The general election for President of the United States, which took place on the 6th of November, 1860, was conducted in strict conformity with the provisions of the Constitution and laws of the country, and resulted in the choice of Abraham Lincoln. The party which elected him was pledged in advance to maintain "that the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom," and to "deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States." The word Territory" is here used in the above-mentioned sense of an incipient political organization, which may at some future time become a State. แ This decision of the people of the United States was resisted by some of the inhabitants of the States where slavery prevailed. The people of South Carolina, with an undoubted unanimity, commenced the hostile movement. In the following month they proclaimed, through a State Convention, their purpose to secede from the Union, because the party about to come into power had "announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory." The State of Alabama, on the 11th of January, with 1 Greeley's American Conflict, Vol. I, page 320. much less unanimity, (the vote in the Convention being 61 ayes to 39 nays,') followed the example of South Carolina, giving as their reason that the election of Mr. Lincoln, "by a sectional party, avowedly hostile to the domestic institutions [i. e., slavery] of Alabama," was "a political wrong of an insulting and menacing character." The State of Georgia followed after a much greater struggle, in which the party in favor of remaining in the Union resisted to the last, the final vote being 208 ayes to 89 nays.3 Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas each framed an ordinance of secession from the Union before the 4th of February, in each case with more or less unanimity. Of Alabama. Of Georgia and other States. to Opposition the territorial limitation of slavery sion. On the 4th of February, 1861, representatives from some of the States which had attempted to the cause of seces go through the form of secession, and representatives from the State of North Carolina, which had not at that time attempted it, met at Montgomery, in the State of Alabama, for the purpose of organizing a provisional government, and having done so, elected Mr. Jefferson Davis as the Provisional President, and Mr. Alexander H. Stephens as the Provisional Vice-President of the proposed 4 4 1 McPherson's History of the Rebellion, page 4. 2 Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, page 10. McPherson's History of the Rebellion, page 3. Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, Vol. 1, page 126. Opposition to Confederation. the territorial lim itation of slavery the cause of secession. 166 In accepting this office, on the 18th of February, Mr. Jefferson Davis said: ""We have vainly endeavored to secure tranquillity and obtain respect for the rights to which we were entitled," [i. e, the right to extend the domains of slavery.] "As a necessity, and not a choice, we have resorted to the remedy of separation." * * "Our industrial pursuits have received no check; the cultivation of our fields progresses as heretofore; and even should we be involved in war, there would be no considerable diminution in the production of the staples which have constituted our exports, in which the commercial world has an interest scarcely less than our own. This common interest of producer and consumer can only be intercepted by an exterior force, which should obstruct its transmission to foreign markets-a course of conduct which would be detrimental to the manufacturing and commercial interests abroad." Mr. Stephens spoke with still more explicitness. He said the "foundations [of the new government] are laid. Its corner-stone rests upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white that slavery-subordination to the superior race is his natural and moral condition." man; 1 Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, page 613. 2 Appleton's Annual Cyclopædia, 1861, page 129. Νο Having thus formally declared that the contemplated limitation of the territory within which negro slavery should be tolerated was the sole cause of the projected separation, and having appealed to the world to support them, the seceding States made efforts, which proved vain, to induce the other slave States to join them. other States passed ordinances of secession until after the fall of Fort Sumter. On the contrary, the people of the States of Tennessee' and Missouri' before that time voted by large majorities against secession; and in the States of North Carolina and Virginia conventions were called and were in session when some of the events hereinafter referred to took place; and these bodies were known to be opposed to the revolutionary movements in South Carolina and the six States bordering on the Gulf of Mexico. A large minority, if not a majority, of the people of the slave States known as Border States, and of the mountainous parts of the six States known as the Gulf States, did not desire separation. They were attached to the Union, which had fostered and protected their interests, and they expressed no dissatisfaction, except with the proposed policy as to the extension of slavery, and A party in the in many cases not even with that. Their feelings South opposed to secession. were forcibly expressed by the distingushed Alexander H. Stephens, Provisional Vice-President of the Montgomery Government, in a speech made in the Convention in Georgia before that State passed the ordinance of secession, and about two months before he accepted office at Montgomery. He said, "This step [of secession] once taken can never be recalled; and all the baleful and withering consequences that must follow will rest on the Convention for all coming time. When we and our posterity shall see our lovely South desolated by the demon of war, which this act of yours will inevitably invite and call forth; when our green fields of waving harvest shall be trodden down by the murderous soldiery and fiery car of war sweeping over our land; our temples of justice laid in ashes; all the horrors and desolations of war upon us, who but this Convention will be held responsible for it, and who but him who shall have given his vote for this unwise and illtimed measure, as I honestly think and believe, shall be held to strict account for this suicidal act by the present generation, and probably cursed and execrated by posterity for all coming time, for the wide and desolating ruin that will inevitably follow this act you now propose to perpe 1 McPherson's History of the Rebellion, page 25. |