seceded.
“The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of
April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United
States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the
States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference
to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further
forbearance ceases to be a virtue.
And now the State of South Carolina having resumed her separate and equal place among
nations, deems it due to herself, to the remaining United States of America, and to the nations
of the world, that she should declare the immediate causes which have led to this act.
In the year 1765, that portion of the British Empire embracing Great Britain, undertook to
make laws for the government of that portion composed of the thirteen American Colonies. A
struggle for the right of self-government ensued, which resulted, on the 4th of July, 1776, in a
Declaration, by the Colonies, ‘that they are, and of right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES; and that, as free and independent States, they have full power to levy
war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and
things which independent States may of right do.’
They further solemnly declared that whenever any “form of government becomes destructive
of the ends for which it was established, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and
to institute a new government.” Deeming the Government of Great Britain to have become
destructive of these ends, they declared that the Colonies ‘are absolved from all allegiance to
the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great
Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.’
In pursuance of this Declaration of Independence, each of the thirteen States proceeded to
exercise its separate sovereignty; adopted for itself a Constitution, and appointed officers for
the administration of government in all its departments- Legislative, Executive and Judicial.
For purposes of defense, they united their arms and their counsels; and, in 1778, they entered
into a League known as the Articles of Confederation, whereby they agreed to entrust the
administration of their external relations to a common agent, known as the Congress of the
United States, expressly declaring, in the first Article “that each State retains its sovereignty,
freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction and right which is not, by this
Confederation, expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.”
Under this Confederation the war of the Revolution was carried on, and on the 3rd of
September, 1783, the contest ended, and a definite Treaty was signed by Great Britain, in
which she acknowledged the independence of the Colonies in the following terms: ‘ARTICLE 1- His Britannic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz: New Hampshire,
Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and
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Georgia, to be FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATES; that he treats with
them as such; and for himself, his heirs and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof.’
Thus were established the two great principles asserted by the Colonies, namely: the right of a
State to govern itself; and the right of a people to abolish a Government when it becomes
destructive of the ends for which it was instituted. And concurrent with the establishment of
these principles, was the fact, that each Colony became and was recognized by the mother
Country a FREE, SOVEREIGN AND INDEPENDENT STATE.
GRADE 11
In 1787, Deputies were appointed by the States to revise the Articles of Confederation, and
on 17th September, 1787, these Deputies recommended for the adoption of the States, the
Articles of Union, known as the Constitution of the United States.
The parties to whom this Constitution was submitted, were the several sovereign States; they
were to agree or disagree, and when nine of them agreed the compact was to take effect
among those concurring; and the General Government, as the common agent, was then
invested with their authority.
If only nine of the thirteen States had concurred, the other four would have remained as they
then were- separate, sovereign States, independent of any of the provisions of the
Constitution. In fact, two of the States did not accede to the Constitution until long after it
had gone into operation among the other eleven; and during that interval, they each exercised
the functions of an independent nation.
By this Constitution, certain duties were imposed upon the several States, and the exercise of
certain of their powers was restrained, which necessarily implied their continued existence as
sovereign States. But to remove all doubt, an amendment was added, which declared that the
powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the people. On the 23d May, 1788, South
Carolina, by a Convention of her People, passed an Ordinance assenting to this Constitution,
and afterwards altered her own Constitution, to conform herself to the obligations she had
undertaken.
Thus was established, by compact between the States, a Government with definite objects and
powers, limited to the express words of the grant. This limitation left the whole remaining
mass of power subject to the clause reserving it to the States or to the people, and rendered
unnecessary any specification of reserved rights.
We hold that the Government thus established is subject to the two great principles asserted
in the Declaration of Independence; and we hold further, that the mode of its formation subjects it to a third fundamental principle, namely: the law of compact. We maintain that in
every compact between two or more parties, the obligation is mutual; that the failure of one of
the contracting parties to perform a material part of the agreement, entirely releases the obligation of the other; and that where no arbiter is provided, each party is remitted to his own
judgment to determine the fact of failure, with all its consequences.
In the present case, that fact is established with certainty. We assert that fourteen of the States
have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer
to their own Statutes for the proof.
The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person
held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in
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GRADE 11
consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but
shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”
This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have
been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the
Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the
States north of the Ohio River.
The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.
The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. 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, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of
the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin
and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any
attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or
labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation
made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity
with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more
recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by
the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been
denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice
fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia.
Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be ‘to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence,
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.’
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was
recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them
the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by
authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of
fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and
the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and
recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they
have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have
been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
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For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its
aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original]
of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive
Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been
drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a
man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are
hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government,
because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half
free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate
extinction.
GRADE 11
This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of
the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile
to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.
On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has
announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease
throughout the United States.
The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will
be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or selfprotection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered
vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the
sanction of more erroneous religious belief.
We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled,
appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of
North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position
among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy
war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and
things which independent States may of right do.”
Adopted December 24, 1860
[Committee signatures]
— J.A. May & J.R. Faunt, *South Carolina Secedes* (U. of S. Car. Pr, 1960), pp. 76-81
C I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
91
Mississippi
GRADE 11
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the
State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Mississippi depends
on slavery.
Choices: get rid of
slavery, or get rid of
Union.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery— the greatest material
interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and
most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate
verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race
can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world,
and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed
at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. 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.
That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.
The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was
manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.
The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.
The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from
Mexico.
It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right
on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had
jurisdiction.
It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion.
It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.
It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly
broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.
It advocates Negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.
It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of
the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.
It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in
the States and wherever else slavery exists.
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It seeks not to elevate or to support the slave, but to destroy his present condition without
providing a better.
It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch whose purpose
was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to our lives.
GRADE 11
It has broken every compact into which it has entered for our security.
It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system.
It knows no relenting or hesitation in its purposes; it stops not in its march of aggression, and
leaves us no room to hope for cessation or for pause.
It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its unhallowed
schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship and brotherhood.
Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain in it. It is not
a matter of choice, but of necessity. 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. For far less cause than this,
our fathers separated from the Crown of England.
Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation;
and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness
of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.”
— “Journal of the State Convention”, (Jackson, MS: E. Barksdale, State Printer, 1861), pp. 86-88
C I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
93
Georgia
GRADE 11
Slavery has been
an issue for at least
the past 10 years.
Northern refusal to
play by the
(Constitutional)
rules – North is
hostile to slaveholding.
Recent events:
94
“The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of
the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which
have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of
complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of
African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace
and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal
Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of
the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and
has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil
war. Our people, still attached to the Union from habit and national traditions, and averse to
change, hoped that time, reason, and argument would bring, if not redress, at least exemption
from further insults, injuries, and dangers. Recent events have fully dissipated all such hopes
and demonstrated the necessity of separation. Our Northern confederates, after a full and
calm hearing of all the facts, after a fair warning of our purpose not to submit to the rule of
the authors of all these wrongs and injuries, have by a large majority committed the
Government of the United States into their hands. The people of Georgia, after an equally
full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with equal firmness that they
shall not rule over them. A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and
the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has
been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party
of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent
origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the
advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By antislavery it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the
way of the formation of the Constitution. While the subordination and the political and social
inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery
would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution
was made with direct reference to that fact. But a distinct abolition party was not formed in
the United States for more than half a century after the Government went into operation.
The main reason was that the North, even if united, could not control both branches of the
Legislature during any portion of that time. Therefore such an organization must have resulted either in utter failure or in the total overthrow of the Government. The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at
all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests
of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own
business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury.
The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave
an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without
diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought
to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they
have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the
support of these objects. These interests, in connection with the commercial and manufactur-
TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR
ing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction
in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties
and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slaveholding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands
were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their
demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy
of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of
other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the
necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons
prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of
the whole country.
GRADE 11
But when these reasons ceased they were no less clamorous for Government protection, but
their clamors were less heeded- the country had put the principle of protection upon trial and
condemned it. After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon
their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden
change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public
expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States
sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at
all.
All these classes saw this and felt it and cast about for new allies. The anti-slavery sentiment
of the North offered the best chance for success. An anti-slavery party must necessarily look
to the North alone for support, but a united North was now strong enough to control the
Government in all of its departments, and a sectional party was therefore determined upon.
Time and issues upon slavery were necessary to its completion and final triumph. The feeling
of anti-slavery, which it was well known was very general among the people of the North, had
been long dormant or passive; it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive activity.
This question was before us. We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico;
Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the
North and the conflict began. Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to
exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and
efficient exercise of this power to that end. This insulting and unconstitutional demand was
met with great moderation and firmness by the South. We had shed our blood and paid our
money for its acquisition; we demanded a division of it on the line of the Missouri restriction
or an equal participation in the whole of it. These propositions were refused, the agitation
became general, and the public danger was great. The case of the South was impregnable.
The price of the acquisition was the blood and treasure of both sections - of all, and, therefore, it belonged to all upon the principles of equity and justice.
The Constitution delegated no power to Congress to exclude either party from its free enjoyment; therefore our right was good under the Constitution. Our rights were further fortified
by the practice of the Government from the beginning. Slavery was forbidden in the country
northwest of the Ohio River by what is called the ordinance of 1787. That ordinance was
adopted under the old confederation and by the assent of Virginia, who owned and ceded the
country, and therefore this case must stand on its own special circumstances. The
Government of the United States claimed territory by virtue of the treaty of 1783 with Great
Britain, acquired territory by cession from Georgia and North Carolina, by treaty from
C I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
95
GRADE 11
France, and by treaty from Spain. These acquisitions largely exceeded the original limits of
the Republic. In all of these acquisitions the policy of the Government was uniform. It
opened them to the settlement of all the citizens of all the States of the Union. They emigrated thither with their property of every kind (including slaves). All were equally protected by
public authority in their persons and property until the inhabitants became sufficiently
numerous and otherwise capable of bearing the burdens and performing the duties of selfgovernment, when they were admitted into the Union upon equal terms with the other States,
with whatever republican constitution they might adopt for themselves.
Under this equally just and beneficent policy law and order, stability and progress, peace and
prosperity marked every step of the progress of these new communities until they entered as
great and prosperous commonwealths into the sisterhood of American States. In 1820 the
North endeavored to overturn this wise and successful policy and demanded that the State of
Missouri should not be admitted into the Union unless she first prohibited slavery within her
limits by her constitution. After a bitter and protracted struggle the North was defeated in her
special object, but her policy and position led to the adoption of a section in the law for the
admission of Missouri, prohibiting slavery in all that portion of the territory acquired from
France lying North of 36 [degrees] 30 [minutes] north latitude and outside of Missouri. The
venerable Madison at the time of its adoption declared it unconstitutional. Mr. Jefferson condemned the restriction and foresaw its consequences and predicted that it would result in the
dissolution of the Union. His prediction is now history. The North demanded the application
of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all
other parts of the public domain then and in all future time. It was the announcement of her
purpose to appropriate to herself all the public domain then owned and thereafter to be
acquired by the United States. The claim itself was less arrogant and insulting than the reason
with which she supported it. That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally
abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity. This particular question, in
connection with a series of questions affecting the same subject, was finally disposed of by the
defeat of prohibitory legislation.
The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the total overthrow of the advocates of restriction and their party friends. Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the
defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake
their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere. This is the party two
whom the people of the North have committed the Government. They raised their standard
in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and
succeeded.
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the
black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers.
With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the
people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers.
The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization.
For forty years this question has been considered and debated in the halls of Congress, before
the people, by the press, and before the tribunals of justice. The majority of the people of the
North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment, and in
vindication of our refusal we offer the Constitution of our country and point to the total
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TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR
absence of any express power to exclude us. We offer the practice of our Government for the
first thirty years of its existence in complete refutation of the position that any such power is
either necessary or proper to the execution of any other power in relation to the Territories.
We offer the judgment of a large minority of the people of the North, amounting to more
than one-third, who united with the unanimous voice of the South against this usurpation;
and, finally, we offer the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest
judicial tribunal of our country, in our favor. This evidence ought to be conclusive that we
have never surrendered this right. The conduct of our adversaries admonishes us that if we
had surrendered it, it is time to resume it.
GRADE 11
The faithless conduct of our adversaries is not confined to such acts as might aggrandize
themselves or their section of the Union. They are content if they can only injure us. The
Constitution declares that persons charged with crimes in one State and fleeing to another
shall be delivered up on the demand of the executive authority of the State from which they
may flee, to be tried in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes
affecting slave property. Our confederates, with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all
criminals who seek to deprive us of this property or who use it to destroy us. This clause of
the Constitution has no other sanction than their good faith; that is withheld from us; we are
remediless in the Union; out of it we are remitted to the laws of nations.
A similar provision of the Constitution requires them to surrender fugitives from labor. This
provision and the one last referred to were our main inducements for confederating with the
Northern States. Without them it is historically true that we would have rejected the
Constitution. In the fourth year of the Republic Congress passed a law to give full vigor and
efficiency to this important provision. This act depended to a considerable degree upon the
local magistrates in the several States for its efficiency. The non-slave-holding States generally
repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those
citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge
their duty. Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for the complete execution of this
duty by Federal officers. This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely indispensible
for the protection of constitutional rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings and all
conceivable modes of hostility. The Supreme Court unanimously, and their own local courts
with equal unanimity (with the single and temporary exception of the supreme court of
Wisconsin), sustained its constitutionality in all of its provisions. Yet it stands to-day a dead
letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union. We have
their convenants, we have their oaths to keep and observe it, but the unfortunate claimant,
even accompanied by a Federal officer with the mandate of the highest judicial authority in
his hands, is everywhere met with fraud, with force, and with legislative enactments to elude,
to resist, and defeat him. Claimants are murdered with impunity; officers of the law are beaten by frantic mobs instigated by inflammatory appeals from persons holding the highest public employment in these States, and supported by legislation in conflict with the clearest provisions of the Constitution, and even the ordinary principles of humanity. In several of our
confederate States a citizen cannot travel the highway with his servant who may voluntarily
accompany him, without being declared by law a felon and being subjected to infamous punishments. It is difficult to perceive how we could suffer more by the hostility than by the fraternity of such brethren.
The public law of civilized nations requires every State to restrain its citizens or subjects from
committing acts injurious to the peace and security of any other State and from attempting to
excite insurrection, or to lessen the security, or to disturb the tranquillity of their neighbors,
C I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
97
GRADE 11
and our Constitution wisely gives Congress the power to punish all offenses against the laws
of nations.
These are sound and just principles which have received the approbation of just men in all
countries and all centuries; but they are wholly disregarded by the people of the Northern
States, and the Federal Government is impotent to maintain them. For twenty years past the
abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to
subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us. They have sent
emissaries among us for the accomplishment of these purposes. Some of these efforts have
received the public sanction of a majority of the leading men of the Republican party in the
national councils, the same men who are now proposed as our rulers. These efforts have in
one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the
murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates.
These are the same men who say the Union shall be preserved.
Such are the opinions and such are the practices of the Republican party, who have been
called by their own votes to administer the Federal Government under the Constitution of
the United States. We know their treachery; we know the shallow pretenses under which they
daily disregard its plainest obligations. If we submit to them it will be our fault and not theirs.
The people of Georgia have ever been willing to stand by this bargain, this contract; they
have never sought to evade any of its obligations; they have never hitherto sought to establish
any new government; they have struggled to maintain the ancient right of themselves and the
human race through and by that Constitution. But they know the value of parchment rights in
treacherous hands, and therefore they refuse to commit their own to the rulers whom the
North offers us. Why? Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed
$3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban
of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole
extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their
avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property
but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes,
our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for
our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity.”
[Approved, Tuesday, January 29, 1861]
— Official Records, Ser IV, vol. 1, pp. 81-85
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States’ Refusal to Supply Troops
The Union’s Request for Troops
GRADE 11
War Department
Washington, April 15, 1861
“SIR: Under the act of Congress ‘for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the
Union, suppress insurrections, repel invasions,” &c, approved February 28, 1795, I have the
honor to request Your Excellency to cause to be immediately detached from the militia of
your State the quota designated in the table below, to serve as infantry or rifleman, for the
period of three months, unless sooner discharged. […]
Official Records, Series III Vol. 1, Page 69
I have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
SIMON CAMERON,
Secretary of War.
Virginia’s Refusal to Supply Troops for the Union
Executive Department,
Richmond, Va., April 16, 1861.
Hon. SIMON CAMERON, Secretary of War:
SIR: I received your telegram of the 15th, the genuineness of which I doubted. Since that
time I have received your communication, mailed the same day, in which I am requested to
detach from the militia of the State of Virginia “the quota designated in a table” which you
append, “to serve as infantry or riflemen for the period of three months, unless sooner discharged.”
In reply to this communication I have only to say that the militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your
object is to subjugate the Southern States, and a requisition made upon me for such an object
– an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution or the act of 1795 –
will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we
will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has exhibited toward the South.
Respectfully,
JOHN LETCHER
C I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
99
North Carolina’s Refusal to Supply Troops for the Union
GRADE 11
Raleigh, N.C., April 15, 1861.
Hon. SIMON CAMERON,
Secretary of War:
Your dispatch is received, and if genuine, which its extraordinary character leads me to doubt,
I have to say in reply that I regard the levy of troops made by the Administration for the purpose of subjugation the States of the South as in violation of the Constitution and a gross
usurpation of power. I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country and
to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina. I
will reply more in detail when your call is received by mail.
JOHN W. ELLIS,
Governor of North Carolina.
Tennessee’s Refusal to Supply Troops for the Union
Nashville, Tenn., April 17, 1861.
Hon. SIMON CAMERON,
Secretary of War:
SIR: Your dispatch of 15th instant, informing me that Tennessee is called upon for two regiments of militia for immediate service, is received. Tennessee will not furnish a single man for
purpose of coercion, but 50,000, if necessary, for the defense of our rights and those of our
Southern brethren.
ISHAM G. HARRIS,
Governor of Tennessee.
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Letters of Secession
GRADE 11
Virginia
AN ORDINANCE to repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United State of
America by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said
Constitution.
The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of
America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our
Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted
under said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States and might be
resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the
Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of
Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States:
Notes:
The Federal
Government is not
doing what it is
legally allowed to
do. It is hurting the
South.
Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain, That the ordinance adopted by
the people of this State in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord
one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States
of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State ratifying and adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union
between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid is hereby
dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of
sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State.
And they do further declare, That said Constitution of the United States of America is no longer
binding on any of the citizens of this State.
This ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day, when ratified by a majority of the
voter of the people of this State cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in
May next, in pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.
JOHN JANNEY,
President.
JOHN L. EUBANK,
Secretary.
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101
Texas
GRADE 11
Prior to 1845,
Texas was an independent nation. It
joined as an equal
state.
A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the
Federal Union.
“The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day
of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign
and independent nation [emphasis in the original], the annexation of the latter to the former,
as one of the co-equal states thereof,
The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the
same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed
State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally
admitted into the Confederated Union.
Texas had its own
constitution and
these guarantees
had been continued on statehood.
Slavery was “meant
to be.”
Slavery and location link Texas to
the rest of the
South.
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the
Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more
substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the
compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery - the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits - a relation that had existed from the
first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should
exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest
ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been
strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United
States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection
with them?
The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises,
has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under
odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by
all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in
the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her
sister slaveholding States.
By the disloyalty of the Northern States and their citizens and the imbecility of the Federal
Government, infamous combinations of incendiaries and outlaws have been permitted in
those States and the common territory of Kansas to trample upon the federal laws, to war
upon the lives and property of Southern citizens in that territory, and finally, by violence and
mob law, to usurp the possession of the same as exclusively the property of the Northern
States.
The Federal Government, while but partially under the control of these our unnatural and
sectional enemies, has for years almost entirely failed to protect the lives and property of the
people of Texas against the Indian savages on our border, and more recently against the murderous forays of banditti from the neighboring territory of Mexico; and when our State government has expended large amounts for such purpose, the Federal Government has refuse
reimbursement therefor, thus rendering our condition more insecure and harassing than it was
during the existence of the Republic of Texas.
These and other wrongs we have patiently borne in the vain hope that a returning sense of
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justice and humanity would induce a different course of administration.
When we advert to the course of individual non-slave-holding States, and that a majority of
their citizens, our grievances assume far greater magnitude.
GRADE 11
The States of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts,
New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa, by solemn legislative enactments, have deliberately, directly or indirectly violated the 3rd clause of the 2nd section of the
4th article [the fugitive slave clause] of the federal constitution, and laws passed in pursuance
thereof; thereby annulling a material provision of the compact, designed by its framers to perpetuate the amity between the members of the confederacy and to secure the rights of the
slave-holding States in their domestic institutions - a provision founded in justice and wisdom,
and without the enforcement of which the compact fails to accomplish the object of its creation. Some of those States have imposed high fines and degrading penalties upon any of their
citizens or officers who may carry out in good faith that provision of the compact, or the federal laws enacted in accordance therewith.
In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should
exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States,
based upon an 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 - a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of
mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between
the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us,
so long as a negro slave remains in these States.
For years past this abolition organization has been actively sowing the seeds of discord
through the Union, and has rendered the federal congress the arena for spreading firebrands
and hatred between the slave-holding and non-slave-holding States.
By consolidating their strength, they have placed the slave-holding States in a hopeless minority in the federal congress, and rendered representation of no avail in protecting Southern
rights against their exactions and encroachments.
They have proclaimed, and at the ballot box sustained, the revolutionary doctrine that there is
a ‘higher law’ than the constitution and laws of our Federal Union, and virtually that they will
disregard their oaths and trample upon our rights.
They have for years past encouraged and sustained lawless organizations to steal our slaves
and prevent their recapture, and have repeatedly murdered Southern citizens while lawfully
seeking their rendition.
They have invaded Southern soil and murdered unoffending citizens, and through the press
their leading men and a fanatical pulpit have bestowed praise upon the actors and assassins in
these crimes, while the governors of several of their States have refused to deliver parties
implicated and indicted for participation in such offenses, upon the legal demands of the
States aggrieved.
They have, through the mails and hired emissaries, sent seditious pamphlets and papers
among us to stir up servile insurrection and bring blood and carnage to our firesides.
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GRADE 11
They have sent hired emissaries among us to burn our towns and distribute arms and poison
to our slaves for the same purpose.
They have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby
enriching themselves by draining our substance.
They have refused to vote appropriations for protecting Texas against ruthless savages, for the
sole reason that she is a slave-holding State.
And, finally, by the combined sectional vote of the seventeen non-slave-holding States, they
have elected as president and vice-president of the whole confederacy two men whose chief
claims to such high positions are their approval of these long continued wrongs, and their
pledges to continue them to the final consummation of these schemes for the ruin of the
slave-holding States.
In view of these and many other facts, it is meet that our own views should be distinctly proclaimed.
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 or tolerable.
That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal
civil and political rights [emphasis in the original]; that the servitude of the African race, as
existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly
authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty
Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations
between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.
By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily
do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North,
or unite her destinies with the South.
For these and other reasons, solemnly asserting that the federal constitution has been violated
and virtually abrogated by the several States named, seeing that the federal government is now
passing under the control of our enemies to be diverted from the exalted objects of its creation to those of oppression and wrong, and realizing that our own State can no longer look
for protection, but to God and her own sons - We the delegates of the people of Texas, in
Convention assembled, have passed an ordinance dissolving all political connection with the
government of the United States of America and the people thereof and confidently appeal to
the intelligence and patriotism of the freemen of Texas to ratify the same at the ballot box, on
the 23rd day of the present month.
Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight
hundred and sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.
[Signatures of Delegates]
— E.W. Winkler, ed., “Journal of the Secession Convention of Texas,”61-66
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North Carolina
Letter from W.N. Edwards, President of the North Carolina State Convention, to
Jefferson Davis
GRADE 11
Raleigh, N.C., May 23, 1861.
His Excellency JEFFERSON DAVIS,
President, Confederate States of America:
SIR: It is made my pleasing duty, as president of the North Carolina State convention, to
transmit to you two ordinances, unanimously passed by that body, and I have charged T.B.
Venable, Esq. (special messenger), with the delivery of the same. I avail myself of the occasion
to express the very high gratification I feel in being able to announce to you the accession of
this ancient State to the Confederate States of America; and most devoutly do I pray that this
union, strengthened by all the kindred ties of climate, pursuits, and institutions, may perpetually “promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to our people and their
posterity.”
To which I beg leave to add assurances of the very high consideration with which I am, your
obedient servant,
W.N. EDWARDS,
President of the Convention.
Enclosures:
Ordinance to “dissolve the union between the State of North Carolina and the other States
united with her, under the compact of government entitled “The Constitution of the United
States.”
Ordinance to ratify the Constitution for the Provisional Government of the confederate
States of America. Adopted at Montgomery, Alabama, on February 8, 1861. Other states in
the Confederacy: South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.
— Official Records. Series IV, Vol. I, pages 353-354; 335-336
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South Carolina
GRADE 11
This is part of the speech of South Carolina’s commissioner to Alabama, Andrew Pickens
Calhoun, in the State Capitol to the South Carolina Agricultural Society on November 13,
1860:
Republicans would inaugurate “a depraved Government” on
March 4, he insisted, and they would seek “to seduce the
poor, ignorant and stupid nature of the negro in the midst of
his home and happiness.” Calhoun drew a chilling parallel
between the impact of Republican abolitionist propaganda on
the slaves of the South and the effect that French
Revolutionary rhetoric – specifically the slogan “liberty, equality and fraternity” – had had on the slave population of Haiti.
“Well, the [Haitian] negro heard the ill omened words, and
he, born in Africa, the slave, whose head was always in danger,
perhaps to repair some skull-built wall of a kinky-headed
chief, who, hunted down, captured, famished in his native
land, could only view his change as a blessed one – he, too,
arose, with all the fury of the beast, and scenes were then
enacted over a comparatively few planters, that the white
fiends [of the North] would delight to see re-enacted now
with us.” The only way to save the South from a similar fate,
he concluded, was ‘disentanglement from the North,” a separation that had to be ‘complete, thorough and radical.” […]
According to the local press, the speech “was listened to with
marked attention, and received with loud applause.” (Apostles
of Disunion, 40-41)
Here is part of James L. Orr’s address to a mass meeting in South Carolina on November 23,
1860. He was South Carolina’s commissioner to Georgia.
The abolition of slavery would produce ruinous competition
between the races, he said, a struggle that would force the
white man to enter the poorhouse or flee the country.
Emancipation also threatened white South Carolinians with
the specter of racial equality – a subject Orr was loath even to
mention. He vowed that he “never would submit to such equality, equality at the ballot box and jury box, and at the witness
stand.” With this sort of threat looming over their heads, the
white people of his state had no choice but to seek safety outside the Union. (Apostles of Disunion, 46)
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Alabama
Letter from secession commissioner John A.Winston, to Governor Moore,
regarding Louisiana
GRADE 11
January 2, 1861.
His Excellency A.B. MOORE:
SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of
Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on
the grave and important duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and
honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery.
[Due to various factors, he was unable to do so, but managed to meet with several people separately and communicate his mission.]
…The Legislative mind appeared fully alive to the importance and the absolute necessity of
the action of the Southern States in resistance of that settled purpose of aggression on our
constitutional and inherent natural rights by the majority of the people of the non-slave-holding States of the Federal Union, which purpose and intention has culminated in the election
of a man to the Presidency of the United States whose opinions and construction of constitutional duty are wholly incompatible with our safety in a longer union with them. […]
The State of Louisiana, from the fact that the Mississippi River flows through its extent and
debouches through her borders, and that the great commercial depot of that river and its tributaries is the city of New Orleans, occupies a position somewhat more complicated than any
other of the Southern States, and may present some cause of delay in the consummation and
execution of the purpose of a separation from the Northwestern States and the adoption of a
new political status…As a point of policy, it might be advisable for the State of Alabama to
announce her intention as a foregone conclusion, a fixed fact, that on a day appointed our
relations as a member of the political association known as the United States had ceased, and
that Alabama, acting as sovereign for herself in the act of separation, was prepared to form
such political relations with States having a community of interest and sympathies as to them
may seem just and proper. I feel assured that by such a course of respectful delay on our part
other States would more promptly respond to whatever action Alabama may take, and that
there is little or no doubt but that Louisiana will cooperate with the States taking action, and
so add dignity and importance to the movement which is so essential to secure the respect and
recognition of foreign nations and the support of hesitating States…
Trusting that the time has come when not only Alabama but the entire South will prove prepared to vindicate her honor by a fearless assertion of her rights and her determination to
enjoy them,
Most respectfully, your obedient servant, &c.,
JOHN A. WINSTON.
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GRADE 11
Letter from Commissioner David Hubbard to Governor Andrew B. Moore
Regarding the possibility of Arkansas seceding from the Union
Kinloch, Ala.,
January 3, 1860 [1861]
Governor ANDREW B. MOORE:
MY DEAR SIR: On receipt of your letter and appointment as commissioner from Alabama to
Arkansas, I repaired at once to Little Rock and presented my credential to the two houses, and
also your letter to Governor Rector, by all of whom I was politely received. The governor of
Arkansas was every way disposed to further our views, and so were many leading and influential members of each house of the Legislature, but neither are yet ready for action, because
they fear the people have not yet made up their minds to go out. The counties bordering on
the Indian nations – Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, and Chickasaws – would hesitate greatly
to vote for secession, and leave those tribes still under the influence of the Government at
Washington, from which they receive such large stipends and annuities. These Indians are at a
spot very important, in my opinion, in this great sectional controversy, and must be assured
that the South will do as well as the North before they could be induced to change their
alliances and dependence. […]
My appointment gave me no authority to speak as to what any State would do, but I spoke
freely of what we ought to do. I took the ground that no State which had seceded would ever
go back without full power being given to protect themselves by vote against anti-slavery projects and schemes of every kind. I took the position that the Northern people were honest and
did fear the Divine displeasure, both in this world and the world to come, by reason of what
they considered the national sin of slavery, and that all who agreed with me in a belief of their
sincerity must see that we could not remain quietly in the same Government with them.
Secondly, if they were dishonest hypocrites, and only lied to impose on others and make them
hate us, and used anti-slavery arguments as mere pretexts for the purpose of uniting Northern
sentiment against us, with a view to obtain political power and sectional dominion, in that
event we ought not to live with them. I desired any Unionist present to controvert either of
these positions, which seemed to cover the whole ground. No one attempted either, and I said
but little more. I am satisfied, from free conversations with members of all parties and with
governor Rector, that Arkansas, when compelled to choose, will side with the Southern States,
but at present a majority would vote the Union ticket. Public sentiment is but being formed,
but must take that direction.
I have the honor to be, truly, &c.,
DAVID HUBBARD
Official Records, Series IV, Vol. I
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Excerpt from a Letter from David Clopton, Alabama’s Commissioner to Delaware, to
Delaware’s Governor William Burton
[…] In the succession of party triumphs and defeats which have marked the political history of
the country, the power and patronage of the Executive Department of the Federal
Government will on the 4th of March next pass for the first time under the control of a purely sectional party, which has succeeded by a purely sectional vote…the fact that it is a sectional
party includes the additional fact that its aim will be, by al the means of legislation and of the
administration of the Government, to promote and foster the interests and internal prosperity
of one section, and to debase the institutions, weaken the power, and impair the interests of
the other section. Its animus, its single bond of union, is hostility to the institution of slavery
as it exists in the Southern States. Its members, numbering nearly two millions of voters, as
evidenced by the late Presidential election, have been collected from all the other various
political organizations, and although disagreeing totally upon other important political principles, have nevertheless ignored all these, and been molded into a compact mass of enmity to
this particular institution, upon which depend the domestic, social, and political interests of
fifteen States of the Union, and by the convention which framed the Constitution, and by the
people of the States by whom it was ordained and established.
GRADE 11
The slave-holding states, notwithstanding the vastness of their interests at stake, will be either
underrepresented in the Cabinet councils of the incoming Administration or represented by
men who sympathize with this party in its purpose. […]
The success of “Republicanism” ignores the sovereignty and disregards the rights of the States
by disallowing the concurrent majorities established by the Constitution and perverting the
powers of the Federal Government to the redressing of what it may consider to be a wrong in
the social, domestic, or local institutions and regulations of any of the States, and by converting that which was intended to be a federal republic into a consolidated, centralized power, a
despotism of numbers. Its success destroys the equality of the States by a denial of common
and equal rights in the common territories; by the effectual exclusion of any representative
voice on behalf of the slave-holding States in the management of a co-ordinate department of
the Government, and by the declared intent to administer that department in a manner hostile to their peace, safety, and prosperity.
Its success subverts and defeats the ends of the Constitution. Instead of forming a more perfect union it has dissolved the Union by compelling the secession of one of its members and
the anticipated secession of others. Instead of establishing justice it denies justice to fifteen of
the States by refusing to admit any more slave States into the Union, and by the enactment of
laws to prevent the rendition of fugitive slaves. It endangers instead of insuring domestic tranquility by the possession of channels through which to circulate insurrectionary documents
and disseminate insurrectionary sentiments among a hitherto contented servile population. It
neglects instead of providing for the common defense by permitting within the limits of some
of the States the organization of plans for the armed invasion of others, and by refusing to
surrender the criminals when fugitives from justice. It disregards and impairs instead of promoting the general welfare by compassing the destruction of an inestimable amount of property with all its direful consequences. It will rob us of instead of securing to ourselves and our
posterity the blessings of liberty by the extinction of a great domestic and social institution, by
the overthrow of self-government and the establishment of an equality of races in our midst.
Its success overthrows the fundamental principles of the Revolution by denying the freedom
of property. This freedom of property is the corner stone of social happiness. […]
You cannot be surprised that, in the opinion of the people of Alabama, the time has arrived
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GRADE 11
when imperious necessity and self-preservation require them to exercise their right to abolish
the present Government and institute a new one, laying its foundation in such principles and
organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness. […]
The people of Alabama, however, also understand and will observe the comity which should
exist between sovereign States, and especially between the slave-holding States. They fully
appreciate the position and condition of the border slave-holding States, and are willing and
ready to engage with them in a defense of common rights and safety. Identity of interest is a
bond of sympathy. Similar dangers suggest the propriety of similar and simultaneous action, as
far as practicable. The withdrawal of all the slave-holding States and the organization of a
Southern Confederacy would possess a moral, political, and physical power which no government would dare to oppose. Yet the people of Alabama will not assume or pretend to dictate
to the intelligent, brave, and patriotic people of the State of Delaware what course their safety,
interests, and honor require them to adopt, believing that they are competent and have the
right to decide by and for themselves. They ask only to advise and consult together. […]
I have the honor to be, very respectfully, sir,
DAVID CLOPTON
Official Records, Series IV, Vol.
I, page 34-38
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Excerpts from Letter from Stephen Fowler Hale, Alabama’s commissioner to
Kentucky, To Kentucky Governor Beriah Magoffin
…Each State, as a sovereign political community, must finally determine these grave issues for
itself, yet the identity of interests, sympathy, and institutions, prevailing alike in all of the
slave-holding States, in the opinion of Alabama renders it proper that there should be a frank
and friendly consultation by each on e with her sister Southern States touching their common
grievances and the measures necessary to be adopted to protect the interest, honor, and safety
of their citizens.
GRADE 11
1. The people are the source of all political power, and the primary object of all good governments is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty, and property; and whenever
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the inalienable right and the
duty of the people to alter or abolish it.
2. [The purpose of the Constitution was] “to establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity,
provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to her citizens and their posterity;” and when it is perverted to the destruction of the
equality of the States, or substantially fails to accomplish these ends, it fails to achieve the purposes of its creation, and ought to be dissolved.
3. … When [the powers delegated by the States to the Federal Government] are abused, or
used for the destruction of the rights of any State or its citizens, each State has an equal right
to judge for itself as well of the violations and infractions of that instrument as of the mode
and measure of redress; and if the interest or safety of her citizens demands it, may resume the
powers she had delegated without let or hindrance from the Federal Government or any other
power on earth.
4. Each state is bound in good faith to observe and keep on her part all the stipulations and
covenants inserted for the benefit of other States in the constitutional compact (the only bond
of union by which the several States are bound together), and when persistently violated by
one party to the prejudice of her sister States, ceases to be obligatory on the States so
aggrieved, and they may rightfully declare the compact broken, the union thereby formed dissolved, and stand upon their original rights as sovereign, and independent political communities; and further, that each citizen owes his primary allegiance to the State in which he resides,
and hence it is the imperative duty of the State to protect him in the enjoyment of all his constitutional rights, and see to it that they are not denied or withheld from him with impunity
by any other State or government. […]
At the time of the adoption of the Federal Constitution African slavery existed in twelve of the
thirteen States. Slaves are recognized both as property and as a basis of political power by the
Federal compact, and special provisions are made by that instrument for their protection as
property. Under the influences of climate and other causes, slavery has been banished from
the Northern States; the slaves themselves have gone into the pockets of their former owners
at the North. And in the meantime African slavery 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, according to recent
estimates, not less than $4,000,000,000; forming, in fact, the basis upon which rests the prosperity and wealth of most of these states, and supplying the commerce of the world with its
richest freights, and furnishing manufactories of two continents with raw material, and their
operatives with bread. It is upon this gigantic interest, this peculiar institution of the South,
that the Northern States and their people have been waging an unrelenting and fanatical war
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GRADE 11
for the last quarter of a century; an institution with which is bound up not only the wealth and
prosperity of the Southern people, but their very existence as a political community. This war
has been waged in every way that human ingenuity, urged on by fanaticism, could suggest.
[…]
[He then discusses the Northern failure to obey the Fugitive Slave laws, the fact that John
Brown is treated as a martyr, and the election of Lincoln to the presidency.]
If the policy of the Republicans is carried out according to the program indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must overwhelm alike all classes
of citizens in the Southern States. The slave-holder and non-slave-holder must ultimately
share the same fate; all be degraded to a position of equality with free Negroes, stand side by
side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life, or else there will be
an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all
the resources of the country. Who can look upon such a picture without a shudder? What
Southern man, be he slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror
contemplate the triumph of Negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters in the not
distant future associating with free Negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and
the white man stripped by the heaven-daring hand of fanaticism of that title to superiority
over the black race which God himself has bestowed? […]
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. Then why attempt longer to hold together hostile States
under the stipulation of a violated Constitution? It is impossible. Disunion is inevitable.
[He then urges Kentucky to think about what he’s said, and act without hesitation or delay,
because delay will be considered a sign of weakness.]
Your obedient servant, &c.,
S.F. HALE,
Commissioner from
the State of Alabama
Official Records, Series IV, Vol.
1, pages 4-11
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TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR
Mississippi
Here, historian Dr. Charles Dew is describing the address of William L. Harris who spoke at
a joint session of the Georgia General Assembly on December 17, 1860. Harris was
Mississippi’s commissioner to Georgia.
GRADE 11
The triumph of the Republican Party in the recent presidential election revealed a North “more defiant and more intolerant than ever before,” Harris insisted. “They 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,” he said. The new administration
coming to power on March 4 promised “freedom to the slave,
but eternal degradation for you and for us.”
Every other issue paled in comparison to the Republican
threat to the South’s racial order. “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,”
Harris maintained. Lincoln’s administration was determined
“to overturn and strike down this great feature of our
Union…and to substitute in its stead their new theory of the
universal equality of the black and white races.”
Under these circumstances the choice for the South was clear:
“This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free
negroes, without slavery; or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free
negroes either, to molest us.” If white Southerners wanted to
avoid “submission to negro equality,” then ”secession is
inevitable,” he told the Georgia legislators. Judge Harris
closed his brief address with this peroration:
“Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, the part of
Mississippi is chosen, she will never submit to the principles
and policy of this Black Republican Administration.
She had rather see the last of her race, men, women and children, immolated in one common funeral pile [pyre], than see
them subjected to the degradation of civil, political and social
equality with the negro race.” (Apostles of Disunion, 29-30)
C I V I L WA R P R E S E RVAT I O N T R U S T
113
GRADE 11
Here, Dr. Charles Dew describes Judge Alexander Hamilton Handy’s address to a crowd of
over 1,500 people in December of 1860. Handy was Mississippi’s commissioner to Maryland.
To the “black republican” claim that “slavery is a sin before
God and the world,” Handy gave a counterclaim: “Slavery was
ordained by God and sanctioned by humanity.” Southerners
“would not give up their slaves” because to do so would turn
“the beautiful cotton fields” of their region into “barren
wastes,” he said. […]
“The moment that slavery is pronounced a moral evil – a sin –
by the general government,” that moment the safety of the
rights of the South will be entirely gone.” […]
Handy was convinced that the Republicans would “repeal the
laws which prohibit circulation of incendiary documents, so
that they many be sent among the slaves to excite them
against their masters.” The South would be infiltrated with
Republican agents…who would “excite the slave to cut the
throat of his master.” (Apostles of Disunion, 33)
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Georgia
Here, historian Dr. Charles Dew describes Henry Lewis Benning’s address to the Virginia
Convention on February 18, 1861. Benning was Georgia’s commissioner to Virginia.
GRADE 11
“What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step
of secession?…This reason may be summed up in a single
proposition…It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the
part of Georgia, that a separation from the North was the
only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. […]
“…the Black Republican party of the North” embraced “a
sentiment of hatred to slavery as extreme as hatred can exist.
[…] …the North has invariably exerted against slavery, all the
power which it had at the time.” […]the black race will be in a
large majority, and then we will have black governors, black
legislatures, black juries, black everything” – a comment the
audience greeted with “laughter,” according to a reporter
present. […]
War would “break out everywhere like hidden fire from the
earth,” he predicted, and “a standing army” from the North
as well as thousands of Northern “volunteers”…would
descend upon the South to assist the slaves engaged in mortal
combat with their masters…“We will be overpowered and our
men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the
earth,” he told his audience, “and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination.”
[…] We will be completely exterminated,” he told the
Virginians, “and the land will be left in the possession of the
blacks, and it will go back to a wilderness and become another
Africa or St. Domingo.” (Apostles of Disunion, 64-67)
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Jefferson Davis
GRADE 11
President of the Confederate States of America
Excerpt from his Address to the Confederate Congress, April 29, 1861
“…The declaration of war made against this Confederacy by Abraham Lincoln, the President
of the United States, in his proclamation issued on the 15th day of the present month, rendered it necessary, in my judgment, that you should convene at the earliest practicable
moment to devise the measures necessary for the defense of the country…
During the war waged against Great Britain by her colonies on this continent a common danger impelled them to a close alliance and to the formation of a Confederation, by the terms of
which the colonies, styling themselves States, entered “severally into a firm league of friendship with each other for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual
and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or
attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any
other pretense whatever.” In order to guard against any misconstruction of their compact the
several States made explicit declaration in a distinct article – that “each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right which is not by
this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled.” […]
Strange, indeed, must it appear to the impartial observer, but it is none the less true that all
these carefully worded clauses proved unavailing to prevent the rise and growth in the
Northern States of a political school which has persistently claimed that the government thus
formed was not a compact between States, but was in effect a national government, set up above
and over the States. An organization created by the States to secure the blessings of liberty and
independence against foreign aggression has been gradually perverted into a machine for their
control in their domestic affairs. The creature has been exalted above its creators; the principals
have been made subordinate to the agent appointed by themselves. […]
…so utterly have the principles of the Constitution been corrupted in the Northern mind
that, in the inaugural address delivered by President Lincoln in March last, he asserts as an
axiom, which he plainly deems to be undeniable, that the theory of the Constitution requires
that in all cases the majority shall govern; and in another memorable instance the same Chief
Magistrate did not hesitate to liken the relations between a State and the United States to
those which exist between a county and the State in which it is situated and by which it wwas
created. This is the lamentable and fundamental error on which rests the policy that has culminated in his declaration of war against these Confederate States. […]
[…] When the several States delegated certain powers to the United States Congress, a large
portion of the laboring population consisted of African slaves imported into the colonies by
the mother country. In twelve out of the thirteen States negro slavery existed, and the right of
property in slaves was protected by law. This property was recognized in the Constitution,
and provision was made against its loss by the escape of the slave. The increase in the number
of slaves by further importation from Africa was also secured by a clause forbidding Congress
to prohibit the slave-trade anterior to a certain date, and in no clause can there be found any
delegation of power to the Congress authorizing it in any manner to legislate to the prejudice,
detriment, or discouragement of the owners of that species of property, or excluding it from
the protection of the Government […]
[Jefferson Davis adds that because its climate was not conducive to slavery, the North then sold its
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TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR
slaves to the South. The North began a system “hostile” to slavery; attempted to outlaw it, and then did
all in its power to make slaves “discontented” so they would revolt. The North also did not obey the
Fugitive Slave Law and would not cooperate in the location and return of runaway slaves.]
GRADE 11
Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the
Government, with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave
States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by all the States in
common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which
slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be
comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the
election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States […]
[He continues by discussing the benefits of slavery.]
In moral and social condition [slaves] had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts but with
careful religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race their labor had been so
directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to
convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of the wilderness into cultivated lands covered
with a prosperous people…the productions of the South in cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco,
for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable, had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the
whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man. […]
[The view that slavery is wrong puts Southern prosperity in peril.]
In the exercise of a right so ancient, so well established, and so necessary for self-preservation,
the people of the Confederate States, in their conventions, determined that the wrongs which
they had suffered and the evils with which they were menaced required that they should revoke
the delegation of powers to the Federal Government which they had ratified in their several
conventions. They consequently passed ordinances resuming all their rights as sovereign and
independent States and dissolved their connection with the other States of the Union. […]
[Mr. Davis then discusses the events at Fort Sumter, and Lincoln’s call for 75,000 troops to
preserve the Union. This, he said, was a declaration of war, and Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Missouri were right in refusing to comply with Lincoln’s
request for troops. He announces that Virginia is joining the Confederacy.]
We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we
desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honor and independence; we seek no conquest, no
aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let along; that those who never held power over us shall not now
attempt our subjugation by arms. This we will, this we must, resist to the direst extremity.
The moment that this pretension is abandoned the sword will drop from our grasp, and we
shall be ready to enter into treaties of amity and commerce that cannot but be mutually beneficial. So long as this pretension is maintained, with a firm reliance on that Divine Power
which covers with its protection the just cause, we will continue to struggle for our inherent
right to freedom, independence, and self-government.
JEFFERSON DAVIS
Official Records, Series IV,
Vol. I, pages 256-268
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Florida
GRADE 11
Secession Ordinance
ADOPTED JANUARY 11th, 1861.
Whereas all hope of preserving the Union upon terms consistent with the safety and honor of
the slaveholding States has been finally dissipated by the recent indications of the strength of
the anti-slavery sentiment of the free States; therefore,
Be it resolved by the people of Florida, in Convention assembled, that it is undoubtedly the
right of the several States of the Union, at such times, and for such cause as in the opinion of
the people of such State, acting in their sovereign capacity, may be just and proper; and, in the
opinion of this Convention, the existing causes are such as to compel Florida to proceed to
exercise that right.
We, the people of the State of Florida, in Convention assembled, do solemnly ordain, publish
and declare that the State of Florida hereby withdraws herself from the Confederacy of States
existing under the name of the United States of America, and from the existing Government
of the said States; and that all political connection between her and the Government of the
said States ought to be, and the same is hereby totally annulled, and said Union of States dissolved; and the State of Florida is hereby declared a sovereign and independent nation; and
that all ordinances heretofore adopted, in so far as they create or recognize said Union, are
rescinded; and all laws, or parts of laws, of force in this State, in so far as they recognize or
assent to said Union, are hereby repealed.
Courtesy of http://www.templeofdemocracy.com/Ordinances.htm
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TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR
Name: ____________________________
Date: _____________________________
GRADE 11
Slavery vs. States’ Rights
Answer these questions in the space provided below.
1. Write down the arguments that your document makes, if any, supporting slavery as the
main cause of the Civil War.
2. Write down the arguments that your document makes, if any, supporting states’ rights as
the main cause of the Civil War.
3. If you received a document that supports the side you’re NOT on, can you think of any
arguments that would counteract the points in your document?
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GRADE 11
! Teacher’s Eyes Only
Ask your students to get out their document and assignment sheet from last night. Tell
them that they will have 20 minutes to get in their groups to share what they learned from
the documents they read and discuss the group’s core argument for the debate. When the
time is up, have the groups face each other and begin the debate. Let the students know
that credit will be given to each student that speaks at least once during the debate,
which will last 20 minutes. They are not restricted to making points from their individual
document, but that is the general idea. They are encouraged to read a quote from their
document to support their point, but it must be SHORT. One side may make a point, and
then the other side will be given an opportunity to offer a counter-argument and/or make a
new point. When 20 minutes is up, you may declare the winner or declare a tie.
Hand out the homework assignment entitled, “Slavery or States’ Rights…My Opinion.”
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TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR
Name: ______________________________
Date: _______________________________
GRADE 11
Slavery or States’ Rights…My Opinion
Answer the questions in the space provided below. Attach the paragraph that you wrote concerning what you thought caused the Civil War to this assignment.
1. After reading your document and listening to the arguments for both sides yesterday, what
do you think was the main cause of the Civil War? Offer some points to support your opinion.
2. Did your answer change from the paragraph you wrote a few days ago?
3. Why do you think some of the Southerners said that they were fighting for slavery before
the war and then after the war, said that they had fought for states’ rights?
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GRADE 11
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TWO WEEK CURRICULUM FOR TEACHING THE CIVIL WAR