- Dec 2018
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
I shall adduce consists in two extracts from a speech of Lincoln’s, made in October, 1858. They are as follows: “I have always hated slavery as much as any abolitionist; I have always been an old line Whig; I have always hated it and I always believed it in the course of ultimate extinction, and if I were in Congress and a vote should come up on the question, whether slavery should be excluded from the territory, in spite of the Dred Scott decision, I would vote that it should.” These are pregnant statements; they avow a sentiment, a political principle of action, a sentiment of hatred to slavery as extreme as hatred can exist.
16 - The author argues that the South cannot be governed by someone who hates slavery.
-
In the first place, I say that the North hates slavery, and, in using that expression I speak wittingly.
15 - The author states that Northern hatred of slavery will lead to eventual abolition.
-
if not the only remedy, for the territorial evil.
5 - The author argues that the government has shown hostility towards the South by not allowing slavery to expand in new territories.
-
It is true, sir, that the effect of this conviction was strengthened by a further conviction that such a separation would be the best remedy for the fugitive slave evil,
1 - The author mentions the governments shortcomings to enforce the fugitive slave law, and cites it as a reason for secession.
-
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.
14 - The author states that the only way to prevent the Republicans from abolishing slavery was by seceding.
-
the ordinance of secession of Georgia, and further, to invite Virginia, through this Convention ‘ to join Georgia and the other seceded States in the formation of a Southern Confederacy.
10 - The author uses the fact that other states have seceded to persuade Virginia to join the confederacy and secede.
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Submission would but invite new and greater aggressions, until Alabama would become a despised and degraded province.
20 - (Northern demonization of the South): The author argues that if Alabama stays in the Union, it would be degraded and demonized as a state.
-
navigation laws, fishing bounties, land laws, and internal improvement laws, have been important aids to their material prosperity—a prosperity which is, in fact, to a great extent, the result of burdens upon the agricultural interests of the South.
19 - The author argues that other federal economic legislation like subsides have benefited the North far more than the South.
-
The benefits that have been conferred upon them in the shape of tariff laws,
6 - The author states that tariffs, among other things, have economically benefited the North and hurt the South.
-
They feel no desire to depreciate the value of their own property, nor to demoralize their slaves by throwing among them savages and cannibals.
3 - The author argues that if Northerners continue to oppose slavery and disregard the interest of the South, the institution of slavery will cause economic suffering.
-
if the slaves now in Alabama are to be restricted within her present limits, doubling as they do once in less than thirty years, the children are now born who will be compelled to flee from the land of their birth, and from the slaves their parents have toiled to acquire as an inheritance for them, or to submit to the degradation of being reduced to an equality with them, and all its attendant horrors.
11 - The author claims that racial equality will be a part of the future based on political trends and states that this is a reason for secession.
-
Republican party, that no more slave States are to be admitted into the Union, and that slavery is to be forever prohibited in the Territories (the common property of the United States), must, of itself, at no distant day, result in the utter ruin and degradation of most, if not all of the Gulf States.
3 - The author argues that if slavery cannot expand, then the economies of states around the Gulf of Mexico will suffer.
-
It ushers in, as a settled policy, not only the exclusion of the people of the South from the common Territories of the country, but proposes to impair the value of slave property in the States by unfriendly legislation; to prevent the further spread of slavery by surrounding us with free States; to refuse admission into the Union of another slave State, and by these means to render the institution itself dangerous to us, and to compel us, as slaves increase, to abandon it, or be doomed to a servile war.
5 - The author argues that because slavery cannot expand in the West, Northerners are dooming the institution in the long run.
-
The election of a President of the United States, of any opinion, however heretical, and however much calculated to disturb the public mind, would, of itself, we think, be considered by our people is of secondary importance; but the recent Presidential election is the inauguration of a system of Government as opposed to the Constitution as it is to our rights and safety.
16 - The author argues that Lincoln will ignore the constitution and institute a government opposed to the South.
-
Beyond this, is the fact that the plain letter of the Constitution, providing for the rendition of fugitive slaves, has not only been annulled by the non-slave-holding States, but several of them have, by their so-called “personal-liberty bills,” made it a highly penal offense for a master to attempt the enforcement of the Fugitive-Slave Law of Congress.
2 - The author says that Northern Liberty Laws have allowed Northerners to nullify their constitutional duty to help enforce the Fugitive Slave Law.
-
these States, with the other non-slave-holding States, have adopted and are acting on the settled policy that we of the South shall be excluded from the Territories, obtained by the common exertions and treasures of the nation ; and that to maintain this sectional policy, the Constitution of the United States, as expounded by the grave, well and earnestly considered decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, is to be set at naught, and the Court itself, which made the decision, is to be reformed, not only for general partizan purposes, but for the particular purpose of obtaining a reversal of that decision.
5 & 15 - The author says that Northern abolitionists have disallowed slavery and Southern culture to expand into the West.
-
Some of them have opposed every war in which we have been involved, from that of 1812, with Great Britain, to the war with Mexico; have opposed the acquisition of the rich territories we have obtained—even that which gave us the Mississippi river and the vast plains watered by it;
18 - The author says that many Northerners have opposed wars that have been necessary to strengthening and defending American interests. They refer to the Hartford Convention in the War of 1812, as well as Northern resistance to the Mexican American War.
-
They think the history of the country shows, that some of the non-slave-holding States have, throughout our political existence, proven themselves sectional, and hostile to the rights and interest of the common country.
15 - The author argues that non slaveholding states are in opposition to the institution of slavery.
-
We believe that the exhibitions of public opinion in Alabama are so marked and distinct, as to justify us in declaring that her approaching Convention will withdraw her from the Federal Union.
20 - The author claims that Alabama's wish to secede is because of its citizens' desire to do so.
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
in the establishment of a Southern confederacy, a government of homogeneous people,
20 - The author argues that a reason for secession is that Southerners are homogeneous with one another. This indicates that the author believes that the North and South are too dissimilar for them to remain united.
-
Alabama will stand by and make common cause with her and every other State which shall assert her independence of an abolitionized Government.
14 - The author argues that the government has been taken over by the Republican party of abolition.
-
Alabama, acting for herself, has solemnly declared that under no circumstances will she submit to the foul domination of a sectional Northern party;
15 - The author claims that Northerners are sectionally opposed to Southern interests.
-
the assaults upon the institution of slavery and upon the rights and equality of the Southern States, unceasingly continued with increasing violence and in new and more alarming forms, may constrain her to a reluctant but early exercise of that invaluable right.
4 - The author states that there have been assaults on slavery that will not cease unless slave states secede.
-
To permit a seizure of the Federal Government by those whose unmistakable aim is to pervert its whole machinery to the destruction of a portion of its members would be an act of suicidal folly and madness almost without a parallel in history; and that the General Assembly of Alabama, representing a people loyally devoted to the Union of the Constitution, but scorning the Union which fanaticism would erect upon its ruins, deem it their solemn duty to provide in advance the means by which they may escape such peril and dishonor, and devise new securities for perpetuating the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.
20 - The author states that Alabama must secede to protect its heritage and to prevent suppression by Republicans.
-
In anticipation of such a contingency and in advance of any of her sister States, the General Assembly of Alabama on the 24th day of February, 1860, solemnly declared that—
10 - The author says that Alabama considers secession because other states are likely to secede.
-
The unnatural warfare which, in violation of the Federal compact and for a long series of years, has been unceasingly waged by the anti-slavery States upon the institutions, rights, and domestic tranquillity of the slave-holding States, has finally culminated in the election of an open and avowed enemy to our section of the Union; and the great and powerful party who have produced this result calmly awaits the 4th day of March next, when, under the forms of the Constitution and the laws, they will usurp the machinery of the Federal Government and madly attempt to rule, if not to subjugate, and ruin the South.
14 - The author claims that the Republican party is a party of abolition with the intent to condemn the South to hostile laws once it takes over the government.
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
One State has seceded; others will soon follow.
10 - The author argues that because South Carolina, Alabama, and other states have seceded, other states will follow suit. This could also be interpreted as encouragement for Maryland to secede.
-
As a sovereign State, vitally interested in the preservation and security of African slavery, she will exercise the right of withdrawing from the compact of union.
3 & 4 - The author argues that secession is necessary to preserve slavery and thus the wellbeing of white people as well.
-
This, from recent indications, is to be changed, so that to a great extent power is to be centralized at Washington, Congress is to be the final judge of its powers, States are to be deprived of a reciprocity and equality of rights, and a common government, kept in being by force, will discriminate offensively and injuriously against the property of a particular geographical section.
20 - The author believes that the federal government will unite and grow in power, thus stripping the states of their power and freedom. Fear of this could have resulted from this belief's direct conflict with Southern and Jeffersonian ideals on governance and state rights.
-
The sentiment of the sinfulness of slavery seems to be embedded in the Northern conscience.
15 - The author references the hostility that the North has towards the South's institution of slavery to add reason to the secession of the South.
-
Republicans to reap the fruits of their recent victory, and to abate not a jot or tittle of their Abolition principles. They refuse to recognize our rights of property in slaves, to make a division of the territory, to deprive themselves of their assumed constitutional power to abolish slavery in the Territories or District of Columbia, to increase the efficiency of the fugitive slave law, or make provision for the compensation of the owners of runaway or stolen slaves, or place in the hands of the South any protection against the rapacity of an unscrupulous majority.
1 & 14 - The author argues that the Republican party has taken over Congress and have unconstitutional plans to abolish slavery. The author also highlights that they have failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law.
-
Thus, under the new Government, property which existed in every one of the States save one when the Government was formed, and is recognized and protected in the Constitution, is to be proscribed and outlawed.
4 & 14 - The author finds that the right to own slaves, a constitutionally protected right, is being threatened and infringed upon by a newly Republican government.
-
Now, the opinion of nearly every Republican is, that the slave of a citizen of Maryland, in possession of and in company with his master, on a vessel sailing from Baltimore to Mobile, is as free as his master, entitled to the same rights, privileges, and immunities, as soon as a vessel has reached a marine league beyond the shores of a State and is outside the jurisdiction of State laws. The same is held if a slave be carried on the territory or other property belonging to the United States, and it is denied by all Republicans that Congress or a Territorial Legislature or any individuals can give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States.
1 & 11 & 14 - The author claims that Republicans have denied and continue to deny the Fugitive Slave Law as well as consider black people as equals to white people when in non-slaveholding states. This implies that the author worries that if the South were to continue being part of the Union, racial equality would be thrust onto the South.
-
Cover over its offensiveness with the most artful disguises, and the fact stands out in its terrible reality that the Government, within the amplitude of its jurisdiction, real or assumed, becomes foreign to the South, and is not to recognize the right of the Southern citizen to property in the labor of African slaves.
14 - The author claims that the Republicans will not recognize slaves as property and states that this is reason for the South to secede.
-
Having watched with painful anxiety the growth, power, and encroachments of anti-slaveryism, and anticipating for the party held together by this sentiment of hostility to the rights and institutions of the Southern people a probable success, too fatally realized, in the recent Presidential election, the General Assembly of Alabama, on the 24th of February, 1860,
14 & 16 - The author argues that the Republican party clearly had an anti-slavery agenda that was growing in power, especially with the results of the presidential election of 1860.
-
The bare fact that the party is sectional and hostile to the South is a full justification for the precautionary steps taken by Alabama to provide for the escape of her citizens from the peril and dishonor of submission to its rule. Superadded to the sectional hostility the fanaticism of a sentiment which has become a controlling political force, giving ascendancy in every Northern State, and the avowed purpose, as disclosed in party creeds, declarations of editors, and utterances of representative men, of securing the diminution of slavery in the States and placing it in the course of ultimate extinction, and the South would merit the punishment of the simple if she passed on and provided no security against the imminent danger.
14 & 15 - The author implies that one of the Northern Republican party's main goals is abolition which makes it the enemy of the South since one of its resolutions will undermine Southern values and interests.
-
When Mr. Lincoln is inaugurated it will not be simply a change of administration–the installation of a new President–but a reversal of the former practice and policy of the Government, so thorough as to amount to a revolution.
16 - The author expresses disdain towards the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln and argues that it is reason for the South to secede.
-
Recognizing the common interests and destiny of all the States holding property in the labor of Africans, and “anxiously desiring their co-operation in a struggle which perils all they hold most dear,” Alabama pledged herself to a “cordial participation in any and every effort which, in her judgment, will protect the common safety, advance the common interest, and serve the common cause.”
10 - The author encourages Maryland to join the Confederacy and secede in order to secure the interest of the South and more power.
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
The majority section may legislate imperiously and ruinously to the interests of the minority section not only without injury but to great benefit and advantage of their own section. In proof of this we need only refer to the fishing bounties, the monopoly of the coast navigation which is possessed almost exclusively by the Northern States and in one word the bounties to every employment of northern labor and capital such a government must in the nature of things and the universal principles of human nature and human conduct very soon lead as it has done to a grinding and degrading despotism.
19 - The author argues that economic grants and subsidies have vastly benefited the North over the South.
-
Although that election is made by little more than one third of the votes given. But however large the majority may have been to recognize such a principle is to announce a revolution in the government and to substitute an aggregate popular majority for the written constitution without which no single state would have voted its adoption not forming in truth a federal union but a consolidated despotism that worst of despotisms that of an unrestricted sectional and hostile majority, we do not intend to be misunderstood, we do not controvert the right of a majority to govern within the grant of powers in the Constitution.
16 - The author argues that the election of Lincoln was by only slightly above a third of the nation and that regardless of the number of votes, his election is the clear announcement of a hostile majority against the South.
-
As to the sacrifice of lives which recent acquisitions have caused how small is the proportion of Northern blood shed or laurels won in the Mexican war.
5 &18 - The author believes that the Mexican-American war shed more Southern blood than Northern and uses this to argue that Southerners should have a larger say in whether slavery could expand into new territories or not.
-
The revenues of the General Government are almost entirely derived from duties on importations. It is time that the northern consumer pays his proportion of these duties, but the North as a section receiving back in the increased prices of the rival articles which it manufactures nearly or quite as much as the imposts which it pays thus in effect paying nothing or very little for the support of the government.
5 & 6 - The author argues that tariffs collected from the Southern states vastly overweighs the taxes collected from the Northern states and so the decision of whether new states will be slave-holding or not, should fall to the South.
-
In either case the slaveholding States contribute at least this equal proportion of men or money – we think much more than an equal proportion.
3 - The author states that the slave-owning states are the reason the nation has experienced economic prosperity and that the North's only source of income is through imports.
-
The members of the Republican party has denied that the party will oppose the admission of any new state where slavery shall be tolerated. But on the contrary they declare that on this point they will make no concession or compromise. It is manifest that they will not because to do so would be the dissolution of the party.
5 - The author argues that the Republicans will not compromise and allow any expansion of slavery.
-
It is in so many words saying to you we will not burn you at the stake but we will torture you to death by a slow fire we will not confiscate your property and consign you to a residence and equality with the african but that destiny certainly awaits your children – and you must quietly submit or we will force you to submission – men who can hesitate to resist such aggressions are slaves already and deserve their destiny.
11 - The author believes that the Federal Government will free the slaves within a generation, leading the "African" to be an equal amongst their children in the future.
-
Their natural tendency every where shown where the race has existed to idleness vagrancy and crime increased by an inability to procure subsistence.
12 &13 - The author believes that if slaves were free, their unemployment would lead to violence against white people by unleashing their "natural tendency" to wreak havoc and threaten women, children, and society as a whole. The author's concerns are based on paternalism and the Pedestal Theory.
-
That no more slave States shall be admitted into the confederacy and that the slaves from their rapid increase (the highest evidence of the humanity of their owners will become value less.
5 - The author claims that if slavery cannot expand due to the Northwest Ordinance and the efforts of Republicans , then the value of slaves will plummet.
-
A President has recently been elected, an obscure and illiterate man without experience in public affairs or any general reputation mainly if not exclusively on account of a settled and often proclaimed hostility to our institutions and a fixed purpose to abolish them.
14 &16 - The author argues that Lincoln and the Republican party want to abolish slavery making them opposed to the South.
-
By the agency of a large proportion of the members from the non slaveholding States books have been published and circulated amongst us the direct tendency and avowed purpose of which is to excite insurrection and servile war with all their attendant horrors.
7 - The author says that Northerners have been spreading abolitionist literature that has increased slaves' desire to seek freedom through revolt.
-
a just regard for the interests of all the States there represented and respect for the feelings of all its members has been prostituted to the daily denunciation and vituperation of the slave holding States as sanctioning oppression robbery and all villainies, thus subjecting the members from these States to the degradation of gross and constantly repeated insults, and compelling the exclusion from our public press of the debates of our national Legislature or the circulation of the most incendiary matter.
15 - The author argues that the North has showed hostility towards the South by insulting their views on slavery. The author also expresses the belief that the North's abolition removed the expected fraternity between the two regions. The author's concerns may be referring to the brawl that Sumner started in congress about Brook's sex with slaves.
-
The nullification of these laws by the Legislatures of two thirds of the non slaveholding States important as it is in itself is additionally as is furnishing evidence of an open disregard of constitutional obligation, and of the rights and interests of the slaveholding States and of a deep and inveterate hostility to the people of these States.
2 - The author states that many Northern states have nullified the Fugitive Slave Laws and failed to fulfil their constitutional duties as a reason for Florida to break away from the Union.
-
Laws clearly constitutional and as decided to be by the Federal Judiciary as well as by the Courts of all the non slaveholding States where the question has been presented for adjudication have been by counter legislation rendered inoperative, laws without the power to pass which none will deny that the Constitution would not have been adopted.
1 - The author lists the belief that the federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law in the non-slaveholding states as a reason for secession.
-
An incursion has been instigated and actually perpetuated into a sister State the inevitable consequences of which were murder rapine and crimes even more horrible. The felon chief of that murderous band has been canonized as a heroic martyr by public meetings by the press and pulpit of all of the Northern States – others of the party have been demanded by the Governor of the State they invaded and their surrender refused by the Governors of two States of the Confederacy, demanded not as fugitives from service but as fugitives from justice charged with treason and murder.
8 - The author refers to John Brown's attempt to incite slave revolt in Virginia, arguing that the North made him a martyr to signify opposition to the South.
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
-
whydidthesouthsecede.com whydidthesouthsecede.com
-
Each of these documents was annotated by students looking for instances where the authors made the following arguments for secession:
- Federal government failed to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law
- Northern personal liberty laws
- Defense of slavery as an economic institution
- Defense of slavery as a cultural and social institution
- Inability to expand slavery in the West
- Tariffs
- Fear of slave rebellion
- John Brown’s attempt to incite rebellion
- Religious differences
- Because the other states seceded
- Fear of racial equality
- Protection of enslaved Americans who would be hurt by freedom
- Emancipation would mean race war
- The Republican Party is the party of abolition
- All northerners are abolitionists
- The election of 1860 was not valid
- Fear of Indian attack
- Lingering anger related to the Mexican-American War
- Federal subsidies benefit the North (ex. Fisheries)
- Other
-
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.
9 - The author argues that the religious differences of the North and South became too divisive and sectional for them to remain united. Anti-slavery beliefs had been interwoven into Northern Christianity, especially after the Methodist and Baptist Church split as a result.
-
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 self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.
20 - The author expresses the South's fear of losing its autonomy.
-
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.
2 + 4 - The author claims that Northern liberty laws allowed Black people to vote and deems that unconstitutional since he does not believe they could ever be citizens. The author also views this as an attack on the stability of the Southern states' social and cultural beliefs and values.
-
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.
14 + 16 - The author expresses disdain towards the election of a Republican president, not elected in the South, is considered a hostile to slavery, and plans on abolishing it. These concerns imply that he should not be the president of the South.
-
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.
7 - The author says that because slaves are becoming literate, and reading abolitionist and anti-slavery literature, there is a growing sentiment for slave revolt.
-
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.
4 - The author argues that the Northerners' attack on slavery resembles an attack on the lifestyle of Southerners.
-
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.
20 - The author claims that the Federal Government failed to keep the peace and has not defended all states equally.
-
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.
8 - The author argues that states have refused to bring John Brown's co-conspirators to justice after committing murder and inciting slave revolt in Virginia. The author views this as the breaking of "the constituted compact" and an obvious "disregard" to slave states.
-
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.
2 - The author states that many Northern States nullified the Fugitive Slave Law.
-
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.
1&2 - The author references Northern liberty laws, and states that the federal government failed to enforce Article IV of the Constitution in the Northern States.
-
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.
2 - The author argues that 14 Northern States have refused to abide by and perform their duties regarding the 4th article of the constitution. Northern states had passed laws that nullify their responsibility to return escaped slave laborers back to their southern masters.
-
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.
20 - The author claims that states were given less power than what the Constitution stated they should have. He argues that the states should have more power as separate entities from the federal government.
-
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.
20 - The author cites the states' rights that were given to them by the Articles of Confederation to imply that they were violated when the federal government dawned new laws upon the states without their consent.
-
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;
20 - The author states that the federal government has violated the constitutional rights of states and therefore they have no choice but to "withdraw" from the union.
-