5. After 1849 the existence of gold in California brought so many people to the Pacific coast that California became a state in 1850.

6. As population grew denser, and transportation was facilitated by the expansion of railroads and steamboats and canals, business opportunities were increased, and new markets were created.

7. Labor-saving and time-saving machines and appliances became more in demand than ever, and a long list of remarkable inventions and business aids appeared.

8. The South, owing to its own peculiar industrial and labor condition, was little benefited by all these improvements, and remained much the same as in 1800.

CHAPTER XXVII

WAR FOR THE UNION, 1861-1865

419. South Carolina secedes. The only state where in 1860 presidential electors were chosen by the legislature was South Carolina. When the legislature met for this purpose, November 6, 1860, the governor asked it not to adjourn, but to remain in session till the result of the election was known. If Lincoln is elected, said he, the "secession of South Carolina from the Union" will be necessary. Lincoln was elected, and on December 20, 1860, a convention of delegates, called by the legislature to consider the question of secession, formally declared that South Carolina was no longer one of the United States.1

The meaning of

420. The "Confederate States of America." this act of secession was that South Carolina now claimed to be a “sovereign, free, and independent" nation. But she was not the only state to take this step. Before February 1, 1861, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas also left the Union. Three days later, February 4, 1861, delegates from six of these seven states met at Montgomery, Ala., formed a constitution, established a provisional government, which they called the "Confederate States of America," and elected Jefferson Davis and Alexander H. Stephens provisional President and Vice President.

Toward preventing or stopping this, Buchanan did nothing.

1 "We the people of the state 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.”

No state, he said, had a right to secede. But a state having seceded, he had no power to make her come back, because he could not make war on a state; that is, he could not preserve the Union. On one matter, however, he was forced to act. When South Carolina seceded, the three forts in Charleston harbor Castle Pinckney, Fort Sumter, and Fort Moultrie were in charge of a major of artillery named Robert Anderson. He had under him some

eighty officers and men, and knowing that he could not hold all three forts, and fearing that the South would seize Fort Sumter, he dismantled Fort Moultrie, spiked the cannon, cut down the flagstaff, and removed to Fort Sumter, on the evening of December 26, 1860.

This act was heartily approved by the people of the North and by Congress, and Buchanan with great reluctance yielded to their demand, and sent the Star of the West, with food and men, to relieve Anderson. But as the vessel, with our flag at

its fore, was steaming up the channel toward Charleston harbor, the Southern batteries fired upon her, and she went back to New York. Anderson was thus left to his fate, and as Buchanan's term was nearly out, both sides waited to see what Lincoln would do.

421. Why did the States secede? - Why did the Southern slave states secede? To be fair to them we must seek the answer in the speeches of their leaders. "Your votes," said Jefferson Davis, "refuse to recognize our domestic institutions

[slavery], which preëxisted the formation of the Union, our property [slaves], which was guaranteed by the Constitution. You refuse us that equality without which we should be degraded if we remained in the Union. You elect a candidate upon the basis of sectional hostility; one who in his speeches, now thrown broadcast over the country, made a distinct declaration of war upon our institutions."

"There is," said Howell Cobb, of Georgia, Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, "no other remedy for the existing state of things except immediate secession."

"Our position," said the Mississippi secession convention, "is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery. A blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union."

Alexander H. Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, asserted that the Personal Liberty laws of some of the free states "constitute the only cause, in my opinion, which can justify secession."

The South seceded, then, according to its own statements, because the people believed that the election of Lincoln meant the abolition of slavery.

422. Compromise attempted. The Republican party in 1861 had no intention of abolishing slavery. Its purpose was to stop the spread of slavery into the territories, to stop the admission of more slave states, but not to abolish slavery in states where it already existed. A strong wish therefore existed in the North to compromise the sectional differences. Many plans for a compromise were offered, but only one, that of Crittenden, of Kentucky, need be mentioned. He proposed that the Constitution should be so amended as to provide

1. That all territory of the United States north of 36° 30' should be free, and all south of it slave soil.

2. That slaves should be protected as property by all the departments of the territorial government.

3. That states should be admitted with or without slavery as their constitutions provided, whether the states were north or south of 36° 30'.

4. That Congress should have no power to shut slavery out of the territories.

5. That the United States should pay owners for rescued fugitive slaves.

As these propositions recognized the right of property in slaves, that is, put the black man on a level with horses and cattle, the Republicans rejected them, and the attempt to compromise ended in failure.

One act of great

423. A Proposed Thirteenth Amendment. significance was done. A proposition to add a thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was submitted to the states. It read, "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere within any state with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said states."

Even Lincoln approved of this, and two states, Maryland and Ohio, accepted it. But the issue was at hand. It was too late to compromise.

424. Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President. Lincoln and Hamlin were inaugurated on March 4, 1861, and in his speech from the Capitol steps Lincoln was very careful to state just what he wanted to do.

1. "I have no purpose," said he, "directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists."

2. "I consider the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability I shall take care . . . that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the states."

3. "In doing this there need be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority."