On Dec. 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first Southern state to secede from the Union. The formal declaration of secession occurred as a result of the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln as president and followed a state convention that called for the separation.
Tension between Northern and Southern states had extended back to the foundation of the republic. Thomas Jefferson, himself a Virginia slave owner, had attacked the institution in an early draft of the Declaration of Independence. Southern states demanded the offending section be removed, however.
One of the greatest debates of the 1787 Constitutional Convention revolved around apportionment of congressional seats and electoral votes to the Southern states. Under the 3/5 Compromise, Southern states were allowed to count their slaves as 3/5ths of a man for the purposes of representation, giving the South a power in Congress disproportionate to its actual numbers of voting citizens.
Despite these compromises and more, tension remained between Northern and Southern states for decades. The late 1820s saw Congress pass a tariff on manufactured goods, which ultimately meant that the South had to pay more to buy goods from the North than it previously had from England. South Carolina, ever claiming to be a champion of states' rights, passed the Ordinance of Nullification, claiming that a state could nullify a federal law within its own borders that it disagreed with. When President Andrew Jackson took exception to South Carolina's position, the state threatened to secede. When no other Southern states were willing to follow South Carolina's lead, the state backed down.
In 1850, Southerners again were angered at President Zachary Taylor's encouragement of California to enter the Union as a free state. Again, South Carolina threatened secession, and this time it looked as though other states might follow. A compromise was brokered that admitted California as a free state, but mollified the South with a tougher Fugitive Slave Act and other incentives. For the last time, South Carolinian secession was averted.
The following decade saw the disintegration of the Whig Party and the formation of the anti-slavery Republican Party. Though many Republicans hated slavery passionately, most of them were also practical and realized that total and immediate emancipation of the South's slaves was simply not possible given Southern feelings on the subject. Instead, they adopted the strategy that favored leaving slavery in place in the South, while at the same time preventing it from spreading to the Western territories that had been opened up by the conclusion of the Mexican War in 1848.
Abraham Lincoln adopted this policy for his 1860 presidential run. Among his opponents in that fateful race was his rival in the 1858 race for an Illinois Senate seat, Stephen Douglas, who represented the rump of the Democratic Party. Southern Democrats, however, had bolted their party and formed their own party, the National Democrats, and nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Another party emerged at this time as well, the Constitutional Union Party, which nominated John Bell from Tennessee.
Both Douglas and Bell favored another compromise. For Lincoln, Breckinridge, and their respective parties, however, a line had been drawn in the sand. Either there would be no slavery in the West, or all of the West would be open to slavery.
When the election was held Nov. 6, 1860, Douglas took 12 electoral votes and Bell took 39, mostly in the border states. Breckinridge took 72, including all of the Southern states except the few claimed by Bell and Douglas. Lincoln won the election with 180 votes from the North and West. The results of this election represented the only time in American history that half the country completely refused to accept the results.
Almost immediately, secessionists throughout the South began to organize and call for state conventions to discuss (or begin) the process of removing their states from the Union. Some secessionists, such as future Confederate President Jefferson Davis, urged a moderate pace so that the Southern states could announce secession more or less at the same time and deliver a fait accompli to the federal government.
The hotheads in South Carolina, however, were numerous and had no desire to wait. Robert Barnwell Rhett, a die-hard secessionist, said that no war would follow a declaration of secession and boldly stated that he would eat all of the corpses that resulted from such a war. On Dec. 17, South Carolina's convention convened in Charleston. In the book “Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America,” historian William C. Davis wrote:
“It took only a few hours after the South Carolina convention heard the first gavel for the delegates to decide unanimously for secession. Indeed, the debates were a mere formality. Three days later, they solemnly signed the ordinance of secession before a cheering crowd. Rhett himself fell to his knees and lifted his hands heavenward in prayer and thanks when he approached the table to sign. The citizens at large reacted with enthusiasm.”
The Ordinance of Secession, which was signed on Dec. 20, stated in part: “We, the people of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain … that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other States under the name of the United States of America is hereby dissolved.”
Note the capitalization of the “S” in the word “States” outside of “United States.”
A few days later on Dec. 24, Christopher Memminger, a secessionist from Charleston, expounded upon the reasons for the separation in another document titled, “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina.” Memminger led a committee authorized by the convention to further explain South Carolina's point of view.
Memminger described the state of the colonies under Great Britain and then the compact that was created by the states in 1776 and the governments formed a few years later with the Articles of Confederation and finally with the U.S. Constitution. He noted how South Carolinians approved of the high ideals of the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, but believed that by denying property rights (i.e. slavery), the government was not living up to those ideals. He wrote, “For 25 years, this agitation has been steadily increasing” and that the Northern states are now “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 stated that once Lincoln was inaugurated “the guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; equal rights of the states will be lost. The slaveholding states will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.”
Many in the North were surprised with how quickly South Carolina had decided on secession. For President James Buchanan, who held the office until Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861, the news was a shock. In the book, “Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln,” historian Doris Kearns Goodwin noted Buchanan's reaction while attending a wedding reception:
“A sudden disturbance heralded the entrance of South Carolina congressman Lawrence Keitt. Flourishing his state's secession ordinance over his head, he shouted: 'Thank God! Oh, thank God! … I feel like a boy let out from school.' When Buchanan absorbed the news, he 'looked stunned, fell back, and grasped the arms of his chair.' No longer able to enjoy the festivities, he left immediately.”
Over the next few months, several more states seceded from the Union. Buchanan took no position toward the secessionist states, however, so as not to tie his successor's hands. Shortly after Lincoln's inauguration, South Carolinian militia under P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on the Union army base at Fort Sumter, an island fort near Charleston. Lincoln soon called for military volunteers to put down the growing rebellion, which in turn prompted several more states to secede, including Virginia. In all, 11 states seceded in 1860-1861, beginning the U.S. Civil War.
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's in history from the University of Utah and teaches at Salt Lake Community College. An avid player of board games, he blogs at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com