The Critical Signpost on the Journey toward Secession
2011; Southern Historical Association; Volume: 77; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2325-6893
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoTHE CIVIL WAR STANDS OUT AS THE MOST CATACLYSMIC EVENT IN United States history. Almost all historians as well as most of the general public agree with that generalization. I do not intend to challenge it, for I certainly concur. Nor am I going to treat the war at all. Rather, I am going to address the secession crisis, or the crisis of the Union, in 1860-1861. Without that crisis there would surely have been no war, at least not at that time. Thus, the crisis of the Union merits careful attention. I realize that bringing up secession in this setting means taking a great risk. I say risk because the membership of this organization contains a number of scholars, some undoubtably here tonight, who have made notable contributions to our understanding of the crisis. Perhaps age has brought me no more wisdom than it did my maternal great-great-great-grandfather, who, as the oldest member of the South Carolina secession convention, made no known effort to halt his and his colleagues' headlong rush over the precipice. My taking this risk calls to mind not only my ancestor but also David F. Jamison, the president of that convention. Imploring his fellows to act, Jamison cried, and again to and without end to dare! Just as I am acknowledging Jamison, he gave due to the French revolutionary Georges-Jacques Danton. Calling on Danton can be extremely hazardous, however; he ended up on the guillotine. (1) At the outset, I must note that just three years ago the distinguished historian and my longtime friend Bill Freehling brought out his impressive and massive The Road to Disunion, Volume 2: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854-1861. That book filled a critically important void--secession is arguably the least studied major event in American history. Prior to Freehling's volume, the last full investigation was Dwight Lowell Dumond's The Secession Movement, 1860-1861, published in 1931. The immediate question is why? In part, I think secession has been subsumed by the larger theme of the coming of the Civil War. Every major study of the onset of the war comments on secession, but none engages in a thorough investigation. Perhaps even more important is that secession is an exceptionally vexing topic. It is easy to say that slavery caused secession, a claim that today draws a practically unanimous chorus from historians. (2) Yet if simply slavery is at fault, then all fifteen slave states should have acted similarly. We know that these states did not. They reacted in three different ways. Seven Deep South or cotton states left the Union by the beginning of February 1861; four upper South states followed upon Abraham Lincoln's call for troops after the surrender of Fort Sumter; four border states never seceded. To explain satisfactorily what happened in the slave states during the secession winter and spring requires accounting for the three different courses taken by the slave states. Then, it is essential to connect secession with the political process across the South, for the decision to secede or not was basically political. Freehling fully understood the complexity of his task, and he successfully completed it. He recognized and accounted for the three separate reactions, pointing to the various political and social forces that influenced events. One does not have to accept completely his interpretations to avow his achievement? My goal here is neither to challenge directly nor to replicate his accomplishment. I know that latter assertion pleases you, since even to approach replication would keep us here not only all night but at least until Christmas or maybe the New Year. The question, however, remains, what caused secession? I begin by underscoring Freehling's attainment. No one else has ever done so much work on the phenomenon of disunion or provided such a rich context. With his unparalleled research, it took a book of 565 pages of text even to get to the mid-1850s, and in Volume 2 he did not reach secession itself until page 343. …
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