Primary Document Set 4.

1: Secession

1. The Republican Party Platform of 1860
Despite being a relatively new party, the Republicans won the 1860 presidential
election. Their platform was the official statement of the party on important matters,
particularly slavery.


Resolved, that we, the delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the
United States, in Convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to our
constituents and our country, unite in the following declarations:...
4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the
right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its
own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the
perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless
invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what
pretext, as among the gravest of crimes...
7. That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries Slavery into
any or all of the Territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at
variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous
exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its tendency,
and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country...
8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of
freedom; That as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our
national territory, ordained that "no person should be deprived of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever
such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all
attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature,
or of any individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of the United
States...

Source: A Political Text-book for 1860, p. 26ff., as reprinted in Henry Steele Commager,
ed, Documents of American History, 8th ed. (New York, 1968), pp. 363-65.

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2. Mississippi Declaration of Secession (1861)
After the election of Abraham Lincoln, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida,
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas seceded (left the Union to form their own
country). A number of the states, including Mississippi, explained their reasons for
seceding.


A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of
the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection
with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should
declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest
material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the
largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are
peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of
nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products
have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and
civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of
reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates
of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work
out our ruin.
That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts
will sufficiently prove.
The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the
Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the
Northwestern Territory...
It [the federal government] refuses the admission of new slave States into the
Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the
power of expansion.
It tramples the original equality of the South under foot.
It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union,
and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.
It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection
and incendiarism in our midst.
It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole
popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.
It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of
emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists...
It has invaded a State, and invested with the honors of martyrdom the wretch
whose purpose was to apply flames to our dwellings, and the weapons of destruction to
our lives...
It has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to
prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system...
It has recently obtained control of the Government, by the prosecution of its
unhallowed schemes, and destroyed the last expectation of living together in friendship
and brotherhood.
Utter subjugation awaits us in the Union, if we should consent longer to remain
in it. It is not a matter of choice, but of necessity. We must either submit to degradation,
and to the loss of property worth four billions of money, or we must secede from the
Union framed by our fathers, to secure this as well as every other species of property.
For far less cause than this, our fathers separated from the Crown of England.
Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of
separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the
full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to
maintain it.

Source: Library of Congress

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3. Alexander Stephens, Cornerstone Speech, 1861
Alexander Stephens was a reluctant secessionist from Georgia. Once his state left
the Union, Stephens threw his full support behind the new government and was elected
vice-president of the Confederate States of America.


[Stephens began by discussing the improvements of the Confederate Constitution over
the United States Constitution.]
But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow
me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest,
forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as
it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was
the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast,
had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." ...The
prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the
formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in
violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and
politically...Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the
assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and
the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations
are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the
white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal
condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based
upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

Source: Henry Cleveland, Alexander H. Stephens, in Public and Private: With Letters and
Speeches, Before, During, and Since the War (Philadelphia, 1886), pp. 717-729.

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4. Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov.
Magoffin of Kentucky (1860)
Alabama sent Stephen Hale to Kentucky to convince that state to secede. Since
the Kentucky legislature was not in session when Hale visited the state on December
26th, 1860, he fulfilled his charge as a commissioner by writing the following letter to
the governor.


1. The people are the source of all political power; and the primary object of all
good Governments is to protect the citizen in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property;
and whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
inalienable right, and the duty of the people to alter or abolish it.
2. The equality of all the States of this Confederacy, as well as the equality of
rights of all the citizens of the respective States under the Federal Constitution, is a
fundamental principle in the scheme of the Federal Government... and when it is
perverted to the destruction of the equality of the States, or substantially fails to
accomplish these ends, it fails to achieve the purposes of its creation, and ought to be
dissolved...
4. Each State is bound in good faith to observe and keep, on her part, all the
stipulations and covenants inserted for the benefit of other States in the Constitutional
Compact-- the only bond of Union by which the several States are bound together; and
when persistently violated by one party to the prejudice of her sister States, ceases to be
obligatory on the States so aggrieved, and they may rightfully declare the compact
broken, the Union thereby formed dissolved, and stand upon their original rights, as
sovereign and independent political communities; and further, that each citizen owes
his primary allegiance to the State in which he resides, and hence it is the imperative
duty of the State to protect him in the enjoyment of all his Constitutional rights, and see
to it that they are not denied or withheld from him with impunity, by any other State or
Government.
If the foregoing propositions correctly indicate the objects of this Government,
the rights and duties of the citizen, as well as the rights, powers and duties of the State
and Federal Government under the Constitution, the next inquiry is, what rights have
been denied, what wrongs have been done, or threatened to be done, of which the
Southern States, or the people of the Southern States, can complain?...
Therefore it is that the election of Mr. Lincoln cannot be regarded otherwise than
a solemn declaration, on the part of a great majority of the Northern people, of hostility
to the South, her property and her institutions --- nothing less than an open declaration
of war --- for the triumph of this new theory of Government destroys the property of
the South, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo
servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations, and her wives and
daughters to pollution and violation, to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans.
Especially is this true in the cotton-growing States, where, in many localities, the
slave outnumbers the white population ten to one.
If the policy of the Republicans is carried out, according to the programme
indicated by the leaders of the party, and the South submits, degradation and ruin must
overwhelm alike all classes of citizens in the Southern States. The slave-holder and non-
slave-holder must ultimately share the same fate --- all be degraded to a position of
equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in
all the social relations of life; or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the
land with blood, and utterly wasting and destroying all the resources of the country.
Who can look upon such a picture without a shudder? What Southern man, be
he slave-holder or non-slave-holder, can without indignation and horror contemplate
the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters, in the not distant
future, associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality, and the
white man stripped, by the Heaven-daring hand of fanaticism of that title to superiority
over the black race which God himself has bestowed? In the Northern States, where free
negroes are so few as to form no appreciable part of the community, in spite of all the
legislation for their protection, they still remain a degraded caste, excluded by the ban
of society from social association with all but the lowest and most degraded of the white
race. But in the South, where in many places the African race largely predominates,
and, as a consequence, the two races would be continually pressing together,
amalgamation, or the extermination of the one or the other, would be inevitable. Can
Southern men submit to such degradation and ruin? God forbid that they should...
With us it is a question of self-preservation --- our lives, our property, the safety
of our homes and our hearthstones --- all that men hold dear on earth, is involved in the
issue. If we triumph, vindicate our rights and maintain our institutions, a bright and
joyous future lies before us. We can clothe the world with our staple [cotton], give
wings to her commerce, and supply with bread the starving operative in other lands,
and at the same time preserve an institution that has done more to civilize and
Christianize the heathen than all human agencies beside --- an institution alike
beneficial to both races, ameliorating the moral, physical and intellectual condition of
the one, and giving wealth and happiness to the other. If we fail, the light of our
civilization goes down in blood, our wives and our little ones will be driven from their
homes by the light of our own dwellings. The dark pall of barbarism must soon gather
over our sunny land, and the scenes of West India emancipation, with its attendant
horrors and crimes (that monument of British fanaticism and folly), be re-enacted in our
own land upon a more gigantic scale...

Source: Charles Dew, Apostles of Disunion, pages 90-103.

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6. Republican Banner editorial (1861)
Not every white southerner was enthusiastic about secession. Tennesseean John
Crittenden put forward compromise that eventually died. In this editorial, a Nashville
newspaper expresses its misgivings about secession.


The Resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, published in our paper a few
days since, define the position of Tennessee satisfactorily, as we believe, to the great
mass of the people. They substantially adopt the Crittenden Compromise as a basis of
adjustment of the pending issues between the North and South, and Tennessee will say
to the people of the North, not in a spirit of braggadocio, but firmly and calmly, and
with a sincere and honest desire that this adjustment may be accepted -- we demand
nothing more -- we will accept nothing less. This settlement can be agreed upon by the
people of both sections without the sacrifice of a principle or of any material interest. It
would be acceptable, we believe, to a majority of the people in the seceding States, and
the State of Tennessee could take no course better calculated to befriend and conserve
the interests of those States than by maintaining such a position as will enable her, in
conjunction with other Southern States, to negotiate the adoption of this compromise
with the North.
That the sympathies of Tennessee are emphatically Southern, no one will deny.
She will take no course, in any event, calculated to militate against the interests of her
Southern sisters. But the question for her to decide -- and it is a question upon which
hangs her own and the destiny of the South and the Union -- is what course is most
judicious, most patriotic, and best calculated to conserve the interests of her Southern
sisters, and if possible preserve the Union? Upon this question there is a difference of
opinion. Some are for precipitate secession. Others for maintaining our present attitude,
prepared, when the time comes, to act as mediators upon the basis of the Crittenden
adjustment. If the policy of the former party is pursued, we lose the advantage of our
position as pacificators, and gain nothing that we could not gain at any future time,
when it shall be demonstrated, as it unfortunately may be, that a settlement is
impracticable. We are therefore opposed to hasty action. We do not think the friends of
a fair and honorable settlement, in the seceding States, desire Tennessee to follow their
example until all honorable endeavors to secure such a settlement are exhausted.
Doubtless there are many in those States who do not desire a settlement -- who
prefer disunion and a Southern Confederacy to any reconstruction of the Government.
There are a few, even in Tennessee, who sympathize with these disunionists per se, but
they are very few, and thus far have been very modest in the avowal of such
sentiments. Tennessee is emphatically a Union State, if the Union can be preserved
upon terms of equality and justice, and is for making an attempt to preserve it before
abandoning the hope. The difference of opinion among her people is merely as to the
best policy to be pursued to accomplish a given end, at which all seem to be driving...

Source: Republican Banner, Nashville, January 25, 1861