Free Republic

Wise was quoted as saying that if Fremont had been elected in 1856 an army of 20,000 men would have converged on the capitol to prevent the inauguration. But of course, Fremont couldn't have won.

Agreed, but Wise was one of those inclined to speak off the cuff. He invited Southern governors to meet in Raleigh to discuss what Southern States should do if Fremont was elected, and only NC and SC showed up. And they didn’t do anything in the end. There was no popular clamour for secession in 1856, I would assert, because the violence I spoke of had largely not occurred yet.

If Fremont had shown more signs of winning, secession talk would have been louder, and if he'd won, there might well have been a secession in 1856.

You didn’t have State legislatures passing resolutions about secession in 1856 like you did in 1860 (e.g. Alabama and Mississippi). It is not coincidental that the Alabama Resolutions (Feb. 24, 1860) were issued in the immediate aftermath of Harper’s Ferry, when there was talk of northerners rescuing Brown before his execution, northerners publicly praising his efforts, and public mourning of his execution. These acts by private citizens indicated how they intended to conduct themselves in the future.

In 1850-1 there was a lot of talk about secession. I would surmise that it failed because neither party was anti-slavery, Calhoun and Clay were still alive, and the country had just passed through a victorious and unifying war, rather than six or ten years of sectional conflict.

You needed a run-up to rebellion. Enough Southerners had to feel that they'd exhausted alternative approaches before they would take such a radical step.

In 1860, by contrast, Southern Democrats split their party, ensuring the election of a Republican, an event which could serve as a pretext for secession. What was going on there?

Obviously, there were elements in the South that demanded either (A) complete acquiescence in Southern demands, or (b) secession. That is the mindset of some of the delegates who went to Charleston.

As for the Compromise measures of 1850/51, those advocating their adoption (e.g. Clay and Webster) presented them as a “final adjustment” of the slavery issues. These measures were accepted by the people of the South on that basis. When the compromise measures weren’t honoured by the Northern people, the people of the South felt betrayed, and had reason to doubt the sincerity of any future compromise proposal.

Clearly John Brown was a factor, but I doubt one could say he was the main one. He was something demagogues could use to scare voters, but politicians had a pretty clear assessment of what was going on, and weren't so easily cowed themselves.

To be sure, there was fear in the South in the days leading up to war, but there was also a great enthusiasm for taking a revolutionary step. Those who believe in the Southern version of victim history leave that out of their accounts.

But that step only resonated with the people of the South after the violents events I wrote of.

Also, I doubt Republicans "winked and nodded" at Brown. That's the sort of claim that people love to make then or now about this party or that, but when you look at the record there's usually less to such allegations than people want to believe.

By winking and nodding, I meant certain concrete acts that were taken by Northern Republican office holders. For example (as I mentioned in an earlier post), Gov. Samuel Kirkwood (Republican, Iowa) and Governor William Dennison (Republican, Ohio) refused to extradite to Virginia those wanted for their connection to the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. Kirkwood’s excuse was that the extradition request wasn’t notarized. (I went to Richmond and saw the original letter from Kirkwood to Letcher). Dennison informed Letcher that there was no statute in the Ohio statute book that would allow him to extradite someone wanted to trial in another State. (Letcher then found the Ohio statute for Gov. Dennison.) Additionally, Dennison wrote that the indictment did not specify that the accused had ever been in Virginia, and thus he could not have fled to State to escape prosecution. Lemuel Shaw, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, refused to allow a deputy of the US Senate apprehend Frank Sanborn and take him to Washington to testify to the Mason Committee investigating the Harper’s Ferry insurrection. These incidents were noted in newspapers all across the South at the time. In addition, the incidents were specifically referenced in the secession declarations of South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia in laying out their reasons for wanting out of the Union.

Ultimately, however, the decision to secede (and thus go to war, although these two things are not the same thing) was a complex one. There were a number of reasons, some directly related to protecting the investment of Southerners in that form of “property” others not directly related, and some not related at all. And the key thing is that any particular individual could have felt any or all of these reasons. And some of those reasons are completely honorable.

It might be just as accurate to say that without violent anti-slavery, there would have been no war.
Well, of course, had the north not cared one whit about slavery there wouldn't have been a war.

I can be anti-abortion without feeling the need to bomb abortion clinics. But if I do act violently on my moral convictions against abortion, that doesn’t mean that the residents of, say, Massachusetts must accept being the victims of my violent action, just because my intentions are honourable. They can object strenuously to the means I am using. And if a party assumes control of the Federal government, some of the members of whom have demonstrated a willingness to look the other way in prosecuting violent anti-abortion fanatics, then I believe that they have a legitimate complaint.
Now the analogy to the Republicans of 1860 is not a strict one. Lincoln, for example, had condemned John Brown’s violent means. But there were

But, I don't agree that it was the violence against anti-slavery that drove the South to secede. A bitter cold war had been brewing for years over the expansion of slavery into the new territories and states. My view is that given the long history of the sectionalism, war was virtually inevitable.

But why did it occur in 1860 and not at some earlier date? Why had sectional agitation not precipitated secession in 1850-51 or 1856? In 1850, the Nashville Convention was a secessionist fizzle. In 1856, Gov. Wise’s call on Southern Governor’s to meet at Raleigh to discuss a Southern response to a Fremont victory lead to only 3 Governors showing up (Va, NC, & SC), and they didn’t actually do anything.
I assert that the recent (i.e. post-1856 election) of violence in the political discourse over slavery made the issue relevant to a much broader Southerner audience that just slaveholders. Servile insurrection threatened every white Southerner, not just slaveholders. The winking and nodding by Republicans at violent anti-slavery activists indicated the future attitude of Republican officeholders towards the future perpetrators of anti-slavery violence. In a speech in Washington in 1860, W. L. Yancey made the following comments: “Suppose that party gets into power; suppose another John Brown raid takes place in a frontier state; suppose “Sharpe’s rifles” and pikes and bowie knives, and all the other instruments of warfare are brought to bear upon an inoffensive, peaceful and unfortunate people, and that Lincoln or Seward is in the presidential chair, where will then be a force of United States marines to check that band? Suppose that is the case – that the frontiers of the country will be lighted up by flames of midnight arson; as it is in Texas; that towns are burned; that the peace of our families is disturbed; that poison is found secreted throughout the whole country in immense quantities; that men are found to prowling about in our land distributing that poison in order that it may be placed in our springs and our wells; with arms and ammunition placed in the hands of this semi-barbarous people, what will be our fate? Where will be the United States Marshals to interfere? Where will be the dread of this General Government that exists under this present administration? Where will be the fear of the United States army to intimidate or prevent such movements? Why, gentlemen, if Texas is now in flames, and the peace of Virginia is invaded now under this administration, and under the present aspect of affairs, tell me what it will be when a “higher law” government reigns in the city of Washington?“
That kind of rhetoric resonated with Southerners, slaveholders and non-slaveholders. A government that could not (or would not) provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, etc. seems to have lost functional legitimacy in the eyes of a certain number of its citizens.

The depth of the animosity, and the level of hatred and mistrust meant that war, and a bloody one, was probably the only way this issue was going to be resolved and remove the sectionalism that would not let the nation grow. I think you can look back and find a million things that could have been done differently that might have prevented the war, and the top of my list was not electing Buchanan. On the other hand, I think war would have broken out eventually.

That strikes me as a pretty pessimistic view of human nature and conflict resolution.
Why do you suppose secession happened in 1860 instead of 1850 or 1856?
Northern States (Mass., Connecticut, RI, NY, Penn., NJ, etc.) got rid of slavery in their own good time, and in their own way.

"The overwhelming issues which divided the north from the south in the years preceding the Civil War were about expansion of slavery into the new territories. Without slavery there would have been no civil war."

It might be just as accurate to say that without violent anti-slavery, there would have been no war.
The inclusion of violent anti-slavery means had changed the debate over the latter 1850's. Anthony Burns (et al.), Bleeding Kansas, Harper's Ferry, the public mourning of John Brown and the suspicious fires in Texas in the summer of 1860 all combined to import ominous meaning to the election of a Republican to the White House in 1860.
The election of 1860 was seen by a significant number of Southerners as a referendum on the violent means adopted by the more radical wing of the Republican party. Indeed, John A. Andrew, Republican candidate for governor and John Brown's volunteer defense attorney declared, on the night of Brown's execution, "This (Harper's Ferry) is the eternal and heaven sustained nature of the irrepressible conflict." Andrew was elected in the same election that took Abraham Lincoln to the White House. Here was a Republican, trying to establish a link between Harper's Ferry and Republican policy. And he was elected to the Governor's office after making that statement.

If not for these violent means, I would wager that the election of Abraham Lincoln would have been viewed by most Southerners as undesirable, but not the end of the world (or the Union). I don't believe there was a credible threat to secede if Fremont had won in 1856 (although, I'm sure you will correct me if I'm wrong).

I don't think that Virginia got final jurisdiction, they got initial jurisdiction. I suppose it is possible that if Brown had been acquitted, or sentenced to time in prison instead of hanging, the Federal government might have tried him as well (I haven't checked the ante-bellum Federal Statute books for a Federal treason statute).
Brown was intending to overthrow the entire United States' government, and all the State governments. He had in his possession (back at the Kennedy farm, if memory serves) of a new draft Constitution of the United States, that he and his accomplices had drafted in Chatham, Canada West in the summer of 1858. Virginia was just the first place he intended to overthrow. Maps, also recovered at the Kennedy farm, showed his planned area of operations: Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee, with symbols on counties with large black populations. He was not just trying to run off slaves. When he said that before his trial and when his supporters said so in front of Congress, they were lying, and they knew they were lying.
On a relevant sidenote, in Kentucky vs Dennison, the Ohio Attorney General advised Gov. Dennison not to extradite a criminal to Kentucky because slave-stealing wasn't a crime in Ohio, even though the Constitution clearly says that the criminal will be delivered up to the State having jurisdiction over the crime. This was just another example of how northern Republicans were probably going to run things, once they got in power. If I were a Southerner in 1860, even a non-slaveowning Southerner, I'd be very nervous about such a bunch being in charge of the Congress and the White House.

diplomat, thanks for the reply.
The Harper's Ferry convicts were charged with (convicted of and executed for) treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia (not the US), murder and inciting servile insurrection. Now, as for treason against the Commonwealth, one of the accused (Brown, himself, if memory serves) said that he never owed any allegiance to Virginia, so being charged with treason to her was inappropriate (Brown had a certain point here, I believe). But murder and inciting insurrection were serious crimes, and the Governors Kirkwood and Dennison were dead wrong to refuse the extradition requests from Governor Letcher. What this conduct meant was observed by the Staunton (Va.) Vindicator in February, 1860, when that paper editorialized as follows: "The conduct of the Governor of Iowa (says the Richmond Dispatch) is remarkable for its duplicity, and shows to us of the South, what we have to expect from Northern officials, elevated to power by the sectional party of the day."
The fact that Northern Republican office holders (not just loud-mouthed radicals in private life) had done this was very troubling. Would a Seward or Lincoln Administration take a similar stance in regards to perpetrators of future armed invasions of the South?
And you are correct on one other point. A different extradition failure spawned an appeal to the Federal bench around the same time. In Kentucky vs. Dennison, the Court ruled that the Governor had a moral obligation to extradite fugitives from justice, but that the Federal Court had no authority to issue a writ of mandamus ordering a State Executive to do his duty.
As for the idea that the Federal government had ultimate jurisdiction I am not sure what Federal laws the raiders broke at Harper’s Ferry. I’m not sure there was even a Federal law against murder back then. That would have been a State law only. And the Federal government acted swiftly to protect Virginians’ life and property, but apprehension and prosecution are two separate things.

2. You are right about pork, but it was one of the grievances of which Southerners complained. If ever there was a real-world example of the slippery slope, this issue is it. Is there any topic that the Federal government considers to be beyond its purview?

3. The fugitive slave law was a Federal not a State law. It was enacted pursuant to Article IV, Section 2 of the US Constitution. Lots of States had laws that were specifically designed to thwart Article IV, Section 2. Of course, these laws were unconstitutional, but they did serve as examples of how Republicans intended to run the show, once they got the Senate and White House. Some Republicans had already shown that they were willing to use their offices to protect murderers. What were Southerners supposed to make of that fact?
Of course, if a Northern State found enforcing the fugitives from labor clause to be so repugnant, they could have seceded. Then they would be free to ignore the Fugitive Slave Law and welcome escaped slaves with open arms.

1. Protection by northern Republicans in public office (i.e. Gov. Kirkwood of Iowa and Gov. Dennison of Ohio) of men (i.e. Owen Brown, Francis Merriam, Barclay Coppoc) wanted for trial in Virginia for their crimes in connection with the Harper's Ferry insurrection. These northern Republican office holders used their offices to shield fugitives from justice from prosecution, because these fugitives were anti-slavery murderers.
2. Federal expenditures, with no constitutional basis, for things like fishing bounties for New England fishermen.
3. State laws passed to deliberately thwart a constitutional provision for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

Or did you mean to imply that the list of greivances on the Declaration of Independence is definitive and exhaustive? Are there no other potential grievances which might authorize a people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another?