Why White Southerners Want To Secede Essay

Southern commissioners employed various tactics to persuade the southern states to secede from the Union in 1860 and 1861. Commissioners, who were average people, were tasked to help convince slave states to secede from the North. Their messages illustrate the main reasons for white southerners wanting to secede from the Union. Although commissioners varied their arguments depending on the state, they set forth a clear message as to the South’s desire to separate. Racial equality, the Republican Party, and economics all caused a deep-rooted fear in the southern states. This fearfulness led to the secession of the South and the creation of the Confederacy. The biggest and most notable source of fear that white southerners possessed was

James Orr illustrated South Carolina’s stance against racial equality by saying he “never would submit to such equality, equality at the ballot box and jury box, and at the witness stand.” Southern white men feared racial equality for three main reasons: a justification to end slavery, the possibility of being outnumbered by the black populace, and a drastic change in the social life. At this point in history, the south no longer viewed slavery as a ‘necessary evil,’ but rather as the primary consequence of the inferiority of the black man. Mississippi’s commissioner Jacob Thomson vocalized that slavery was justified by racial differences by saying, “the social principle that equality is not the right of man, but the right of equals only.” Although not spoken outright, southerners feared that racial equality

The southern whites feared the “the fate of the white race under Republican rule.” Many southern white men noted that Abraham Lincoln clearly wanted to end the southern way of life by forcing racial equality. “The North has variably exerted against slavery, all the power which it had at the time.” Many southern states saw the plans of the party as an abuse of federal government power, and feared what that could mean for the future. The southern states reasoned that secession was the natural response to the election of Republican president Abraham Lincoln. Finally, the South feared the economic repercussions that racial equality and Republican rule would initiate. The interstate slave trade consisted of nearly a significant portion of the South’s economics. Stephen Hale did not exaggerate when he said, “Constitutes the most valuable species of their [southern states] property, worth, according to recent estimates, not less than $4,000,000,000.” The South feared to lose the wealth and power that slavery provided since the formation of the United