While the Southern Colonies were known for having numerous plantations, they had few towns and cities. Plantation owners wanted to use as much land as possible for growing cash crops and were not interested in building towns. However, by the mid 1700s, settlements along the Atlantic coast grew into large towns. These large towns all had the same thing in common--good harbors for trade. Port cities became popular when both buyers and sellers needed a place to exchange goods.
This led to a secession crisis. By February 1861, six more states from the South seceded. These seven seceded states went on to form the Confederate States of America. The president at the time, James Buchanan, refused to take action to stop them claiming that it was not up to the government to preserve the Union, because it is based on public opinion and can never be strengthened by the blood of its people shed in a war. The new president waiting to take his term in office, Abraham Lincoln, obviously very much disagreed with this statement and denied the fact that states can secede.
So the south demanded over and over again that slavery spread to the west, they found that if they brought slavery to the west it would make more sense because both regions were largely based on farming this was said in document 2. Abraham Lincoln was elected for president of the United States on November 6,1860. Lincoln had his support on the North meaning he had no electoral votes in the south, which were slavehood states. Six weeks after the election South Carolina became the first southern state to leave the union. South Carolina's leaders wrote and voted upon a declaration of secession stating “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free.”
Southern states started to secede after Lincoln was elected, but they seceded because they were scared that he was going to end slavery. The whole Southern economy was based off of slavery because they had an agricultural economy and not an industrial economy like the North. The North and the South were completely different. The North did not need slaves, while the South feared what would happen without slaves. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
As stated in Document 5, “Many Southerners favored secession as part of the idea that the states have rights and powers which the federal government cannot legally deny. The supporters of states’ rights held that the national government was a league of independent states, any of which had the right to secede”. This shows how Southerners believed that they had every right to secede. They wanted to ensure that they lived in a country in which they would be free to live the way they wanted to. The federal government was unable to prevent this, since each state has inalienable rights and powers.
The South seceded from the Union in 1860 when Abraham Lincoln’s presidency rose. South Carolina was the first state to secede with others that followed to create the Confederacy. States with a higher percentage of the state’s population that had slaves left earlier and states geographically farther from the Union seceded earlier as well. The Confederacy believed in the power of leaving the Union since they voluntarily joined the Union. The South was afraid that Lincoln was going to abolish slavery once he was president so left quickly.
The decision to seced by the South was a decision which was made with careful planning and consideration. The south saw their options as either letting their economy crumble under their fingers, or taking action through succeeding. The South's dependency on slavery, the increasing understanding of the North's antislavery opinions, and the changing tone of the debates over slavery from a passive tone to one of having to take action all influenced the South to seced, thus causing the Civil War. The reasons for the South's increasing awareness to slavery being attacked in the North varried from protests to congressional decisions.
The Confederate States of America consisted of eleven states in the south. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas were the seven states that first seceded. The last four to secede were Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The Confederates fought against the Union during the Civil War in the years 1861-1865. The Confederacy fought for slavery and states’ rights.
The North had been pressuring the South for years at this point, but it had not yet done anything significant enough for their actions to be considered offensive. The governments of the southern states had begun to assemble an army. In South Carolina “the state legislature prepared to arm a defense force of 10,000 men” (Dew, 25). The thought of secession was one not focused upon the defence of the confederate state, rather the focus was upon the revolutionary aspect of it. In the document, the “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union,” they compare their leaving the union to the thirteen colonies leaving the control of the British Crown.
Document A declares the reasoning for the secession of South Carolina, the first state to secede from the Union in December of 1860. In the Declaration of Causes of Secession, it is cited that the Constitution of the United States unjustly limited the powers of the states, giving South Carolina motive to secede. (Document A) Many more Southern states soon seceded as well, forming the Confederacy. Although the formation of the Confederacy was an act of defiance and opposition to the ideals of the Union, the idea of the Confederacy itself was not revolutionary, especially considering the early government of the newly independent colonies was based on the Articles of Confederation.
In the 1860’s South Carolina decided to secede from the union. This caused an uprising of many other states that decided the United States was not working out for them and many others decided to secede too. President Lincoln felt that this violated the Constitution and felt that it was not the states choice whether or not they were part of the union. On the contrary, the states felt that if they joined the union they should be able to leave it, no questions asked.
Some of the seceding states even wrote that the federal government’s hostility towards slavery was a reason for them leaving in their official
When looking at why the South seceded we must first admit and recognize that is was very much a multi layered issue without a clear answer as to what was the reason the south seceded as there were so many factors. However, while most people believe that the south seceded because of slavery; while in fact, it was influenced more so by sectionalism and events by radicals such as Bleeding Kansas; therefore, southern secession was in fact not mainly over the issue of slavery, but rather over more complex internal issues the nation was seeing from sectionalism. We first have to remember the differences between the North and the South just as societies as well in terms of sectionalism. The societies of these 2 sections of the United States were vastly different. Economically there was competition between the 2 which led to competition for political policies to favor one or the other, which could’ve been compromised but wasn’t.
‘Slavery was the root cause of secession’. ‘November 6 1860, Lincoln was elected president of America which resulted in panic emerging in the South’ . The election of Lincoln as president who was a Republican leader meant that ideologies, movements and values from the North would be implemented in the South which meant the abolition of slavery. Slavery was a huge characteristic of the South as the economy; politics; social status and psychological mind-sets were influenced by the process of slavery. The southern white population then derived the idea of secession which meant the South would gain independence from Northern aggression .
After the election of President Abraham Lincoln in 1860, eleven Southern states seceded from the Union. People in the South made a living through a plantation economy, Southerners needed cash crops that were labor intensive, using slaves to work this economy. The Northern economy was very different than the Southern economy the Northern economy was an industrialized economy, unlike the Southern economy. Abolitionists wanted slavery to end and thought it was an immoral and incorrect way to treat other human beings. Many Southerners supported the secession of South Carolina, and many other states, from the Union because they would rather leave the Union now than be killed by the people who hated them and the people they owned.
