Discussion Topic

Justification for Southern Secession

Summary:

The Southern states, particularly South Carolina, seceded from the Union primarily to preserve slavery and assert states' rights. They feared that President Lincoln, elected without Southern support, would abolish slavery. Secession was seen as a constitutional right, as states believed they could withdraw from the Union, which they had voluntarily joined. However, this justification is morally undermined by its association with slavery, and the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled secession unconstitutional, affirming the Union's indestructibility.

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Why did South Carolina want to secede from the Union?

The South seceded because they did not want the North to be able to tell them what to do.  In specific, they did not want the North to be able to do anything that would hurt the institution of slavery.  They feared that the North would do that once Abraham Lincoln became president.

Lincoln had been elected without getting any votes from Southern states.  This made the South believe that he would govern only for the benefit of the North.  As part of this fear, they were afraid that he would abolish slavery in the South.

The South wanted to be left alone to rule itself, which meant having slavery.  They feared that Lincoln would not let them have slavery, so they seceded.

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What reasons did the South have for wanting to secede from the Union?

There were several reasons why the South wanted to secede from the Union. One reason had to deal with slavery. The South believed in the concept of slavery. The South was very concerned that slavery would be banned in the future. When President Lincoln got elected, the South was convinced he would end slavery, even though President Lincoln never said he would do that.

Another reason why the South seceded from the Union was because of the South’s belief in states’ rights. The South believed that states should have the right to nullify laws that hurt one state or region while benefitting another state or region. The North opposed this idea. The North believed federal laws took priority over state laws.

The South was also concerned about the differences in the economies of the North and of the South. Because the South had primarily an agricultural economy, they supported economic policies that were different than those the North supported. The North was primarily an industrial economy. For example, the North wanted protective tariffs to be higher, which the South opposed.

Since the North and the South had so many differences, which couldn’t be resolved by compromise, it was not surprising that a split occurred. The South believed its whole way of life and everything in which they believed would be in jeopardy if they stayed in the Union.

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Was the South's justification for secession valid?

Although the southern states seceded for morally questionable reasons, one could argue that secession was a right that states in the U.S. retained prior to 1868.

Secession had been a hot topic in American political and legal circles even before the Civil War began. The theory of states rights’ seemed to suggest that states, who legally entered into an agreement with the federal government through adopting the constitution, could secede or withdrawal with a similar vote. Political theorists, especially those in the south where the authority of the state was seen as more important than that of the federal government, believed that secession was the right of every state. Southern patriots such as Patrick Henry affirmed that the constitution was an agreement between sovereign states, and that secession was allowed if it was done to safeguard the rights of the people.

There were also many instances were states, both north and south, flirted with the ideas of secession. During the War of 1812, the New England states thought about seceding because the war had ruined their trade with Britain, causing huge reductions in the amount of American exports. During the Nullification Crisis, the state of South Carolina tried to secede over an unpopular tariff.

It wasn’t until after the Civil War in 1868 that the Supreme Court ever ruled on the issue of secession and said unequivocally that secession was unconstitutional. In the case White v. Texas, supreme court justice Salmon P. Chase said that not state, not even Texas, had the right to secede because once a state is admitted to the union, they become a part of an “an indestructible Union, composed of indestructible states.” Basically, the Supreme Court said that no state has ever actually seceded; they’ve only been in states of rebellion.

On a side note, it is interesting to note that today over 22% of Americans believe that states have the right to secede, even today.

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Was South Carolina justified in seceding from the Union?

One reason that South Carolina was not justified in leaving the Union was constitutional. In short, South Carolina, along with twelve other states, had chosen to join the Union when it ratified the Constitution in May of 1788. Like every other state that ratified, they joined without qualifications or conditions. The Constitution contained no provision allowing states to leave the Unionindeed, it would have been self-defeating to include such a stipulation. So there was no constitutional basis for secession. To do so was to essentially nullify or negate the Constitution.

South Carolina, in announcing its decision to leave the Union, claimed it was justified in doing so because several Northern states were violating the Fugitive Slave Act (which itself was based on a clause in the Constitution), yet South Carolina itself had claimed the right of states to nullify laws in 1833, when it provoked a crisis over nullifying a tariff its leaders saw as injurious to their interests.

Finallyand most importantlyto argue that South Carolina was justified in leaving the Union is essentially to argue that the state had the right to continue to enslave human beings. In a "Declaration of the Immediate Causes of Secession" issued by the state's secession convention in December of 1860, South Carolina complained that Northern states, with the election of Abraham Lincoln, had taken up a uniform and explicit anti-slavery position, one which threatened their rights as slaveholders:

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.

In short, as the state's leaders themselves said at the time, South Carolina left the Union to preserve slavery. There can be no moral justification for such a cause.

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Was there merit to the South's justification for secession?

If it were not for the fact that slavery was involved, it would not be hard at all to agree with the South's reasoning.  Their justification was not unassailable, but it was defensible.

The major justification for secession was that the Constitution was a pact between states, not between the people of the country as a whole.  Perhaps the easiest way to support this is to point out that ratification was not done by a vote of all the people.  Instead, it was done on a state by state basis.  This implies that each state was consenting to join the Union.  If a state could consent to join, then presumably it could withdraw that consent as well.  After all, government is only valid (the Declaration of Independence tells us) when it is done with the consent of the governed.

Because this argument is so closely associated with slavery, it is hard to be sympathetic to it today.  However, it is not a ridiculous argument.

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