Summary: The Decision To Secede

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Abraham Lincoln once said, “ No state, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union. Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy.” In the text, it states that the decision to secede was favored by 11 southern states. Those states included South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. These states’ favored the decision to secede for numerous of reasons. However, in each state, namely Mississippi, there were certain groups opposed to the decision to succeed. In this article, I will analyze those opposing views to help us better understand secession and its effects on the broader Mississippi population.
To analyze why certain groups opposed the decision to secede, I must first look at the reason others were pro-secession.
First, many states favored the decision to secede because of slavery. Slavery was legal in the South but banned by some states in the North. Many Southerners were afraid that slavery would be outlawed completely. Southern slave owners could not move into territories where slavery was prohibited because their slaves would then be free, according to the text.

Now that the root cause has been discovered, I can now analyze on opposing view. Many groups were opposed to the decision to secede because some thought it was unlawful. Some groups …show more content…

For example, the primary source document states “seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion”, this quote expresses the ideology of a slave owner. This completely masked the voices of those who did not own slaves, which includes poor whites, women, and African Americans. The source even goes on to state “ it advocates negro equality, socially and politically”, this showed how the voices and rights of African Americans were not heard or