The reason why southern states seceded from the Union following the election of Abraham
Lincoln in 1860 was to protect the institution of slavery.
But how do we know?
Well, let’s look at a few key pieces of evidence.
Every state that seceded and joined the Confederacy issued Ordinances of Secession, but four of
them actually went further.
South Carolina, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas issued Declarations that explained in
detail their reasons for seceding.
The Declaration of South Carolina, the first state to secede, begins by arguing that each
state in the Union has a right to secede if the federal government doesn’t fulfill its
constitutional obligations.
It then describes which constitutional obligations the government has not met, namely the Fugitive
Slave Clause in Article 4, which required a state to return a fugitive slave who escaped
from another state to his/her legal owner.
It claims that for several years this was respected, but that “an increasing hostility
on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to
a disregard of their obligations...”
It also says that those northern states “have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery.”
It then objects to the election of Abraham Lincoln, saying that “A geographical line
has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the
election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes
are hostile to slavery.
He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared
that that ‘Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,’ and that the public
mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”
The second sentence of Mississippi’s Declaration says that “Our position is thoroughly identified
with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world.”
This one goes even further and espouses a racist ideology, claiming that slavery “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.”
Later, it claims that the northern free states advocate “negro equality, socially and politically,”
and that they promote “insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.”
Georgia’s Declaration of Secession states: “For the last ten years we have had numerous
and serious causes of complaint against our non-slaveholding confederate States with reference
to the subject of African slavery.”
Texas’s Declaration proclaims that civil and political rights only belong to white
men and goes on to say that “the servitude of the African race, as existing in these
States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and
justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator,
as recognized by all Christian nations.”
It then argues that if the existing relations between the races are destroyed, they would
“bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding
states.”
It’s often said, especially by people who would like to absolve the South of its history
of slavery, that the primary reason the southern states seceded is because of states’ rights
and not to protect slavery.
But what’s interesting when looking at these Declarations of Secession is that they repeatedly
criticize the northern free states for not obeying federal laws and federal constitutional
obligations.
In other words, the southern states opposed northern states when they tried to assert
their own states’ rights in a cause they happened not to like, namely the attempt to
diminish and ultimately destroy the institution of slavery.